IN THE NAME OF THE TOURIST: LANDSCAPE, HERITAGE, AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN CHINCHERO Pablo Garcia A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2015 Full metadata for this item is available in Research@StAndrews:FullText at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/7793 This item is protected by original copyright In the name of the tourist: Landscape, heritage, and social change in Chinchero Pablo Garcia This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 25th of September, 2015 To my parents To Bettychay ABSTRACT This thesis examines social change in the Quechua-speaking town of Chinchero (Peru), located 30 km away from the city of Cuzco. It does so by studying the conditions created by touristic development in the Region. It is an ethnography that builds on, and dialogues with, previous ethnographies done in Chinchero before. It focuses on issues of landscape and cultural heritage, as these are some of the domains most affected by the changes brought about by tourism, among other forms of modernization. The thesis looks at processes of re-territorialization and social exclusion that have followed the reconversion of the Inca ruins into an Archaeological Park. It also studies the town´s reputed textile tradition in a context of growing commercialization. Over the last few years, coinciding with a surge in tourism in the region, the tourist demand for “authentic” indigenous crafts has fostered significant changes in the textile production of Chinchero. The multiplication of weaving centers where the ethnicity is performed for the tourist gaze, plus the social implications of this new mode of social organization, comes into scrutiny. Another major focus of attention is the project of the New International Airport of Cuzco in Chinchero land. The airport is a direct consequence of tourist development in the Region. This thesis explores processes of social disruption and environmental conflict as the project is deeply dividing the community and raising expectations of progress that that are unlikely to be met. Additionally, the airport intersects with issues of indigeneity and the redefinition of the ethnic identity as the project engages with the supposed incompatibility between being indigenous, and thus “traditional”, and being modern, a process that involves the commercialization of “ancestral” land and the heavy reworking of a landscape where the ancestors and other-than-human forces still dwell. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This doctoral dissertation would have not been possible if the people of Chinchero had not allowed me to live with them for a year and had not been willing to share with me part of their lives and their knowledge. It is to them, first, and particularly to my host family there, that I want to show my gratitude. I also want to acknowledge the role of the Department of Social Anthopology at the University of St Andrews throughout these years in providing me with academic as well as with economic support in the form of a fee waiver. Additionally, The Russell Trust provided funds for my fieldwork year. My thanks too to my supervisors, Sabine Hyland and Tristan Platt, for their professional guidance and help throughout this PhD. And finally, my gratitude and affection to my colleagues in the Department of Social Anthropology, especially my friends in office 46, who made me feel “at home” in their company and provided a great environment for the successful completion of this degree. CONTENTS 1. Introduction p6 1.1 Brief history of a project p6 1.2 Living in Chinchero with Jacinto and Augusta: The tourist-anthropologist and some fieldwork dilemmas p9 2. The District of Chinchero p24 2.1 Origin times p25 2.2 History and archaeology p30 2.3 Ayllus and land tenure p37 2.4 Folk history p43 3. The landscape of Chinchero: Ontology of the Quechua landscape p52 3.1 Origin stories p53 3.2 Naming the land: Andean animism? p58 3.3 The temporalities of the landscape p77 4. The ethnographies of Chinchero: A critical record of past research p82 4.1 Oscar Núñez del Prado p82 4.2 Jesús Contreras and the Spanish Mission p90 4.3 Christine (and Ed) Franquemont p94 4.4 Notes from the tourist-anthropologist p99 5. Tourism in Chinchero and in the Cuzco region p107 5.1 The anthropology of tourism p107 5.2 The tourist system in Cuzco: Political economy p113 5.3 The case of Chinchero p123 6. Ruins in the landscape: Tourism and the archaeological heritage of Chinchero p134 1 6.1 When ruins become “archaeological sites” p135 6.2 Space, time, contact p141 6.3 Academic versus local archaeology p146 6.4 The problem with the “Historic Centre” p153 6.5 The deconstruction of heritage and the politics of cultural preservation