1

STAGING INCA TRADITIONS:

TOURISTS, NATIVES, AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS
IN CONTEMPORARY CUZCO I

Beatriz Prez Galn

University of Granada

All societies reconstruct their past to a greater or lesser degree in order to respond to
situations that the present poses and to plan responses to future challenges. This re-
appropriation of the past is not, however, a new phenomenon, nor is it exclusively
confined to Western society. Ethnohistorians specializing in South America are quite
familiar with how the Incas, even while lacking a written register, selected which
historical episodes should be recorded and which should not. This local practice
translated into the considerable confusion that the Spanish chroniclers experienced
when they tried to give an account of the history of the Inca rulers and even to
determine who these rulers had been.ii
This text will explore the meaning of a type of theatrical representation of the
pre-Hispanic past that has become very widespread in recent years throughout all of
Latin America, as one of the main attractions of cultural tourism. In Peru these
representations receive the name of raymis (from Quechua: festivals).iii
This type of festival awakens tourist interest for many reasons, but among all
of these reasons, I will point out the following. 1) The geographic settings where they
are carried out are the most outstanding pre-Hispanic archeological sites of American
geography, converted into immense theme parks. 2) An abundant cast of actors,
dancers, and extras participates; portrayed in showy costumes, they recreate some
specific ritual episode sometimes esoteric episodes- of the Totonac, Aztec, Maya, or
Inca religious calendar. 3) Authentic natives from the communities participate and,
along with the professional actors, lend their exotic image to the staging of their
own past.
In order to illustrate the meaning of these Inca festivals, let us begin by
situating them in the broadest ideological framework that they express. I am referring
to the indigenist political and intellectual discourse, with its extensive tradition in
Latin America and particularly in Peru. Incanism is the present-day Peruvian
version of this discourse. Like others of its type, Incanism is based upon and
reproduces an old imaginary about the meaning of the native past that is almost
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exclusively identified with everything Inca. At present, this imaginary is produced

globally (by tourism, travel agencies, and the communications media, among others)
and re-appropriated locally (by the actors in the double sense of the word- who
give life to these festivals). In this second group, I will emphasize the role that two of
these actors play. On one hand, there are the Incanists, the majority professionals of
the tradition (anthropologists, folklorists, archeologists, and ethnohistorians, among
others), in charge of adapting the contents of the 16 th- and 17th--century chronicles that
narrate the deeds of the Incas into scripts that can be represented, and of supervising
the props and costumes. On the other hand, there are the traditional Quechua political
authorities, the varayoqkuna (from Quechua: baton-holding mayors), the descendants
of the Incas who, as representatives of the local indigenous population, act as
imaginary actors of a Tradition that is reinvented by the first group. Both groups
join together to guarantee, by their participation, the authenticity and historic
fidelity of the representations. Because today, in order for the traditions to serve
those who invented or appropriated them, it is necessary to put them on stage (Garca
Canclini, 1992:151).
The invention of tradition perspective that Hobsbawm and Ranger employ to
study the political use of a more or less fictitious past, through ritual staging, turns out
to be the most adequate perspective for understanding the multiple dimensions of
meaning that these events capture for their creators. Specifically, when they speak of
the invention of tradition, these authors refer to the set of practices that seek to
inculcate certain values and behavioral norms that automatically imply continuity
with the past. In contrast to customs, ethnic and national traditions would, according
to these authors, have been invented by the colonial powers in an attempt in ensure
their domination (1983: 1-3).
This interpretation, which places emphasis on the processes of social and
cultural re-appropriation of the past that the actors carry out, reveals the essentialist
conception of culture that neo-indigenist movements, such as Incanism, handle.
Taking a glorified past as a reference point, Incanism characterizes native
culture based on three fundamental assumptions that lack empirical validity:
1) It is a hard nucleus structure- that is homogeneous or unchanging
throughout time, an approach comparable to the functionalist and
structural-functionalist currents in anthropology.
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2) It is isolated from a global analytic framework in which phenomena of

intercultural contact or hybridization happen. In fact, just as in other
ethnicist or nationalist movements, the Incanists vindicate the supposedly
autochthonous origin of the cultural features considered to be purely
Inca, basing their authenticity on this.
3) It lacks actors flesh and blood natives- capable of acting as agents of
change, that is who negotiate and resist in the face of the situations of
domination that the context imposes.

It is only from an essentialist perspective of culture in this case, a native

perspective- such as the one just described, that it is possible to understand the
permanent identification confusion- that the intellectuals of Incanism customarily
show between ethnic and Indian or, in anthropological terms, between the emic
and etic categories of analysis.iv
In order to illustrate this debate, the formation process that one of these Inca
festivals has undergone provides an empirical example: the Pisac-raymi that is
celebrated during the first week of August in the Pisac district, located in the province
of Calca, 30 kms. from the city of Cuzco.v This eminently tourist district, a rural,
indigenous area a Quechua population-, is singled out in the trips offered by travel
agencies in Lima, Cuzco, Paris, London, and Madrid, as being one of the districts that
best conserves its traditional indigenous authorities, the previously mentioned baton-
holding mayors, who can be observed parading every Sunday and staging their rituals
in the local raymi. The working hypothesis that supports this investigation suggests
that, in the context of the post-colonial situation that characterizes the political and
economic reality in which the indigenous communities of Peru are embedded, the
staging of Inca rituals for tourism, with the participation of the traditional authorities,
constitutes an example of political resistance action, in the sense that Keesing
employs (1992).
Thus, as opposed to the dramatic political confrontations undertaken by
political parties, unions, and social movements that tend to attract the attention of
historians and political scientists, Keesing works with those facets of power relations
taken on by subordinate people or groups who, because they lack power as is the
case of the indigenous population in Peru- or because their power is different and uses
other channels of expression and conflict resolution as is the case of the customary
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law as the one represented by the native mayors in the Andes-, have frequently been
ignored in the literature. Considered to be one of the most emblematic institutions of
the Indian peoples identity in general (cf. Fuenzalida, 1976; Spalding, 1981;
Rostworowski, 1983 and 1993; Sallnow, 1987; Rasnake, 1987; Platt, 1982 and 1988;
Martnez, 1995; Prez Galn, 1999), this system of indigenous authorities provides a
paradigmatic example of the historical process of negotiation and re-assignation of
meaning led by the local population as opposed to and in relation to the successive
Others who have represented external power on the local level. During the colonial
period and at the dawn of independence, these others were embodied successively in
the encomenderos, evangelizers, and landowners, principally, and at present they are
embodied in the tourists, development promoters, and social scientists. These, among
others, are the actors who form the modern scene where we will situate the emergence
of neo-indigenist discourse and its manifestations.

