Keely 2012 Inca Trail

Research and writing for this project were supported by the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale and the National Science Foundation. I am extremely grateful for the advice of the editors of HAHR and two anonymous readers in preparation for this article. I am indebted to my fellow Agrarian Fellows and to Enrique Mayer, Michael Billig, and Eric Zolov for their insightful comments on previous drafts. Jim Strick graciously supplied photos of his hike. Mike Rahnis aided with map making. Many thanks to the people who shared their Inca Trail stories, to the South American Explorers Club for helping with outreach, and to the institutions in Peru that provided access to libraries and archives.

1. Hiking numbers are from National Cultural Institute, Cusco, unless otherwise cited.

Hispanic American Historical Review 92:1 doi 10.1215/00182168- 1470995 Copyright 2012 by Duke University Press

Tourism, Environment, and Development

on the Inca Trail

Keely Maxwell

While living on Peru’s famed Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in the early 2000s, I often walked from the village to the train station a few kilometers downhill, traveling against the tide of weary trekkers hiking uphill toward their campsites. Tourists and guides alike inevitably said to me, “Are you lost?” “Are you sick?” or, my favorite, “You’re going the wrong way!” By hiking away from Machu Picchu, I was an anomaly to trekkers whose sole purpose for the next four days was to reach the archaeological site. The Inca Trail has become a unidirectional conduit imbued with symbolic narratives and institutional order, both of which can be violated by wayward hikers.

Thousands of kilometers of former Inca roads span the Andes. One 40- kilometer section has become a new type of Andean pathway, a tourist trail hiked by 54,000 foreign visitors in 2008 alone.1 Tourism has emerged as a potent political economic force in twentieth- century Latin America, with con-comitant environmental impacts. Yet despite the importance of tourism in the region, there are few scholarly investigations of its history, particularly its envi-ronmental history. Research has centered on how tourism developed as a leisure activity linked to modernity and capitalist industrialization, on the social con-struction of tourism destinations, and on social relations of hosts to guests. In Latin America, tourism histories have focused geographically on the Caribbean

144 HAHR / February / Maxwell

and Mexico and thematically on “sun and sand” or on cultural heritage tour-ism.2 The Inca Trail is part of the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, created in 1981 and designated a World Heritage Site for natural and cultural heritage in 1983. It is a premiere tourist destination and the center of controversy over environmental impacts, and so it provides a critical case for examining the envi-ronmental history of Latin American tourism.

State, corporate, and scientific actors produced the trail’s natural and cul-tural heritage as textual and material space.3 Foreign and Peruvian scientific expeditions fashioned a landscape of Inca history and wild nature. In the early 1970s, mountaineers, backpackers, trekking agencies, and guidebooks popular-ized the trail as an adventure destination for foreigners and Peruvians eager to explore ruins and nature. Hiking numbers rose gradually but remained below 20,000 annually until the mid- 1990s, when trail tourism increased exponen-tially. By 1998, 66,000 hikers were hiking the trail annually, and dozens of tour agencies offered guided treks. The trail was no longer a place for explorers but a destination for experiential pilgrimage, a once- in- a- lifetime experience sought by people from all around the globe. For many tourists, heritage was a means to broader ends that ranged from enjoyment and accomplishment to life trans-formation. In the early 2000s, trekking companies seeking to stand out among stiff competition provided increasingly modern luxuries. Hikers’ experiences of heritage began to be tempered by dining tents, portable toilets, and warm water for soaking one’s feet at the end of a long day.

This tension between heritage and modernity reflects a longer history of how state and private interests used natural and cultural heritage to advance

2. Jas Elsner and Joan- Pau Rubies, Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London: Reaktion Books, 1999); John K. Walton, ed., Histories of Tourism: Representation, Identity, and Conflict (Clevedon, UK: Channel View Publications, 2005); Dina Berger, The Development of Mexico’s Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Environmental historians have not studied tourism extensively. Tourism in Mexico created expanding patterns of territorial commodification similar to those of other tropical commodities. It caused water pollution, deforestation, and other environmental problems. Shawn William Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), 219 – 25.

3. In Machu Picchu, heritage construction was not a top- down state project but emerged from the intersection of multiple actors and motives. In Mexico, in contrast, heritage creation for tourism was a nationalist cultural project directed by the state and implemented through federal- local collaboration. Alex Saragoza, “The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929 – 1952,” in Fragments of a Golden Age: the Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940, ed. Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2001), 91 – 115.

