Blogs

Girlhood Lives (Experience Blog 5)

(Disclaimer for Jon: This post is twice as long and thus will count as both our experience blogs)

The Grief of Machu Picchu

Experience Blog 5

Invasion of tourism (experience blog 5)

I knew that the Machu Picchu area was going to be very touristy but I was still a bit disappointed with just how touristy it was. This town was built for tourists and it shows. Up and down the street there were restaurants with people outside trying to get me to come in to eat […]

Neruda and Cultural Memory

In the Neruda reading this week, Machu Picchu represents not only physical grandeur and spectacle but also spiritual resiliance and cultural memory. For Neruda, Machu Picchu embodies the enduring spirit of the Inca civilization despite centuries of colonization and it’s aftermath. I found the following excerpt to be especially intriguing….    “Rise up in birth with me, my brother. Give me your hand out of the deep zone of your wide-spread sorrow. You will not return from the bedrock depths. You will not return from subterranean time. It will not…read more

Experience Blog 5: Machu Picchu and the Filters of Sickness

Hello everyone! I am writing this from my table at the hotel restaurant in Cusco, watching what I can from my angle of the parade below me. Considering today isn’t even technically Inti Raymi, it excites me to see the intensity of the celebration tomorrow. How much more intense and passionate than what’s going on […]

Blog Post #9: The Making and Marketing of Indigeneity in Machu Picchu

In this week’s reading , Making Machu Picchu by Mark Rice, Rice explores the political, economic, and social impacts that ensued in Peru after the “discovery” (an incorrect implication of lostness) of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham in the early 1900’s. Rice analyzes the residual effects that resulted from the promotion of Machu Picchu as […]

Iconically Peruvian

Observations of mass production/consumption