POLITICAL USES OF THE NATIVES PAST

The recent history of the political use of the natives past in Peru, generally linked to
nationalist projects, begins with the indigenist movement, a Pan-American literary,
intellectual, and political movement at the beginning of the 20th century. The
indigenist movement was the political source of some of the intellectual founders of
the historical parties of the Peruvian left wing (such as Ral Haya de la Torre and J. C.
Maritegui), and sought to rescue native societys leading role, defeated and
conquered by the Spaniards, based on an archetypal, atemporal, idyllic image of the
Indian, as well as Indian language and culture (cf. Castro Pozo, Valcrcel, Uriel
Garca). In contrast to this folkloric vision of the past that the indigenist movement
popularized, the growing influence of functionalism in anthropology and the political
changes that occurred in the country revived a new political discourse about the
natives and their past in the 1970s. The old interest in describing and collecting
survivals of the indigenous past became, in the political context favorable to change
of the seventies, the study of the social and political structures of this population, with
the objective of facilitating its integration into the class struggle.
Thus, the populist military government of Velasco Alvarado (1968-75) found
inspiration in Inca iconography, specifically in the figure of Tupac Amaru II (one of
the native kurakasvi who had fought against the Spaniards in the revolts that preceded
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Peruvian independence), in order to promote an agrarian reform. In an attempt to

reduce ethnic particularities to class particularities, Velasco transformed the symbolic
Day of the Indian, celebrated on June 24 (winter solstice in the southern
hemisphere), into the Day of the Peasant, terms which have become synonymous
since then. This mutation produced a paradoxical situation. On one hand, there was
no room for a romantic vision of a population that was considered to be, above all,
exploited and miserable; on the other hand, the celebration of festivals and the
promotion of folk artists, that partly recovered the image of the traditional Indians
and their glorified past, were fostered. The image that the indigenist movement had
strengthened four decades earlier had now become a form of political commitment.vii
At the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties, in the context of a
new and profound economic and political crisis, a group of Lima intellectuals
historians, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists-, the majority linked to left-wing
political parties, played a leading role in a new attempt to make the countrys
indigenous population the protagonists once again. This current of thought was called
the Andean utopia and was the heir to the indigenist movement, although it was far
from constituting the articulated political and intellectual movement that the
indigenist movement had constituted. The Andean utopia claims to be a set of social
attitudes and behaviors that pursue the restoration of indigenous society (cf. Burga,
1988; Flores Galindo, 1994). From a historical perspective, the mentors of the
Andean utopia find the origin of these attitudes in the indigenous and mestizo
chroniclers of the 17th century, such as Guamn Poma, Juan Santa Cruz Pachacuti, and
the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, figures claimed as the authentic intellectuals of this
movement. The utopian objective that its authors sought included: returning all the
singularity of their creative strength to the Andean majorities in building the Peruvian
nation (Burga, 1988:7).
In the present-day phase of the modernization processes, we are observing an
unprecedented proliferation of local political discourse about the indigenous past,
transformed into cultural media products. This is the case of Incanism, the third
turning point in the history of the contemporary use of Perus indigenous past.
With its ideology defined by its partisans, mostly criollo and mestizo
intellectuals, as the validity of everything inka (sic) (Flores, 2000:129), this
movement arose at the beginning of the nineties in the city of Cuzco, former capital of
the Inca empire, in a favorable local and national political context (cf. Flores, 1990;
 6

2000; Flores and Van den Berghe, 1999; Vilcapoma, 2002). Just like the indigenist
movements that preceded it, Incanism implies the political, literary, and artistic
recovery of the reinvented Inca past. But, in a more evident way than in those
previous indigenist movements, it is necessary to situate Incanism with reference to
the global and media framework in which it is embedded in order to understand it as a
discourse and a set of political-cultural practices which have, at present, a markedly
elitist and localist character. In this context, discourse on cultural diversity and local
particularities, as well as some of their related phenomena, such as mass tourism,
shape new ethnic and cultural identities that acquire an ever greater leading role in the
local, national, and transnational political agendas (cf. Robertson, 1992 and 1995;
Beck, 1998, Hannerz, 1998, Appadurai, 2001). From this perspective, Incanism and
its principal associated manifestations provide a paradigmatic example of what
Robertson calls a glocal cultural (Robertson, 1995:34).viii
Among the most relevant expressions that Incanism takes on in present-day
Peruvian culture, there are four that stand out (Flores and Van den Berghe, 1999: 184-
5):
a) A monumental architectural style that is given the same name (Incanism or
Neo-Incanism), and represents, in sculptures and murals installed in the urban center
of the city of Cuzco, the mythic heroes of the Inca pantheon (Pachactec, Manco
Cpac and Mama Ocllo, and the Ayar brothers, among others) and some of the
symbols associated with them (fountains of water, ears of corn, or solar disks).ix
b) The Inca paraphernalia adopted by the political parties created in the last
decade throughout the Andean region. These parties, who proclaim themselves to be
independent because they lack explicit connections with the so-called traditional
parties, take on not only the names of the mythic founding heroes, as in the case of the
Inca Pachacutec Movement;x they also stage their public appearances in a typically
Inca fashion, as was done in the recent political campaign of the present-day president
of Peru. One of the most charismatic actions carried out by Alejandro Toledo,
acclaimed by the populace as the Third Millenium Pachacutec or the alpaca of
Harvard, alluding to his indigenous origins,xi was the symbolic inauguration into
office at two of the Inca sanctuaries most visited by tourists, at the same time the most
emblematic sanctuaries for the Peruvian population. Once the official ceremony was
culminated in the Congress of the Republic (Lima), Toledo and his wife Elianne Karp,
an anthropologist from Belgium, characterized as the Great Inca Pachacutec and his
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consort the Qoya respectively, went first to Machu Picchu and then to
Sacsayhuaman. There, surrounded by television cameras, journalists, tourists, and
curious people, and supervised by the most prestigious Peruvian anthropologists who
were consultants for the whole event, Toledo and his wife officiated all of the
prescribed Inca rites for such an occasion: prayers, ablutions, payments to the Pacha
Mama and to the apus or spirits of the mountain, among others (Vilcapoma,
2002:300-316).
c) Development of a new orthography for the Quechua language,
circumscribed to the so-called imperial Quechua variant, in an attempt to confer
greater indigenous authenticity to the language.xii
d) The proliferation of the aforementioned raymis which evoke, upon
imposing archeological and scenic stages, episodes of the lives of the Incas who
founded the Empire, placing special emphasis on certain ceremonies from their
religious calendar. The proliferation of these festivals during the last decade has
turned them into a matter of national politics. This is so much so that in February
2001, after a long legislative controversy, the Congress of the Republic of Peru gave
them the official status of Ritual Festivals of National Identity (Law No. 27425, El
Peruano, Feb. 16, 2001). Since then, in the provinces of Cuzco and Puno (South
Peruvian Andes) alone, more than thirty of these raymis that are repeated yearly have
been counted (Flores, 2000).

