Disaster Destinations, 1948–1960
Keyword(s):
Cold War
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This chapter investigates how Cusco tourism navigated three crises: the end of Good Neighbor cultural diplomacy at the start of the Cold War, the withdrawal of state support for tourism development, and a destructive earthquake in 1950. Cusco’s tourism backers used their transnational connections to new global institutions like UNESCO as well as earthquake recovery funds to sustain tourism in the region and lay the foundation for a travel boom in the next decades. However, such efforts promoted controversial reconstruction techniques at Machu Picchu and failed to address Cusco’s growing agrarian and economic crises.