Month: July 2024

How does one, so simple and small as I, sum up a course as great and grand as this one? How does one categorize an experience which was so varied?

Trying to look back and reflect on the course as a whole feels like I’m standing in the middle of a lake and  trying to see it all at the same time. When you look in one direction you miss what’s behind you. And when you change directions, you can’t see the previous angle anymore. Eventually you’re left spinning around trying to see it all at the same time but all you see is a blur of it all.

What did I learn or unlearn about Indigeneity over the course of the trip? I felt during the course there were a few “turning points” where my personal views on Indigeneity or how I perceived Indigeneity in Peru were challenged.

>Lima: Peru, as one of the cradles of civilization, has been continuously occupied by different indigenous groups for thousands and thousands of years. The Inca were literally just the tip of the iceberg that the Spanish happened to run their Titanic into.

• The visit to the LUM gave me insight into how complex the continuance of the indigenous identity has been and gave context for modern Peru
• Our visit to the Larco illuminated how long this region of the world has been occupied by advanced civilizations. The Incas are merely the most recent.

>Cusco: As the capital of the Inca Empire, it was obvious in the architecture and culture just how rich of a history the town has.

• We talked a lot about the performance of Indigeneity but passing the ladies working the land along the road to rainbow mountain wearing the same traditional dress that we observed in the plaza or around town encouraged me to “believe” more in the representations we had been seeing.
• The planetarium and Sacsayhuaman were pivotal in understanding just how advanced the Incas were before the Spanish arrived and I felt a sense of loss for the people that built and used these sites.
• The syncretism of Corpus Christi, along with the reading by Dean, made me think more about how Catholicism has adopted and co-opted representations of Indigeneity for its own benefit.
• Inti Raymi was a spectacle of Inca-ness. I found myself weighing what are the pros and cons of commercializing the Inca experience like this. It’s good to preserve the culture and maintain the customs, but it’s so constructed. Although it seemed like it was made for a foreign audience, Dean argues that it actually is mostly for Peruvians nationals and for the construction of a national identity.

>Pisac: The indigenous (here: Andean, specifically Incan) cosmovision is called more aptly “cosmo-vivencia” to emphasize its relevance in the present.

• The Amaru Visit: see related experience blog
• Frequently, trying to explain what we were doing and why we’re on this trip led to complex feelings and unsure explanations. Often I didn’t want to make it sound like “oh I’m here to study “your people””. What does that discomfort reveal? I’m not sure and I’m still figuring it out.

>Sacred Valley: although presented in the way that it is, Indigeneity is not a Monolith

• The tour at Machu Picchu with Roy “this beautiful tourism”. I had never heard someone describe the industry this way. Maybe he was just saying it for us or maybe he really did feel that way about his career. Once again, I feel I’m being sold something and I don’t know how to evaluate its authenticity.
• the “tourist menu” in Aguas Calientes. Biggest mistake of my life.
• The Ollantaytambo tour with John from Las Orquideas. This was one of the most personalized tours we had and I felt like we actually got an insight into a modern Peruvian person’s relationship with Indigeneity. He told us about how his father is one of the few people who knows how to move the large rocks up and down hill, a secret which westerners have spent years figuring out.

Tourism has become the modern Titanic sailing through the polar night. The packaged and presented face of Incan Indigeneity rises above the water but without knowing it, visitors are passing by and potentially encountering many intertwined history’s under the proverbial water of ignorance (and inherent lack of roots/routes).

“The flip side of this phrase was that well-off common folk who lacked the symbolic capital that a university degree represented did not have access to the social status that their high income could have otherwise granted them” (de la Cadena 49).

Is this not still extremely true today? Even us as a group subscribe to this. We had a graduation ceremony (the getting of the paper) at Machu Picchu to symbolize the accomplishment and honor the new social strata university graduates have access to.

Our visit to the Kusi Kawsay school in Pisac highlighted how important the option of alternative education is. We learned about how they use holistic learning practices, emphasize outdoor spaces, incorporate Andean cosmoviviencia, and strive to maintain the Indigenous cultural practice such as weaving and traditional dance. Even with all these clear personal and community benefits, not all parents want to send their children to a school like this. We heard from one father who said that in order for his child to end up being a “professional”, Kusi Kawsay wouldn’t provide the correct preparation. The development of his son as a member of the neo-colonial definition of success in Peru was more important to him and his family than an Waldorf-type education. This was interesting to me. Growing up in the public school system, I’ve felt for a long time that there are few efforts made to develop youth as people rather than only develop their skills as students. At university, there is more emphasis on learning to question and think critically but by that time it may be too late. Something is being lost by putting so much social value on the outcome and forgetting to focus on the development of the individual.

Additionally it seems westernized education has gotten less and less community-based and instead focuses on individual achievement. We saw in Amaru how important community ties are. The imposition of the colonial education system is slowly reconstructing the ways communities interact as young students learn that success comes from personal effort instead of communal effort. In Amaru, the farmers took time out of their weeks to plow and prepare each others fields because it benefits the community as a whole. This type of reciprocal work was an important element of the Incan work culture as well. You worked your own land, but you also helped out with the community plots, the plots of those who were sick or disabled, and the land of the community leader (but always last).

Our new-found obsession with personal achievement, such as a piece of paper that says you completed things to a satisfactory level at a certain place with a certain level of cultural prestige, is erasing some of community-mindedness that previous forms of life and education were adept at maintaining.