LOCAL POLITICS IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT. THE MANAGEMENT OF

TRADITION

If we check carefully some of the statistics that characterize the department of Cuzco
where the district of Pisac is located, we observe that this department has the highest
indices in three elements:
1) Poverty: According to the Human Development Report on Peru prepared by
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2002) the department of Cuzco
is one of the poorest and most non-uniform of all the country. xiii The socio-economic
indicators on occupation rates of the active population, provision of basic services
(drinking water, electric light), and other indices that measure chronic malnutrition,
infant mortality, life expectancy, and literacy, among other things, show that this is
one of the poorest regions of all the country. According to the same source, the rural
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mountain and jungle regions alone contain 50% of the extreme poverty that exists in
the country. This poverty principally consists of the Quechua population that lives in
peasant communitiesxiv or in the Marginal Urban Areas (AUM, reas Urbanos
Marginales) of the cities to which they migrate. It is, therefore, a poverty that is
ethnically indigenous. This is the case of the peasant communities of Pisac.
Just like other rural Andean districts, Pisac is divided into two well-
differentiated habitats: the capital of the district which lends its name to the town
(situated at 3,000 meters above sea level) where a third of the total population lives
(about 3,000 people), and the thirteen peasant communities that contain the other two-
thirds (about 6,000 people), which spread out between 3,400 and 4,200 meters above
sea level in the eastern cordillera of the central Andes. This geographical situation
and the steep slopes of the terrain translate, in the case of the communities, into a soil
poor in mineral resources and nutrients as well as a high degree of erosion. The
populations principal economic activity is subsistence agriculture, principally root
crops, which they combine with the breeding of Andean camelidae. The population
pyramid reflects a high concentration of children and youth (under 18 years of age),
who make up approximately 60% of the population total in the communities. The
degree of participation in the market varies in each case, depending on how near the
district capital is, but, in general, it is rather scarce because there is hardly any surplus
for trading. Due to this situation, there is an important flow of temporary migration
towards the valleys, as well as definitive migration with the large cities as the
destination. More than a third of the population of the Pisac communities is illiterate
(all the women and the majority of the men over thirty years of age), and
approximately half is monolingual (Quechua), especially the women. Infant mortality
(0 to 5 years) is high and life expectancy, for both men and women, is around 55 years
of age. This situation is basically due to the hard living conditions, the high rates of
alcoholism and malnutrition, for both men and women, and the constant acute
respiratory illnesses that are frequently fatal. Until just two years ago, all of the
communities lacked basic services such as electric light and drinking water, and only
two have a health center which barely has the supplies necessary for first aid.
2) Non-Governmental Development Organizations (N.G.D.O.s): Although in
recent years a generalized descent has been observed in these institutions throughout
the country,xv the department of Cuzco is one of the ones that has the greatest number
of these organizations, ranking behind only Lima, Puno, and Arequipa (Zolezzi,
 9

1992). These institutions implement development projects with funds from

international aid agencies.
Their radius of action extends to the AUMs previously mentioned and, to a
greater extent, to the peasant communities concentrated in the Sacred Valley of the
Incas, with a geographical distribution that often coincides with the most visited
circuit of the region, including Pisac. This district is a paradigm of the influence and
dispersion of the actions implemented by development agencies. Thus, in the last
twenty years, more than twenty development initiatives have had their field of
operations in this district. Of these initiatives, there has only been one case of a
project with more than five years of continuity (Prez Galn, 1999).
3) Tourism: Cuzco is at present one of the main destinations for national and
foreign tourism not only within the country but in all of South America. In recent
years, the number of foreign visitors who spend the night in this city reached half a
million. According to estimates by the public institutions that manage tourism in the
city of Cuzco,xvi 80% of these tourists visit: the city of Cuzco, the Sacred Valley of the
Incas where Pisac is located-, and the citadel of Machu Picchu. The thrust of
tourism in the region is an affair that goes back for four decades, in the context of a
broader modernizing project that grew out of the 1968 agrarian reform.
In Pisac, this project caused deep changes at different levels:
a) Increased population: Principally as a result of the heavy migration of rural
populations to the center of the municipality (the town of Pisac) and the nearest cities
(Calca, Cuzco, Arequipa, and Lima).
b) Socio-economic level: The expropriation of the rural properties implied a
change in the populations productive orientation from agriculture and stockbreeding
to other activities, among which craft manufacturing for local and provincial markets
stands out.
c) Political: The agrarian reform meant that the land was turn into cooperatives
and, consequently the representative system of authority was democratized turning
into a Directive Boards and specialized Committees.
d) Cultural: The previous levels intertwine to generate a continuous process of
constructing ethnic frontiers among the neighbors who live in the town of Pisac;
before, they were Indians just like their neighbors in the peasant communities, and
today they are bilingual mestizos dedicated to the craft business. However in order to
be considered Piseo at present, that is, a member of the town with full rights, one
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must participate in one of the thirty-five living associations formed in the last
fifteen years, which articulate participation in the socio-cultural, religious, and
economic life of the town; thus, the mestizos feel that they belong to the collectivity,
in contrast to the Indians, who are excluded from participation.