Tourism, Environment, and Development on the Inca Trail 145

development through tourism. Tourism, heritage, and development emerged in relation to one another, not as distinct conceptual threads that converged in Machu Picchu. Beginning in the 1920s, intellectuals and politicians hailed Machu Picchu as the engine that would drive development in the Cusco region by becoming an international tourist attraction. Development projects contin-ued over the next several decades and expanded spatially from the archaeologi-cal site to incorporate the Inca Trail. It is within this context of development that we must understand the trail’s environmental problems and policies. Tour-ism caused environmental impacts. It also influenced how Historic Sanctuary managers and other policy makers characterized and prioritized environmental problems. Concerns over the environmental impacts of tourism have been pres-ent since the trail was first publicized as a trekking route. Trash and human waste have been the principal environmental concerns, deemed problematic because they impact the aesthetics of the touristic landscape of the trail.

The 2000 Inca Trail regulation was the first major policy to address these environmental problems.4 The form these regulations took also served to cement the trail more firmly within the realm of development. Tourists were required to hike with trekking operators instead of backpacking independently, and costs to visitors increased fourfold. These regulations cannot be understood only as part of what I term a “pro- conservation trajectory” characterization of the history of Latin American parks as one of incipient to improved conservation. A common pro- conservation trajectory narrative is that scientists realized the importance of Latin American species and ecosystems and helped spread awareness to state officials and the public. State agencies took measures to protect biodiversity by setting aside territories to create national protected areas and establishing new bureaucratic institutions to manage them. However, the narrative continues, states were politically weak and fiscally challenged, so protected areas became “paper parks” that needed external funding and management interventions. Problems also arose because North American models of park management were not appropriate. New strategies such as ecotourism and debt- for- nature swaps helped parks meet these challenges.5 Pro- conservation trajectory narratives tend

4. Unidad de Gestión de Machupicchu, Reglamento de uso turístico de la Red de Caminos Inca del Santuario Histórico de Machu Picchu, UGM- 002 – 2000, 2000, modified by Unidad de Gestión de Machupicchu, Reglamento de uso turístico de la Red de Caminos Inca del Santuario Histórico de Machupicchu, 02 – 2003- UGM- CD, 2003.

5. See Katrina Brandon, Kent H. Redford, and Steven E. Sanderson, Parks in Peril: People, Politics, and Protected Areas (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998); Sterling Evans, The Green Republic: A Conservation History of Costa Rica (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1999); Lane Simonian, Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico (Austin:


to overlook the myriad forces that shape park policies. I argue that the 2000 Inca Trail regulations are not solely the result of increasing conservation conscious-ness and management capabilities. These environmental regulations are embed-ded within development narratives, projects, and controversies.

A recent state- of- the- field essay on Latin American environmental his-tory calls for research that goes beyond portraying the region as undergoing environmental decline due to “imperialist extraction,” and conservationists as saviors of biodiversity.6 This essay advances the field by investigating tourism’s role in shaping Latin American environments and by repositioning conserva-tion’s intersection with development. Tourism has become an important driver of social and environmental change in Latin America. It causes environmental impacts and influences how officials identify and manage environmental con-cerns. I avoid pigeonholing tourism as a force causing inevitable destruction by demonstrating how the environmental impacts of tourism are socially con-structed and politically deployed in conflicts over appropriate tourism develop-ment. By elucidating the complex interlocking of tourism, development, and environmental problems, I produce a deeper understanding of tourism’s role in changing Latin American environments.

From Inca Rule to Scientific Expedition

Four principal Inca roads connected Cusco with the four quarters of the Inca Empire. The Qhapaq Ñan (Royal Road) spanned nearly 5,000 kilometers from north to south. Altogether, an estimated 25,000 kilometers of highway formed an extensive road network. Roads were an essential part of the imperial enter-prise. The Inca Trail (figure 1) is a mere offshoot. Machu Picchu was built under

Univ. of Texas Press, 1995). There has been less critical evaluation of Latin American parks, claims Mark Carey, “Latin American Environmental History: Current Trends, Interdisciplinary Insights, and Future Directions,” Environmental History 14, no. 2 (2009): 228. Recent works question the pro- conservation trajectory narrative. Nora Haenn, Fields of Power, Forests of Discontent: Culture, Conservation, and the State in Mexico (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2005). Park creation also contributes to national identity debates. Seth Garfield, “A Nationalist Environment: Indians, Nature, and the Construction of the Xingu National Park in Brazil,” Luso- Brazilian Review 41, no. 1 (2004): 129 – 67.

