I found Making Machu Picchu very interesting because it was a side of Machu Picchu that I have never considered before. Machu Picchu is several  different things to different people. It is both the past and the present and will also be the future as long as people continue to work to preserve it. And I bet that tourism will keep this site going for a while yet, although it may be its downfall too.“Machu Picchu’s increased touristic prominence has led the site to acquire its most important contemporary role: it serves as a powerful symbol of Peru that directly links its national identity to an Andean and Inca past.”Indigeniety has literally been turned into a commodity with Machu Picchu being marketed as a connection with the indigenous past. The whole of Peru isn’t indigenous but with Machu Picchu being seen to represent all of Peru and as a link to as a Peruvian Andean Inca past, Peru can be seen as a very indigenous place by outsiders. But this form of Indigeniety is being embraced largely for economical reasons, as Rice discusses, so it makes me wonder how authentic this is. And does motivation matter for these things? Maybe, maybe not. You could make an argument for both sides so I am undecided. Is the pride now associated with an Inca, and therefore indigenous, past a shallow one based on monetary gains and fame from the success of Machu Picchu as a tourist site?

Today Machu Picchu has a very different identity than it did in the past. As our tour guide Roy said the Incas used Machu Picchu as an administrative place, not as a sacred religious place as most people believe. But this common belief of this site being a sacred space has meant that tourism has changed Machu Picchu into a place that arguably has become sacred. It has made a self fulfilling prophecy in a way. People believe this place was sacred in the past so they think and treat it as such, causing it to become that way. Many people I think go to Machu Picchu to be apart of this and to feel a connection with what they see as an ancient, sacred, and spiritual past. And this image has leaked into the view of Peru itself. It some ways Machu Picchu is still part of a myth since so much is still unknown about it and the different ideas of it that exist. Tourism did a number on this place.