The result of these transformations and of the parallel rise that tourism is undergoing
in the region, is that a good part of this districts political economy is currently
dependent on the craft business and the service sector (hostels, restaurants, cafes,
supermarkets), to which the inhabitants of the town have dedicated themselves
massively. Thus, among the new generations of inhabitants who have been able to do
advanced studies, the majority have opted for one of the three degrees that are
considered especially relevant in this town because of their relation with the
management of Tradition and Cultural Patrimony that nourishes the local political
economy. The preference for candidates with this professional profile for Municipal
positions with political responsibility, as occurred in the last electoral processes, is
symptomatic of the social prestige of these activities (Prez Galn, 1999).
From the overview above, we can deduce that at present a good number of
political affairs that demand the local governments attention in this region are
related more or less directly to the management of Tradition, that is, to the
economic and political administration of the present-day vestiges of the Inca past and
their modern representations for tourism.

AUTENTICITY OF THE RAYMIS AND TOURISM

Among the different interpretations that the modern representations of the Inca past
implied by these festivals have generated, one of the most frequently recurring
arguments refers to the relation they have to tourism. Their authenticity, one of the
key concepts that runs through this debate, is at stake.
For some, anthropologists, archeologists, and folklorists, mostly
autochthonous, caught up in preparing and advising for the raymi scripts and the
contours of Incanism, toursim is not the cause but the consequence of these
representations (Flores, 1997; Flores and Van den Berghe, 1999; Vilcapoma, 2002);
others, also professionals of Tradition, but generally outsiders, emphasize the global
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context in which these representations must be explained. From this perspective,

tourism would be a cause (Pea, 2002; Silverman, 2002).
The first group dates the origin of these representations to popular Quechua
theater (Millones, 1992). According to this group, the raymis are conceived as
popular and spontaneous expressions of an Incanist sentiment and, as such, constitute
a form of identity that contributes to the formation of groups in which class, gender,
and ethnic differences are diluted. The common nexus of these groups otherwise
extremely heterogeneous- is fundamentally ideological and consists, as their authors
express it, of feeling oneself to be a descendant of the Incas:

Incanism is an ideology of local pride and an insignia of regional affiliation

that includes natives and mestizos in a single Andean civilization, with
symbols such as the Inti raymi, the same civic monuments, and the same urban
architecture.... (Flores and Van den Berghe, 1999:193).

Only from an essentialist perspective of culture, in which the present use of the past,
that is, its interpretation, is confused with the past itself, is it possible to understand
that the most important cultural legacies of the Incas are transformed into living
expressions of Incanism: Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, the raymis, and the natives
themselves who participate. According to this interpretation, the authenticity of these
festivals resides, on one hand, in their autochthonous origin and, on the other hand, in
the local populations participation and adherence. Even if some (remote) connection
with tourism is admitted, this would act as a springboard or a reinforcement of the
populations popular Incanist explosion:

It would be ingenuous to pretend that this ideological movement is the work

of mayors who desire to be in the spotlight and achieve popular backing, of
commercial campaigns by beer companies, or of the desire to attract tourists.
There are, of course, those who attribute the creation, fortification, and
multiplication of the raymis to certain anthropologists (....). The Mayors join
movements when they can no longer control them, they foster them and lead
them because, as politicians, however local the level, they acknowledge that
there are currents that it is better to follow. (Flores, 2000:143)
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The second interpretation is perhaps less invested but empirically more feasible than
the previous one. It suggests that these representations constitute a typical globalized
expression of a local product in analytic terms that are inseparable from tourism and
from global discourse on cultural diversity, in the framework in which they originate.
From this perspective, Incanism turns out to be a hybrid mixture of indigenist
discourse from the beginning of the 20th century and of western new-age cults from
the 60s and 70s which, inspired by oriental religions, foster a type of militant
primitivism or neo-traditionalism based on an archetypal and idyllic image of the
Indian way of life (Pea, 2002).xvii Cultural tourism in general, and mystic tourism
which relates the archeological settings where the raymis are staged with telluric
energy spaces- in particular, constitutes one of the audiences that is most strongly
attracted by this kind of festival which emphasizes the religious ceremonies practiced
by the high pre-Hispanic civilizations.
The second perspective suggests that the authenticity of these festivals is
dynamic and contested and depends upon the social and historical context in which
they operate. It is not a mechanical result of its relation with tourism, nor does it
derive either from the historical precision of what is transmitted (ethnohistorical
criterion) or from the fact that the festivals are produced by and for the population
(the criterion of authenticity claimed by the Incanists). It is, rather, a matter of
cultural and political re-appropriation of this oft-cited, elitist, and mestizo discourse
about the Inca past and its representations for tourism led by the local population.xviii
From this perspective, the relation between tourism and these festivals is
relevant for two reasons. In the first place, because of the active role that this industry
plays in the reproduction and invention of the imaginary about what the native world
today means or ought to mean-, that is as active producers of ethnicity in a
globalized context. Secondly, because in order to achieve the adaptation of these
definitions to the present-day context, the local tourist industry needs, in turn, to
establish a two-way negotiation: on one hand, with the native population itself, whose
traditional and exotic conditions of existence legitimate and guarantee the
continuity of their actions, and, on the other hand, with the co-producing markets and
massive consumers of these images, the western countries, which are the source of the
economic resources that finance the management of Tradition, the main thread of the
plot which embodies local political economy. The analytic model of the invention of
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tradition allows us to illustrate the formation process of these festivals in Cuzco and
to rescue the role that their actors play.
Although the influx of tourism to Cuzco began with the discovery of Machu
Picchu (1911), it was not until the mid-fifties, with the beginning of regular
commercial flights, that the arrival of tourists to the city of Cuzco was statistically
recorded. It is from these years that the celebration of the first Inca festival, the Inti
Raymi (1944) dates; this is considered to be the antecedent of the present-day
festivals and the central act of the jubilee festive program of the city of Cuzco which
lasts for a week. Without a doubt, the central act of this program is the raymi in
which the Inca ceremony in honor of the Sun God, Inti, is evoked (Flores,
2000:134; Vilcapoma, 2002: 211 and ff.; Calvo, 1995: 27 and ff.).
The script that this play follows is an adaptation of the description extracted
from the chronicle Comentarios reales de los incas, written at the beginning of the
17th century (1605) by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, one of the authentic
intellectuals whose work was rescued first by the mentors of the Andean utopia and
later by Incanism.xix In historiographic terms, Garcilaso is considered to be one of the
most polemic chroniclers of Peru, due to the idyllic vision of the Inca Empire on
which he prides himself as well as to his disputable documentary value (Porras,
1986). A special commission made up of the most prestigious Cuzco anthropologists
and historians of the 50s was in charge of adapting the work. xx During the next four
decades, in which the growth of tourism that Peru underwent was practically
uninterrupted (Lovn, 1982:4-5), the Inti raymi of Cuzco remained an isolated
example, with the exception of Lima, where a raymi was celebrated in 1965
(Vilcapoma, 2002: 205-6).
The rising flow of tourists, especially foreign tourists, came to a crashing end
in the mid-80s, coinciding with one of the worst economic and political crises that
Peru has suffered in the modern epoch and which lasted for approximately a decade
(between 1983 and 1993). The surge of terrorist activity by Sendero Luminoso and
the assassination of various French cooperators in the mountains were some of the
specific actions that led the governments of some First World countries to explicitly
warn their citizens that Peru is not a safe country for visitors. The analysts of the
service sector refer to this period as the lost decade for tourism in Peru.
At the beginning of the 90s, with the leader of the terrorist movement
apprehended and in a context of structural adjustment policies that favored the entry
 14

