Epilogue

This chapter focuses on the centennial celebrations of Hiram Bingham’s “discovery” of Machu Picchu. The lavish ceremony illustrated how Peruvian national state now embraced Machu Picchu as a sign of national identity. It shows how transnational networks of capital, culture, and travel had made Machu Picchu into a global symbol of Peru. However, the continued lack of social or economic inclusion of Andean communities into the Peruvian nation casts light on the limits and potential threat that such processes can have. The influence of tourism and global consumption of Machu Picchu has unmoored the site from the region of Cusco. A century of tourism growth has transformed cusqueños into figurative owners of Peruvian national identity while simultaneously displacing their control over the region’s economic and political future.

Between Maoists and Millionaires, 1975–1996

Burdened with debt, the national state withdrew its investment in tourism development in Cusco in the late 1970s. More ominously, the growth of the Maoist Shining Path rebellion and its attacks on travellers nearly brought the tourism economy to collapse by the end of the 1980s. Yet, this chapter also documents the grassroots innovations in Cusco’s tourism economy. As traditional tourists avoided Machu Picchu, expatriates and locals created a new adventure tourism economy based on backpacking and hiking. Using new transnational cultural and travel networks, these efforts reinvented Machu Picchu as an exotic and adventurous site. The neoliberal government of Alberto Fujimori of the 1990s employed the new imagery of Machu Picchu as it sought to attract new private investment into Peru. These efforts brought in a bonanza of new Lima-based and international investors. However, the new state policies provoked local anger who rallied against tourism development perceived as unjust and as a threat to the region’s historical heritage

Disaster Destinations, 1948–1960

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.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the central argument of the book: Tourism was instrumental in the modern rise of Machu Picchu and its transnational character proved important in influencing the Peruvian state to embrace the Andes and the Inca as symbols of Peruvian national identity.

Making the “Modern” Destination, 1900–1934

The chapter begins with the famous Hiram Bingham-led expeditions to Machu Picchu. Although Bingham brought attention to Machu Picchu, his controversial actions and hasty departure from Peru in 1915 meant that Machu Picchu remained largely ignored on the national and global level. However, local elites contributed to the rehabilitation of Machu Picchu as part of their efforts to promote regional folkloric identity, better known as indigenismo. This emphasized Cusco’s modernity and embraced a utopian vision of the Inca past. However, tourism downplayed the contemporary demands of Cusco’s large exploited indigenous population. By the 1930s, these efforts had begun to sway the national state to embrace their interpretation of indigenous culture.

The Junta and the Jipis, 1960–1975

Advances in jet travel ushered in Cusco’s first tourism boom in the 1960s and 1970s. However, a series of agrarian revolts and the collapse of Cusco’s traditional economic base threatened to unravel tourism. Increasingly, Cusco looked to the national state to use tourism as a source of economic development, especially after the 1968 military coup led by the left-leaning General Juan Velasco Alvarado. Working with transnational institutions like UNESCO and employing Machu Picchu as a populist symbol, the military sought to use cultural tourism with ongoing agrarian reform to remake Cusco’s regional society. Contrary to the military’s goals, these efforts ultimately failed. Plans to construct a modernist hotel at Machu Picchu provoked fights between development and preservation interests. In addition, the unexpected arrival of counter-cultural travellers shocked locals. Finally, the highly-technical strategies employed by the military and UNESCO only served to displace local control over tourism in favor of bureaucratic interests in Lima.

Good Neighbors, Tourism, and Nationalism, 1930–1948

This chapter examines how tourism backers employed the transnational links of the Good Neighbor Era in Latin America to raise global interest in Machu Picchu and to promote travel to Cusco. Tourism interests used the cultural diplomacy of the Good Neighbor Policy to promote Cusco and Machu Picchu as symbols of an Andean Peru and to lobby the Peruvian state to invest in tourism development. However, these efforts also re-invented Hiram Bingham as a benevolent Pan-American figure and continued to overlook the demands of Cusco’s indigenous population.