6. Carey, “Latin American Environmental History,” 222. Latin American environmental history research focuses on postconquest introduction of European crops and livestock, colonial and postcolonial state expansion, commodity production impacts, and capitalist economies, urbanization, and conservation. Ibid.; Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America.


Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui between 1450 and 1470. It was a royal estate used by the Inca and his descent group as a place of luxury and leisure.7 It is likely that Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui and his retinue took the Inca Trail from Cusco to Machu Picchu, as it is the most direct route between the two. The trail was not the only path to the site, nor was Machu Picchu the sole destination of the trail. After Spanish conquest, the Inca Trail likely fell into disuse since the royal retreat was abandoned and the trail was far from colonial travel routes.8 Machu Picchu lies on a saddle above the Urubamba River in the heart of the Urubamba Canyon where steep precipices loom above whitewater rapids. To reach the lowland province of La Convención downriver from Machu Picchu, travelers crossed a mountain pass on the opposite side of the river to avoid the canyon. In 1896, a pack trail was constructed along the river to aid travel to La Conven-ción’s productive plantations. This development infrastructure facilitated later access to Machu Picchu.

The first documented Western, non- Peruvian traveler to hike the Inca

7. Lucy C. Salazar, “Machu Picchu: Mysterious Royal Estate in the Cloud Forest,” in Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas, ed. Richard L. Burger and Lucy C. Salazar (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2004), 26 – 30.

8. Salazar, “Machu Picchu,” 47.

Figure 1. Map of the Inca Trail. Map by Mike Rahnis.


Trail was Hiram Bingham, a Yale history lecturer already famous for the “sci-entific discovery” of Machu Picchu in 1911. Bingham’s trek was the first of four twentieth- century scientific expeditions along the trail. These expeditions began the discursive transformation of the trail into a landscape replete with Inca heritage and wild nature.9 On Bingham’s third expedition to Machu Pic-chu in 1914 – 15, the Yale – National Geographic team excavated Patallacta, a site that lies near the juncture of the Cusichaca Valley and the Urubamba River. Bingham learned of more sites up the Cusichaca Valley, including an “old Inca road leading in the direction of Machu Picchu.”10 He led a small team to explore the road. This trip was significant for three reasons. First, by accessing the trail from the Cusichaca Valley, Bingham provided a road map for later scientists and tourists to begin the trail from there. Second, he reports that he traveled through “a picturesque primeval forest.”11 So began the discursive construc-tion of the trail as wild nature. Third, Bingham depicts the trail as a place of both nature and history.12 He positions archaeological sites as geographically

9. Alexander von Humboldt, too, “reinvented South America first and foremost as nature.” Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), 120. The Yale expedition appropriated Peru’s past and material objects as “imperial projects of knowledge.” Ricardo Salvatore, “Local versus Imperial Knowledge: Reflections on Hiram Bingham and the Yale Peruvian Expedition,” Nepantla: Views from South 4, no. 1 (2003): 67 – 68. Bingham’s photographs of Machu Picchu make landscape an “imperial subject” visually consumed by US readers. Deborah Poole, “Landscape and the Imperial Subject: U.S. Images of the Andes, 1859 – 1930,” in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S. – Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1998), 122 – 33. Tourism expeditions may be rooted in imperial scientific expeditions. Their “tourist gaze,” is not that of an “imperial eye” but rather of an emperor with no clothing. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002), 1 – 3. People think of themselves as explorers and discoverers of Machu Picchu, even if their mode of exploration is air- conditioned buses and their object of discovery is the new hip coffee shop in Cusco.

10. Hiram Bingham, “Further Explorations in the Land of the Incas, the Peruvian Expedition of 1915 of the National Geographic Society and Yale University,” National Geographic Magazine 29, no. 5 (1916): 431.

11. Hiram Bingham, Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1930), 25.

12. The story of how nature has been socially constructed and how this informs conservation politics is addressed in environmental histories of conservation around the globe, e.g. William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 69 – 90; Roderick P. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Wildlife and Nature Preservation in Africa (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998). These works emphasize how “pristine” nature was created out of lived territories.


and conceptually connected to Machu Picchu. Sayaqmarka becomes a “fortified outpost subsidiary to Machu Picchu.”13 Later scientific and tourism accounts similarly interpret sites along the trail in relation to Machu Picchu.