of foreign capital into the country, the institutions dedicated to managing tourism in
the country started to seek new strategies for attracting visitors. The saturation of the
habitual cultural tourism (visits to archeological sites, museums, churches, and
other monuments) practiced in this Andean valley gave way to new forms directed
toward a more select higher income public. Out of the multiple cultural and scenic
attractions that the region offers, two new attractions appeared: on one hand, eco-
tourism, focussed on the scenic areas where so-called adventure sports are practiced,
and, on the other hand, mystic tourism, which relates the Inca archeological sites to
ceremonies and rituals represented, live, by present-day natives on the same stages
that their Inca ancestors utilized. The thrust of this type of tourism at the international
level, allowing a renovation of the options offered, and the reified and folkloric
interpretation of indigenous past that Incanism guarantees, converged during the 90s
in the city of Cuzco with a municipal government that was favorable to supporting
initiatives such as these.xxi And the raymis began to multiply, in the image of the
Cuzco raymi, imbued now with a wave of new-age telluric magic which seemed to
envelop Machu Picchu and the other Inca sanctuaries where the representations take
place.

STAGING TRADITIONS

Each Sunday at around eleven oclock in the morning, when the tourist busses from
Cuzco arrive in Pisac, a cortege of more than fifteen traditional Mayors from the
peasant communities, escorted by their respective Councilors and Seconds, parades
through the streets of the town, dressed in their ponchos and multicolored caps,
among craft sellers and tourist cameras. On other occasions, these traditional
authorities act as the improvised extras of the local Inca festival, the Pisac raymi,
implanted by the municipal authorities the first week of August in 1996, displacing
the celebration of the Mamacha Asunta, the virgin invoked by the natives and ancient
patron saint of the town.
The festival of Pisac, like all of the other raymis that have proliferated in the
last decade throughout Peru, follows the model of the Cuzco Inti raymi. The
ceremony chosen in this case, following the same authentic chroniclers, is the
beginning of the corn harvest, another of the principal festivals of the Inca ritual
calendar. The Inca and his sister-consort, the Qoya, participate in the ceremony.
 15

Priests, a multitude of servants, dancers, and ethnic representatives from other towns
follow them; today these roles are played by experienced professional actors who
participate in other raymis and who are hired by the Municipality.
On the stage, the authorities co-opted by the Municipality to serve in the
creation of an authentic tourist experience wear the multicolor caps of the
traditional Mayors, Councilors, and Seconds. The mestizo mayor of the Municipality
and archeologist of the National Institute of Culture, one of the main institutions
dedicated to managing tradition in Cuzco, refers to the festival in the following terms:

Seeing that the town of Pisac is folkloric and a tourist attraction, and has
a clearly singular culture, the Municipality has tried to recover all the
traditional activity and place it at the service of tourism (...); What can
best attract tourists?: Pisacs own personality, its festivities, which can
offer tourists the presence of the Andean people who still live in the high
lands; another characteristic is that the tourist can experience some of the
customs from the Inca epoch that are reconstructed according to the
information given by the chroniclers (Washington Camacho,
Municipal Mayor of Pisac, August 1997).

In the specific case of Pisac, whose local economy depends, as we have pointed out,
almost completely on the resource of tourism, the sectors that benefit from the starting
up of these raymis include practically all the inhabitants of the town. There are the
townspeople who, after the Agrarian Reform, have dedicated themselves to the sale of
handicrafts in the local market. Another group that benefits is the local municipal
authorities, positions that are frequently occupied by mestizos with degrees in
anthropology, archeology, or Fine Arts, the professionals who are best-prepared to
offer their opinions on, to manage, and to comprehend the Tradition that is unfailingly
associated with the pre-Hispanic past in this valley. Then there are the ecclesiastic
authorities, who benefit from higher income for the parish. The tourists also must be
considered; they come to this area searching for the remains of the authenticity that
has been lost in their places of origin. And finally, of course, there are the
professionals from the academic world who, like myself, make this district their field
of operations for carrying out investigations in anthropology, economy, health, and
biology.
 16

Thus, with the advice of the professionals from the Fund for the Promotion of
Tourism in Peru (FOPTUR, Fondo de Promocin de Turismo en el Per) and of
archeologists and historians from the National Institute of Culture (INC, Instituto
Nacional de Cultura) in Cuzco, the municipal council team of this small Andean town go
to work to create its own raymi. They had all of the necessary ingredients: the vertical
scenery formed by terraces that adorn the slopes of deep and fertile valleys, one of the
best-conserved archeological settlements of the Inca epoch (Inti Watana), second only
to Machu Picchu, and the highland Andean men, the traditional authorities of the
communities.

