Week 1: No Llama Sightings Yet
The first few days of the course were quite tightly scheduled. Luckily my phone was found on the plane (Gabriel’s mom is the GREATEST), so I had to go to the airport to pick it up. This gave me a chance to pick up my classmates from the airport. I LOVE picking up people at the airport. It was wonderful to see everyone again as I had grown very fond of them during our pre-departure meetups.
We saw many sights on the first day such as the Huaca Huallamarca which is a museum and archaeology site in San Isidro. Huaca Huallamarca is a reconstruction of a pyramid that is made from adobe bricks and is attributed to Pinazo culture. In our introduction, it was mentioned that the pyramid was reconstructed as an imagining of what indigenous culture should be and look like and is not necessarily a preserved historical site since it was reconstructed by the artist Arturo Jiménez Borja in the 1950s. When we were approaching the site, I was speaking to one of my classmates about how admirable it is that the municipality of San Isidro worked together to maintain the site amidst the urban growth in the surrounding area. Maintaining the site in the middle of an urban area highlights how the people celebrate or fantasize about indigenous culture.
On a separate note, one of the workers at the Museum, Ernesto, spoke very passionately about peruvian culture and his love for guinea pigs. According to Ernesto, guinea pigs are “the best” type of meat because they have a very clean diet, and the way his grandmother cooks it is very delicious. From what I recall, Guinea pigs are a sacred animal and used widely for sustenance. I really enjoyed speaking to Ernesto because he seemed extremely proud about his culture and his work which was the perfect introduction to Peruvian culture.
Something that was striking to me was the variety of “Inca” branded foods such as Inca Cola and Inca Chips, and many stores and items branded as “Inca”. It seems like a commodification of Inca culture since the founder and creator of Inca Cola was a British man and I’m sure most of the profits are collected by the large corporations that manufacture the drink such as Coca Cola who now owns about 60% of the Inca cola Enterprise. While there is less information on the origins of the Inca Chip brand, I’m assuming it arguably serves as a similar example of the commodification of Indigenous culture as Inca cola as I am curious about who is profiting from these sales. Overall, there is a strong Inca presence in Lima from what I’ve seen so far but much of it seems manufactured and is part of the larger form of fascination of indigenous culture.
We visited many other sites that I have many things to say about, but alas, there is a word limit for these blogs. I will say that in the Museo Larco, one discussion that I found interesting was how there is a large knowledge gap in indigenous practices because of Spanish colonization and how the knowledge was lost. A salient example is our inability to translate/interpret the ancient accounting system using coloured thread. While there are theories on how to decipher these records, the exact practice has been lost which is unfortunate.
"Something that was striking to me was the variety of “Inca” branded foods such as Inca Cola and Inca Chips, and many stores and items branded as “Inca”." As you may have already noticed, there are several examples of Inca appropriation. I can't help but think that Garcilaso de la Vega himself is the first to use it for his own purposes... since in reality he was originally baptized as Gómez Suárez de Figueroa but he changed his name. Are there fundamental differences between what the author of the Royal Commentaries did and who created soft drinks?
Emily, so glad you were able to rescue your phone! I learned today that guinea pigs are called Cuy Cuy here because of the sounds they make and Lima consumes the majority of them for the country. The influence of Coca Cola on Latin America in general makes me wildly upset. There’s a region in Mexico where Coca Cola manufactures its beverage and it’s actually cheaper to buy a coke than buy a water. Meanwhile, the company strips the land of its resources and hence, drive the price of water up. Boo