p157 7. Weaving for the tourist: Textile production and the representation of culture in Chinchero p165 7.1 The weaving centres in the tourist context p168 7.2 Description and social implications of the model p172 7.3 “We are the real weavers”: Weavers, comerciantes, and others… p183 7.4 The ethnicity performed: Is this really “traditional” and “authentic”?p191 7.5 The future of weaving in Chinchero p194 8. Tourism development and sociocultural change in Chinchero: The new International Airport p201 8.1 Dismembering the social body: Airport and conflict p203 8.2 “Where is our identity?”: Rethinking indigeneity p212 8.3 Under the paradigm of “progress”: An anthropological critique of development p220 8.4 Towards a theory of change p230 9. Final thoughts by the tourist-anthropologist p235 Documents and References Cited p245 2 Preface The beginning is always the end. I finished this thesis by revisiting this preface, which I started writing more than a year ago. In this way I complete my own cycle and add a further ring to the spiralling trajectory into which all the previous ethnographies of Chinchero are contained. Will the Chincherinos ever read these pages? To be sure, they have many other preoccupations, and their lives are just too busy. My thesis intends to write the words of ‘other histories’, absent in more generalised accounts of this region. These “other histories” should recognise the everyday, grassroots events that provide the materials out of which their lives are made and that an official historiography has ignored. Here the people of Chinchero may find a reason to pause for a little while and read this text. What I have written is the result of our mutual entanglement, and it is “theirs” as much as it is “mine”. I will make no further authoritative claims, other than to remind the readers that my words and their lives shape each other, and are inextricable. As their lives fade in the frailty of my memory, fixing them in paper will furnish the illusion of some durability. I do know that I have spent and shared a segment of my life with a group of people in their homeland at a precise point in their history that, at the time I write and you, reader, read, is not there anymore. In fact, the next visitor, ethnographer, tourist, or newcomer, is likely to find a very different landscape; I may be conferred then the dubious honour of having been the last ethnographer of a fully recognisable “pre-airport era” in town… 3 Fig 1: A general map of Peru Fig. 2: Map of Cuzco region 4 Fig. 3: A panoramic view of Chinchero’s centro poblado (urban center) with an Inca site in the foreground. 5 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Brief history of a project The day I arrived in Chinchero to start my fieldwork year in Peru, I was not entering a completely unknown territory. I had spent time in Cuzco (the former capital of Tawantinsuyu or Inca Empire) before, and I had even lived there for a while. Through different visits, then, I made contacts and connections, and I became acquainted with the lovely town that sits by the road to the Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River (fig.1). Nor was I the first researcher or ’ethnographer to have lived there before. Peruvian anthropologist Oscar Núñez del Prado carried out early ethnographic work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Later on, during the late 60s and early 70s, the Spanish Archaeological Mission conducted archaeological and anthropological work. ’As I would notice during my fieldwork, adults and elders in the area still had fresh memories of Edward and Christine Franquemont, who had lived in Chinchero during the 1970s and 80s, for over ten years studying its textile tradition and botany. Anthropology students from the UNSAAC1 had written several monographs on Chinchero. Also, my friend and Art Historian of the Inca and Colonial periods, Stella Nair, had spent one entire year studying the outstanding Inca and Colonial architectural legacy of the village. It was precisely thanks to Stella that I was going to meet Jacinto, her research assistant on the ground and respected member of the community. Jacinto introduced me to Augusta, his wife, and, since then, Chinchero became a referential point not only for the lure of its Inca and colonial past and the striking beauty of the scenery, but also for this couple who granted me their hospitality and the opportunity during my visits of being just a little more than a conventional tourist or visitor merely passing by. Perhaps, thinking now in retrospect, my fieldwork already started in those early days. However, this alone is not enough to explain why, years afterwards, I would choose Chinchero as the fieldwork site for my dissertation project.