THE INDIGENOUS MAYORS

From the organizational point of view, two systems of normative order coexist in the
Andean communities, as a result of a long history of colonization. On one hand, there
is the political-administrative system imposed by the foreign (Spanish or criollo)
dominators, in the form of concessions, country properties, and formal democratic
systems; on the other hand there is the system of traditional authorities that is
governed using the principal of stewardship or duties, whose most visible figure is the
baton-holding mayor.
A look at the history of this institution shows that, throughout the entire
colonial period and until nearly the middle of the 20th century, the indigenous
authorities played an active role as political intermediaries between the foreign
government and the population to which they assigned themselves ethnically. Among
the main obligations reserved by the Spaniards for these ethnic lords were the
following: collection of tribute, organization of indigenous work force, and Sunday
church attendance in the main town of the small population the town of Pisac. At the
end of the 18th century, after a succession of violent rebellions led by several of these
ethnic lords in the Andes (Stern, 1990), the Bourbon reforms eliminated the
prerogatives that these ethnic lords had enjoyed and substituted them with elected
indigenous mayors supervised in their functions by their mestizo counterparts from
the municipality (OPhelan, 1995). This is the institutional root of the system of
traditional authorities, behind what can be observed at present.
A new turning point in the recent history of these authorities occurred in the
mid-fifties and culminated with the political and economic transformations derived
 17

from the 1968 agrarian reform. Specifically, these changes translated into the
following conditions for the indigenous population of this district: the obligatory
tribute, tasks, and services that were provided to the mestizos of the town were
definitively abolished, and, last of all, the indigenous population became the owners
of their land. Since then, the indigenous mayors intermediary role with successive
municipal governments, has been drastically reduced. So much so that, according to
different authors, this situation has led to the disappearance of this institution in some
regions, while in others, it has been transformed into a complex of stewardships or
religious duties with few political attributions (cf. Sallnow, 1987; Seligmann, 1992).
A careful review of some of these monographs however reveals a use of the concept
political that is restricted to bureaucratic transactions, power struggles, party
formation, etc., elements more commmon in the framework of a modern western
normative systems, but not necessarily common in the Andean communities.
On the contrary, if we move the focus of analysis to the functions that are
habitually the competence of consuetudinary forms of government, in which the
political and religious spheres become confused and are inserted into daily life, we
can observe the role that these mayors play more clearly. It is in the ritual context,
where actors express a shared concept of the world and of the legitimate forms of
acting upon it, that the nature of the authority that these people have at present can be
perceived in all of its complexity. The analysis of the ritual actions that take place in
these communities, which I have studied on other occasions (Prez Galn, 2001,
2002), reveals that the main function of traditional authorities as representatives of the
group resides in the regulation and up-dating of the pact of reciprocity that sustains
all the forms of social, political, economic, and cultural interrelation in the Andes and,
therefore, socio-cultural identity.
In the communities of the Pisac district, participation in this consuetudinary
system of authority is the indispensable requirement for being considered a runa
(from Quechua: human being), that is, a social individual who participates in the
network of reciprocities that guarantees survival in the rural Andean world. This
participation implies a series of rights, such as access to communal land and pastures,
the right to speak and vote in the assemblies, and to be a beneficiary of the different
systems of mutual aid (ayni and minka). It also implies the fulfillment of some duties,
such as the participation in communal tasks and in the mutual aid systems, among
others.
 18

The systems of reciprocity that shape life in the Andean communities, and
whose regulation falls to the ethnic authorities, can imply symmetric as well as
asymmetric exchanges (Alberti and Mayer, 1974:22 and ff.). Symmetric exchanges
are the ones that are established between people who exchange the same service
work force, resources- in the same proportion. This kind of exchange generally
occurs between people positioned in the same or in similar socio-economic or cultural
situations (two peasants from the same community or from different communities).
The exchanges established in asymmetric reciprocity systems are those in which the
receiver of the service, instead of returning the same service, replaces it with a certain
amount of services or other symbolic goods (e.g., protection) which may or may not
be equivalent to what was received in the first place. This second type of exchange
can occur within the context of the community as well as outside of the community;
in this case, it regulates the dominance relationships that are established between:
- People (natives or non-natives) whose socio-economic and cultural
levels are not equivalent: a native and a mestizo, for example, in the
case of the relationships established in the godfather systems
(compadrazgo) (Contreras, 1985), or the relationships maintained
between property owners and their feudatory dependants (Favre and
Matos Mar, 1968; Anrup, 1990).
- Natives and those beings that populate their supernatural world
(Pacha-Mama, the apus of the mountains). In order to reciprocate
for the protection and sustenance that they receive from their gods,
the runas should offer them continuous payments and offerings of
delicacies (Fernndez, 1997; Prez Galn, 1999).
- Natives and other external powers. This refers basically to the State
(Platt, 1982) and to its representative institutions in the Municipality:
the governor, the parish priest, the council team, and the police
station, but it also refers to the institutions of cooperation for
development (state-based or not) and to tourism, among other
institutions.

These forms of exchange, despite being unequal and taking place between people who
are not equals, are still, nevertheless, reciprocal. As we will see, this is the way the
runas conceive the meaning of all that is political.
 19

WE ARE LIKE INCAS....

The gringos come here because of the mayors of the communities,

they come to see that; so then the Governor always tells us to come
down: You must come! So our country, Peru, will look good. And
the gringos are really enthusiastic about seeing us, for them, we are
like Incas... (Don Martn Illa, traditional mayor of the community of
Chahuaytiri, Pisac, September 1996)