In 1940, Paul Fejos, a Danish medical doctor turned ethnographer, led the Viking Fund Scientific Expedition to Hispanic America, funded by Dr. Axel Wenner Gren. Cusco was abuzz at the time with rumors of ruins newly discov-ered near Machu Picchu.14 Alberto Giesecke, a US citizen who worked in Peru, encouraged Fejos to explore the ruins.15 Fejos’s team located the trailhead in Machu Picchu and worked their way back along the Inca Trail toward the newly discovered sites. They traveled as far as Runkuraqay, halfway to the Cusichaca Valley. Fejos bestowed new names upon two of the rediscovered archaeological sites on the trail: Sayaqmarka (Fortress Town) and Phuyupatamarka (City above the Clouds). These names became bound up in tourist mythology about Inca heritage. Bingham had used names provided by a guide from Huayllabamba for these sites: Sayaqmarka was Cedrobamba (Cedar Plain) and Phuyupata-marka was Qoriwayrachina (Gold Blowing Place). Fejos’s rationale for renam-ing the sites was that their existing names were not Inca enough. Cedrobamba combines the Spanish word cedro (cedar) with bamba (plain), the Hispanicized version of the Quechua word pampa (plain). Fejos disliked this “half- Quechua, half- Spanish name.”16 Qoriwayrachina is wholly Quechua, but it is a common toponym that failed to capture the uniqueness of the site.

Fejos credits a Peruvian scientist, Professor Farfán, with naming the two sites “after consultation with the expedition’s Quechua carriers.”17 Farfán’s scientific credibility was necessary to supplement the linguistic knowledge of native speakers, echoing another similar thread among these expeditions, their hierarchical nature. Indigenous Peruvians encountered the trail by working as

The Inca Trail’s landscape was simultaneously constructed as nature and history, not as ahistorical nature, as Cronon characterizes US wilderness in “The Trouble with Wilderness,” 80.

13. Hiram Bingham, Lost City of the Incas: The Story of Machu Picchu and Its Builders (Greenwich, CT: Triune Books, 2000), 233.

14. “Descubrimientos arqueológicos en la zona de Machu Picchu,” El Sol (Cusco), 13 Nov. 1940. Many thanks to El Sol for access to its morgue and to Berta Bermudez for her hard work collecting articles.

15. Albert Giesecke, “The Reminiscences of Albert A. Giesecke” (New York, 1963), 345, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale.

16. Paul Fejos, Archeological Explorations in the Cordillera Vilcabamba, Southeastern Peru, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 3 (New York: n.p., 1944), 29.

17. Ibid., 20.


manual laborers carrying goods, not as scientific experts. Archaeological site naming is one means by which scientific expeditions erased the postconquest landscape of the trail and transformed it into Inca heritage space.18 Site naming also reconciles the potential disjuncture of celebrating Inca urban architecture and wild Andean nature in the same place. Sayaqmarka marks the accomplish-ment of building a defensively secure settlement in challenging terrain. Tourist guides cite the lyrical and nature- oriented name Phuyupatamarka as evidence that the Inca were in harmony with their environment.

The Viking Fund’s discovery was hailed as good news for tourism. The Touring and Automobile Club, a private organization that promoted and man-aged tourism in Peru, declared that new sites around Machu Picchu would make the “whole region the most interesting archaeological nucleus from the stand-point of tourism.”19 In Cusco, Giesecke proclaimed that the sites would become “a very important attraction for tourism.”20 Yet while a few visitors took mule trips from the Urubamba River up to Phuyupatamarka and Sayaqmarka, the Inca Trail did not become a popular extension of tourist excursions to Machu Picchu.

Victor von Hagen led the 1952 Geographical Society Expedition to map Inca roads from Lake Titicaca to Cajamarca. The expedition spent several weeks surveying around Machu Picchu to “seek out the road which bound the ‘hang-ing cities’ together and arrive, we hoped, by this passage overland at Machu Picchu.”21 Von Hagen’s crew began the trail from its juncture with the Qhapaq Ñan, not from the Cusichaca Valley. While von Hagen was interested in Machu Picchu and other archaeological sites, his true passion was the road. He enthuses about “the road, a great folkway six feet wide that moved along the edge of the canyon.”22 Von Hagen’s trip decenters Machu Picchu, which becomes one of many sites along a network of roads.