As Don Martns commentary implies, the present-day context offers us a panorama

in which these authorities have two very different roles. In their respective peasant
communities, the authorities participate in a complex ritual world, by way of which
they transmit messages about themselves, about their organization and, in short, about
their vision of the world. In the district capital, however, we find them up on a stage
representing some of these rituals not only for the insiders, functioning to transmit an
ordered vision of the world, but also for outsiders (Baumann, 1992: 103), in this case
for tourists. Is this another example of culture by the pound? (Greenwood, 1989)
One common element that underlies the dominant interpretations of the
proliferation of raymis as an expression of Incanism consists of ignoring the role that the
natives play in their own communities, converting them into silent attendants of these
dramatizations. There have been several authors in anthropology (cf. Worsley, 1980;
Wolf, 1987; Comaroff, 1985; Keesing, 1992), political science (Scott, 1985, 2000),
and history (Wolf, 1987) who have pointed out the danger of attributing excessive
importance to the transforming power of western colonial and post-colonial
domination, which can constitute another way of denying a role in history to the
others. As these same authors have shown, the autochthonous strategies of
resistance and negotiation, which often seem to reproduce the institutional structures
of domination, are, nevertheless, essential to understanding the development of these
societies and the differences that can presently be observed among them. However,
the study of the different forms that resistance can take (from subtle theater
representations to armed rebellion) is riddled with conceptual problems. Where we
establish the limits of what we can consider to be political resistance action, or the
limits between this type of action and negotiation, even if they do not necessarily
 20

follow the western channels of expression, is still an open debate (Gledhill, 2000: 113
and ff.). It seems evident that not all individual behavior (ironic behavior, or angry
behavior) no matter how much the individual belongs to a dominated group- can be
considered to be a form of resistance, as Scott proposes (2000).
Considering the subject that we are dealing with and applying the concept
more as a metaphor than as a precise concept, I propose that we contemplate as a
political action of negotiation and resistance the way in which the ethnic authorities of
these communities, as political representatives of the group, re-appropriate a past
reinvented by others the intellectuals of Incanism- and consciously integrate it into
their political culture (Chapman et al., 1989:5). The analysis supplied by Platt
referring to the relations between the State and the Andean communities in the north
of Potos (Bolivia) is very useful (1982 and 1988) for restoring meaning to these
episodes.
The obligation to contribute payment (the earlier tax) and traditional services in
work and in kind was one of the different forms that characterized the relations that the
north Potos ayllus established with the State in the 19 th century through their ethnic
authorities. In exchange for this payment, the natives obtained the States
acknowledgment of their collective right to the land. At present, and even though this
payment is no longer obligatory, these natives continue to make the contribution in the
same way. The attempts to abolish the predial contribution or tax during the 19th century,
and later with the 1952 agrarian reform, generated suspicion among the ayllus who,
through their ethnic authorities, decided to oppose this change and to continue
contributing despite it no longer being obligatory, since ...for the ayllus, this reform
meant a prolongation of different governments secular attempts to deny recognition of
the old reciprocity pact that ruled the ideal relations between the ayllus and the State in
the first decades of the Republic. The essence of this pact consisted of the States
acknowledgment not only of the collective rights of the ayllus to their lands, but also
acceptance of the traditional services and tax, the ancient native tribute paid by the
Indians, as a compensation (1982:20). This is the way, according to Platt, that the north
Potos natives give continuity to the pact of reciprocity that is the basis of their
conception of their relations with the external political power (at present represented by
the State). Let us now return to the representation of Inca traditions in which the
authorities of the Pisac communities participate.
 21

Tributes and obligatory work were abolished at the beginning of the 1970s, and
the right to the property of their lands was acknowledged for the natives of the Andean
communities. This, however, was the way that these people conceived their relationship
with external power, as an asymmetric reciprocal exchange of work and tribute for the
right to land and protection, and since that time, the traditional authorities who go to
Pisac no longer have any business to discuss with the governor, the parish priest, or the
municipal authorities, as representatives of the State in the Municipality. None at all,
except the business of satisfying tourism through their participation in these festivals. If,
as I have pointed out, the management of Tradition is one of the most effective political
channels for shaping the relationships between the population of the communities and
local power, we can affirm that today the exchange is resolved between the local
authorities mestizos converted to the craft business and tourism, who hold the
municipal offices- and the natives. The terms under which this exchange is established,
and which obviously continue to be asymmetrical, and the goods and services exchanged
in the present-day media context, translate into the exotic image in these rituals of
staged authenticity, in exchange for infrastructure work and services which the
Municipality occasionally carries out in its communities. The traditional authorities of
the communities express their present-day function in their towns in the following way:

The mayor of Pisac told us that if we didnt go down to the town, and the
customs were lost, the people of Pisac would no longer be known, the
visitors wouldnt come, and the Municipality wouldnt do any kind of work
for the community (Don Po Perez, mayor of Chahuaytiri, November
1997).

This pact of reciprocity does not translate into a consensual government destined to
maintain the equilibrium between the dominators and those dominated, with the
dominators refraining from wielding power arbitrarily (cf. Fortes and Pritchard,
1979). As in the past, this relation of reciprocity between the State and the
communities is marked by inequality it is vertical- and also by conflict. But, in
contrast to the past relationship, the circumstances of the present-day context, far from
suppressing cultural diversity, allow a small space for the natives to negotiate (Garca
Canclini, 1992). In this space, continuous attempts to renew traditional institutions
and forms of organization, such as the systems of offices or duties of the Andean
 22

communities, are produced. The result of this renovation is an authentically hybrid

product which is not marginal to the processes of inequality or to the dominant
political constellation, but from which the ethnic authorities strengthen and shape the
differences. Thus, the process of cultural self-consciousness implied by parading or
participating in the ritual dramatizations invented by others (the Incanists) to be
observed by others (the tourists) does not necessarily result in a loss of meaning for
these people, as political-symbolic representatives of their communities before
external power. It is, on the contrary, part of the modern strategies of negotiation and
resistance available to this population to guarantee, in the conditions that the present-
day context imposes, the validity of the pact of reciprocity that permeates all of their
forms of organization (economic, political, social, and cultural) and that serves for
them to situate themselves, to think of themselves as a group, in relation to the global
world.