18. Place naming in Peru has been a means for officials to order places and populations, situating them under state authority within particular geographic and racialized categories. Benjamin Orlove, “Putting Race in Its Place: Order in Colonial and Postcolonial Peruvian Geography,” Social Research 60, no. 2 (1991): 301 – 36. Place naming by foreign scientists is another means by which landscapes are bound up in making imperial subjects. Poole, “Landscape and the Imperial Subject,” 127.

19. “Wenner Gren Expedition,” Turismo; revista peruana de viajes, artes, letras y actualidad, 1941, n.p.

20. Alberto Giesecke, “El notable descubrimiento arqueológico en la región de Machupicchu,” El Sol, 30 Jan. 1941.

21. Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, Highway of the Sun (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce / Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 107.

22. Ibid., 108.


The 1968 expedition of National University San Antonio Abad of Cusco (UNSAAC) professors and students was widely covered in the Peruvian press.23

Dr. Victor Angles Vargas and Dr. Manuel Chávez Ballón, a Cusqueñan archaeol-ogist who headed restoration efforts in Machu Picchu, organized the trip. They received funding from UNSAAC, the Departmental Archaeological Council, and the Reconstruction and Development Corporation to take a group of 55 students along Inca roads near Machu Picchu to “investigate new archaeologi-cal complexes.”24 This trip shifted focus from the road back to archaeological sites along it. The group took a train to kilometer 88 and followed the Inca Trail from the Cusichaca Valley to Machu Picchu. Angles Vargas’s account of the trip echoes Bingham’s description of travel through wild nature. Uphill from the village of Huayllabamba, for example, “all vestiges of contemporary human activity disappeared.”25 Villagers recount that at that time, there were potato fields above Huayllabamba and cattle grazed all the way to Sayaqmarka. For Angles Vargas, however, “the wild country was only conquered by ancient Peru-vians; after them, there was silence and stillness, broken only by the wind.”26 He inscribes the landscape with Inca heritage, utilizing Fejos’s names for archaeo-logical sites and calling Huayllabamba “Patawasi” after an archaeological site there. Situating the trail as nature and history required deliberate erasure of modern land use, a political act that served to bolster explorers’ claims to dis-covery and create places of heritage that became tourist destinations. The Inca Trail’s later reputation as a trek through nature and Inca history owes much to these scientific characterizations.

Tourism as Development

Machu Picchu has been at the center of regional and national tourism planning since the 1920s, a trend that informed how the Inca Trail would be managed. Tourism to Cusco and Machu Picchu was a cultural and economic project that became a regional and national development project. In the 1920s, Cusqueñan intellectuals advocated indigenismo, a pro- indigenous cultural movement that sought to elevate a regional, Andean identity over the nationally predominant mestizo identity. Indigenismo and regionalismo (regionalism) were also political

23. “55 estudiantes ubicarán camino a Machu- Picchu,” El Sol, 18 May 1968; “La expedición realizó varios descubrimientos,” El Sol, 8 June 1968.

24. Victor Angles Vargas, Machupijchu, enigmática ciudad inka (Lima: Industrialgráfica, 1972), 55.

25. Ibid., 57.26. Ibid., 349.


movements that attempted to redirect power and decision making from Lima. Proponents of indigenismo and regionalismo, including Luis Valcárcel, José Uriel García, Alberto Giesecke, and José Gabriel Cosio, sought to make Cusco a center of archaeological tourism. Heritage tourism was motivated from the beginning by economic as well as cultural reasons. It was a means of achieving a regional identity that connected past indigenous heritage with the present. It was also a route to modernity, progress, and development.27

The sphere of archaeological tourist attractions soon expanded beyond city limits to include Saqsayhuaman, Pisaq, Ollantaytambo, and Machu Picchu. The principal visitors to these sites were regional elites who took multiday excur-sions on horseback. The University of Cusco organized a scientific excursion to Machu Picchu in 1920, and department prefect Victor Vélez organized another in 1928.28 A few foreign dignitaries visited the site, including US ambassador Miles Poindexter in 1924.29 Peruvian and foreign visitation to Machu Pic-chu increased after 1928, when newly constructed railroad tracks from Cusco reached kilometer 110 along the Urubamba River. The Cusco – Santa Ana Railroad Company offered special overnight excursions to Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu aimed at attracting regional and national visitors. In 1931, the railroad acquired the autocarril (autorail), an eight- person train car, so that wealthy tourists could take day trips to the ruins from Cusco. The company extended railroad tracks to kilometer 112 for the autocarril, Machu Picchu’s first tourism infrastructure.