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i

NOTES

I would like to thank the colleagues who participated in the International Conference Procesos de Globalizacin y
Localizacin en Amrica Latina, celebrated at the University of Granada, for their comments on the preliminary
version on which this text is based, and my teacher, Professor Francisco Snchez Prez, for his apt suggestions that have
allowed me to organize the final version of the text and Nancy Konvalinka for her assintance with the english
translation.
ii
One of the central debates of the ethnohistorians of the Andean world has been to try to clarify, by studying the
chronicles, the identity and number of the rulers of the Inca Empire. On one hand, the selective way of registering the
memory of historical episodes, and, on the other, the Empires peculiar political and military organization, divided in
two halves hanan and hurin-, each governed simultaneously by an Inca, increased the controversy (cf. Rostoworowski,
1988; Zuidema, 1995).
iii
In Mexico, the tourist promotion and widespread media coverage achieved by this type of festival, such as the
Cumbre Tajn (Papantla, Veracruz), considerably surpass those that have been analyzed in the Peruvian case.
iv
The distinction between emic and etic was adopted by anthropology from linguistics from the words phonemic and
phonetic- (Pike, 1967), to explain the contrast between the natives explanation and presentation of models of reality
(emic), and the social scientists description and interpretation of the others socio-cultural system (etic).
v
The ethnographic fieldwork on which this investigation is based took place during different sojourns in the Quechua
communities of the Pisac district (Calca, Cuzco) between 1994 and 1997, totalling twenty months.
vi
Native nobility, called caciques in Mesoamerica.
vii
During the 70s, the government promoted the celebration of folkloric festivals -the Inkarr-, and artists considered to
be folkloric -the Mendvils, Lpez Antay, Jess Urbano-, as well as radio and television programs about Andean
folklore (Roel, 2000:88-92) .
viii
With this neologism, Robertson emphasizes the need to understand any manifestation of local culture from the
starting point of culture politics, cultural difference, cultural homogeneity, ethnicity, race, and gender, all defined
globally (1995: 34-5). Thus, we cannot understand global culture as something static, but only as a contingent dialectic
process, a unit within which contradictory elements can be perceived (Beck, 1998: 80).
ix
Silvermann analyzes the process of resignification that the city of Cuzco has undergone in the last decade, based on an
aggressive municipal policy of monumental construction and relocation of the archeological patrimony that sought to
turn the city into a vast, open-air museum (2002:884).
x
In the last presidential elections celebrated in Ecuador (November 2001), one of the main supports of the president-
elect Lucio Gutirrez was the Pachakutik Movement, the political section of the Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE, Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas de Ecuador).
xi
The political use of the figure of the Inca Pachacutec is not new in Peru. At the beginning of the seventies, General
Velasco Alvarado used this image to carry out some of his main reforms in Peruvian agriculture.
xii
Perhaps one of the debates that has awakened the greatest fervor among Incanists in recent years is the debate about
the correct way to write and refer to the city, Cuzco, Cusco, or Qosqo. The first form is the one given by the Spaniards
upon founding the city and, as such, suffers from certain imperialist connotations according to the Incanists. The
second is the offical form according to the Provincial Council which, although lacking a historical or linguistic base,
adapts the Castilian form to its Peruvian pronunciation. The third form is the one that the Incanists prefer, because they
defend this as the spelling that corresponds to the Quechua pronunciation of its name (Flores and Van den Berghe,
1999:185).
xiii
The Human Development Index (prepared using three basic indicators: GNP per capita, life expectancy at birth, and
literacy rate at the age of fifteen) explains the socio-economic disparities recorded for the provinces of the department
of Cuzco. According to this index, Paucartambo, Quispicanchi, Paruro, Acomayo, Chumbivilcas, Acomayo, and Canas
are located at the lower end of development (0.37 and 0.47); Calca, Urubamba, Anta, Canchis, and Epinar occupy the
lower-middle stratum (0.48 and 0.53), and the exception in the department is the city of Cuzco which, thanks to
tourism, is located at the high end of development (0.65 and 0.75) (UNDP, 2002:244).
xiv
At present, it is calculated that 5,680 peasant communities exist in Peru, sheltering an estimated population of
2,700,000 people, the majority concentrated in the area known as the Indian spot consisting of the departments of
Ayacucho, Apurimac, Cuzco, and Puno. This population represents over 50% of the rural population and 15% of the
national total (Valera, quoted in Pajuelo, 2000:123-4).
xv
Between 1993 and 2002 the number of NGOs in Peru was reduced by nearly half: from almost 900 to the 400
registered at present in the official registries (UNDP, 2002:36). The deflection of funds to the former Soviet Union
countries, the failure of the development policies that these institutions undertook, and the progressive tax intervention
of the Peruvian State in the funds granted by the NGOs especially during the Fujimori government- are some of the
factors that explain this reduction.
xvi
Just referring to those public institutions that have offices and personnel in the city of Cuzco, we can mention the
following: Office of the Tourist Ticket, EMUFEC (Municipal Company of Festivals and Recreational and Tourist
Activities of Cuzco, Empresa municipal de Festejos, Actividades Recreacionales y Tursticas del Cusco), the Transitory
Council of Regional Administration, the Plan COPESCO (Special Commission for Coordinating and Supervising the
Peru-UNESCO Tourism and Cultural Plan), the Cuzco Committee of Tourist Services, the Regional Council of
Graduates in Tourism, the Association of Tourism Agencies in Cuzco, the General Directorship of Industry and
Tourism, the Cuzco National Institute of Culture (with its respective offices of conservation, restoration, maintenance,
evaluation of tourism, and image), the Cuzco Superior Academy of the Quechua Language (quoted in Silverman,
2002:900)
xvii
In Mexico, this movement receives the name of Mexicanism and, in contrast to the Peruvian case, it is basically
circumscribed to the metropolitan area where it has more than forty different types of associations: folkloric
associations, associations for the study of indigenous languages, dance and culinary associations, etc. (de la Pea, F.,
2002)
xviii
As opposed to the classic ethnographic perspective in the study of the present-day uses of the past, one current of
anthropology proposes an analysis of the native forms of historical consciousness (cf. Turner, 1988:235;
Molinie:1997:694).
xix
In recent years, the works of the chroniclers rescued by the Incanist discourse (Garcilaso de la Vega, Guaman Poma
de Ayala, and Santa Cruz Pachacuti) have received unusual editorial attention, compared to the other chroniclers who do
not enjoy such ethnic consideration (Prez Galn, 2000).
xx
This commission included, among others, Oscar Nez del Prado, Andrs Alencastre, Efran Morote Best, and
Manuel Chvez Balln. In 1956, the Ministry of Education sent J. M. Arguedas to supervise the official preparation of
the Inti Raymi. The script was made definitively official in 1994 (Flores, 2000:129).
xxi
The former mayor of Cuzco and present-day Congressman for the Republic, Daniel Estrada, was one of the most
fervent promoters of the Incanist discourse and its manifestations in the city. During his term, the institutional
organisms in charge of managing the past proliferated and the normalization of Quechua was promoted, as well as the
construction of the colossal monuments representing Inca heroes that populate the city center at present (Caretas, 1992;
Silvermann, 2002).