With the aid of key Cusqueñans, Cusco became nationally recognized for its tourist potential. Tourism to Cusco and Machu Picchu became a compo-nent of national development planning.30 In 1932, the Ministry of Development

27. Existing studies focus on Cusqueñan tourism as a cultural project intertwined with the promotion of folklore, art, photography, and dances. Zoila S. Mendoza, Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2008), 65 – 91; Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru 1919 – 1991 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000), 139 – 40. Indigenismo proponents promoted modernization and development, as described by Willie Hiatt, “Flying ‘Cholo’: Incas, Airplanes, and the Construction of Andean Modernity in 1920s Cuzco, Peru,” The Americas 63, no. 3 (2007): 328. Machu Picchu encompassed heritage and modernization aspects of indigenismo. It was “a present from the Incas to their twentieth- century children” and the “capital of the Peruvian tourist industry.” José Tamayo Herrera, Historia social del Cuzco republicano (Lima: Industrial Gráfica, S.A., 1978), 120.

28. Eduardo Pineda Arce, “La expedición a Machupijchu,” El Sol, 19 July 1928; “Excursión a Machupicchu,” El Sol, 14 Feb. 1920.

29. “El Embajador Americano de vuelta de Machupiccho,” El Sol, 6 May 1924.30. National tourism planning in Peru was more an economic project and less a

cultural project than in Mexico or Cuba. Saragoza, “The Selling of Mexico,” 92; Rosalie


and Public Works was given the mandate to “attend to the tourists who come to Peru, and especially to Cusco.”31 On January 23, 1933, the Peruvian Con-gress passed Law 7688, which recognized Cusco as the “Archaeological Capi-tal of South America.” A year later, the Central Executive Committee for the Four- Hundredth Spanish Anniversary of Cusco obtained congressional funds to construct a road from kilometer 112 up to the ruins and build a hotel at the site. Cusco’s celebration of the past also involved progress toward moderniza-tion to attract visitors. Most visits to Machu Picchu in the 1930s were made by Peruvians. Students, scouts, unions, and holiday- goers took special excursion trains offered by the Cusco – Santa Ana Railroad.32 Promoting these excursions remained a cultural project, as seen in the railroad company’s declaration that “all Peruvians are obliged to get to know the grandeur of these magnificent ruins.”33 Foreign tourism was increasing, as well. The railroad company had to replace the autocarril with the autowagon, which could hold 32 passengers. By 1938, Machu Picchu had achieved international acclaim. The New York Times hailed the site as “a Mecca for hundreds of visitors annually.”34 The journey to Machu Picchu was, for visitors, nearly as important as seeing the site itself. Trav-eler accounts and guidebooks describe the train trip in depth.35 The journey to the site demonstrated modernity’s conquering of nature. Travel to Machu Picchu was a challenging rite of passage: “It can be reached only by the more daring of tourists.” “The ascent is arduous. The road, covered with enormous stones and slippery mud, the steep slope, the torrential rains, the suffocating heat.”36 The need of tourists to highlight their travails indicates the importance of the journey as part of their overall tourism experience, a trend repeated with the Inca Trail.

Schwartz, Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997), 95.

31. Law 7663, 3 Nov. 1932. Peru Congress, Lima.32. In Argentina, the railroad also played a central role in increasing travel and

creating tourist destinations. Maria Silvia Ospital, “Turismo y territorio nacional en Argentina: Actores sociales y políticas públicas, 1920 – 1940,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 16, no. 2 (2005).

33. “Tren de recreo a las ruinas de Machupicchu,” El Sol, 19 July 1937.34. Alida Malkus, “To a ‘Lost’ City of the Incas,” New York Times (1857 – Current file),

13 Nov. 1938.35. Carlota Addor, “Viaje por el sud del Perú,” Revista Geográfica Americana (Buenos

Aires) year 6, vol. 12, no. 72 (1939): 177; Luis Enrique Tord, Guía de Machu Picchu (Lima: DELFOS ediciones, 1973), 10 – 12; Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, A Guide to Machu Picchu (New York: F. Farnam Associates, 1949), 11 – 23.

36. Von Hagen, A Guide to Machu Picchu, 25; Addor, “Viaje por el sud del Perú,” 178.


37. Law 10556, 30 Apr. 1946, Peru Congress, Lima.38. Touring and automobile clubs were created throughout Latin America. In

Argentina, the club promoted road construction and destinations throughout the country, part of creating national identity and territoriality. Ospital, “Turismo y territorio nacional en Argentina.” The Peruvian club had a similar national- scale focus with respect to domestic tourism.

39. Tourism planners did continue to motivate Peruvians to visit the site as a national obligation, part of getting to know their cultural heritage.

40. “I imagine seeing Machupicchu in 50 years, with a luxurious and grand hotel in the ruins . . . a hotel that has all the comforts of modern life, with an archaeological Museum.” Manuel Chávez Ballón, “Machu- Picchu: Pasado, presente y futuro de la Ciudad Fortaleza y templo de los Incas,” El Sol, 28 July 1954.

41. Ibid.42. “Pésima atención en Hotel Machu Picchu,” El Sol, 15 Aug. 1967.

Responsibilities for tourism planning in Peru shifted back and forth between state and corporate control. In 1946, Peru established the National Tourism Corporation to encourage tourism as a part of “[Peru’s] social and eco-nomic development.”37 It built hotels and augmented tourist services across the country. One of its first projects was to improve the road up to the site, com-pleted in 1948, and upgrade the hotel at the site. In 1949, the National Tourism Corporation ceded the reins of tourism planning to a private organization, the Touring and Automobile Club of Peru.38 In the aftermath of the 1950 earth-quake in Cusco, regional and national planners came to view tourism to Machu Picchu as primarily a development project.39 The Ministry of Development established the Reconstruction and Development Corporation to restore the devastated city and promote regional development. Several of the corporation’s projects involved improving tourist infrastructure to Machu Picchu and restor-ing the archaeological site, even though the earthquake had not affected it.

Machu Picchu continued to be perceived as a bridge between heritage and modernity.40 It also began to provide more economic benefits. The Archaeo-logical Institute of Cusco increased the site’s entrance fee from one to ten soles in 1951 as annual visitation reached 6,500 visitors, including 400 foreign tour-ists.41 In 1964, a reconfigured Tourism Corporation of Peru took back con-trol over tourism planning from the Touring and Automobile Club, including management of the hotel at Machu Picchu. Throughout the 1960s, visitation and entrance fees continued to rise. By 1967, there were 400 – 500 daily arrivals to Machu Picchu.42 Two years later, railroad service was upgraded to a six- car diesel engine train. In 1972, the military socialist government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado nationalized the train to Machu Picchu, another shift in state- corporate control of tourism services.


43. Plan COPESCO, Acondicionamiento turístico, Machupicchu- Cuzco- Puno (Plan COPESCO, n.d.); MITINCI, Segunda etapa del Plan COPESCO Cusco Puno Apurimac Madre de Dios (MITINCI, 1981); Plan COPESCO, Plan de Desarrollo Turístico Machu Picchu. Documento Síntesis (Plan COPESCO, 1988).

44. Jorge Enrique Hardoy, Ciudades precolombinas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Infinito, 1964); Luis Eduardo Valcárcel, Machu Picchu: El más famoso monumento arqueológico del Peru (Buenos Aires: EUDE, 1964); Humberto Vidal, Guía del Cuzco para turistas (Cuzco: H. G. Rozas sucesores, 1941).

45. Erik Cohen, “Backpacking: Diversity and Change,” in The Global Nomad: Backpacker Travel in Theory and Practice, ed. Greg Richards and Julie Wilson (Clevedon, UK: Channel View Publications, 2004), 43 – 58.

A new national development project, the Tourism and Cultural Plan of the Special Peru- UNESCO Commission (Plan COPESCO), came to work in Machu Picchu beginning in 1969. The Plan COPESCO received funding from the Inter- American Development Bank and the national government. Its mission was to promote regional development via tourism to heritage sites. It encouraged tourism by restoring archaeological sites and constructing hotel and transportation infrastructure. Plan COPESCO was a national program but was implemented primarily in the Cusco region. It worked in Machu Picchu for over two decades, paying for archaeological restoration, improving the road to the site, and paving roads to create a tourism circuit around Cusco.43 In so doing, it actively shaped tourists’ experience in terms of what sites were visited and what modern conveniences were offered as standard service. The Cusco region emerged as Peru’s premiere tourist destination.

A New Destination

While tourist and scientific literature had referred to an Inca road near Machu Picchu since Fejos’s expedition, reports and guidebooks provided no details on how to access it.44 Angles Vargas’s expedition repopularized the trail, which quickly became a destination for three types of Peruvian and foreign visitors: modern explorers, mochileros (backpackers), and mountaineers. Modern explor-ers were primarily foreigners who lived in the tradition of Hiram Bingham, searching for lost cities and new destinations in the mountains. Most backpack-ers came from Europe and the United States, although several of the first Peru-vians to hike the trail did so as backpackers. Backpackers are characterized as dissatisfied with politics and culture at home and attracted by the lure of liv-ing alternative lifestyles abroad. South America was a popular destination as it allowed backpackers to travel cheaply, meet “authentic” people, show their opposition to US foreign policy, and combat cultural homogeneity.45 Cusque-


ñans associated mochileros with hippie counterculture and viewed them as a direct threat to archaeological heritage tourism. Newspapers warned that dirty, drug- addicted youth with loose morals were scaring tourists away from Machu Picchu.46 Citizens urged officials not to “permit that these drifters . . . profane the sacred spaces of this city of beauty.”47 The early backpackers with whom I spoke said they couldn’t remember precisely how they had heard about the trail. Word simply spread in mochilero hangouts throughout South America. Back-packers showed up in Cusco in search of hand- drawn maps of the trail route. They spent up to a week on the trail, investigating side- paths and exploring archaeological sites for hours. Backpackers acted in part as scientific explorers had, describing, measuring, and sketching archaeological sites along the trail. They also kept diaries and communed with nature — more spiritual or intro-spective activities (figure 2).

Mountaineers perceived themselves as skilled professionals distinct from tourists and mochileros. Cusco was not as famous a climbing destination as the

46. “Los hipies y Machu Picchu,” El Sol, 5 May 1970; “Campamento de nudistas hay en Machu Picchu,” El Sol, 23 Aug. 1969.

47. Mario Perez Yañez, “Congreso Internacional de Hipies en Machu- Picchu,” El Sol, 13 June 1970.

Figure 2. Inca Trail hiker, 1984. Photo by James Strick.


Cordillera Blanca near Huaraz, Peru, but there were several expeditions in the Vilcabamba and Vilcanota ranges. In 1952, a French – North American expe-dition was the first to scale Mt. Salkantay, the peak that looms above Machu Picchu. Over the next decades, several more expeditions would attempt to climb Salkantay. Most approached the mountain from the south, so they would have missed the Inca Trail to the northeast.48 Mountaineering knowledge circulated more formally than backpacker knowledge, with trip reports compiled in pub-lications such as the Peruvian Journal of Mountaineering and Glaciology, which published an Inca Trail trip report in 1971. An English climber had “followed the route of the Inca Trail on foot in eight days . . . to the ruins of Machu Picchu.”49 Shortly thereafter, an expedition of UNSAAC students and pro-fessors, members of the Ausangate Cusco Climbing Group, and porters from Huayllabamba hiked the trail. One goal of theirs was to renationalize a trail already seen as dominated by foreigners.50

As part of the Inca Trail’s transformation into a global tourist destination, the textual and material space of the trail underwent three changes: it became an experiential pilgrimage for tourists, an environmental problem and develop-ment project for state agencies and tour operators, and a livelihood opportunity for villagers and porters. These spatial transformations would collide with the 2000 Inca trail regulations. The trail was popularized in the 1970s. In 1974, an English guidebook published the trail route for an international backpacker audience.51 By the end of the decade, general guidebooks to South America also included the route, allowing more traditional tourists to learn of the hike. Tour agencies started to offer guided trail treks, including trekking agencies from abroad, Peruvian tour agencies that expanded into the trekking market, and new Peruvian agencies specializing in adventure tourism.52 One tour operator

48. Expedition data from Revista Peruana de Andinismo, later the Revista Peruana de Andinismo y Glaciología, 1954 – 1981, and American Alpine Journal, 1971, 1976 – 1993, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale.

49. “Cordillera Vilcabamba,” Revista Peruana de Andinismo y Glaciología 21, no. 10 (1969 – 70): 15.

50. César Morales Arnao, “Expedición ‘por los nevados a Machu Picchu’ siguiendo el Camino del Inca de Chilca a las ruinas,” Revista Peruana de Andinismo y Glaciología 21, no. 10 (1971 – 1972 – 1973): 95 – 100.

51. Hilary Bradt and George Bradt, Backpacking along Ancient Ways in Peru and Bolivia (Chalfont, UK: Bradt Enterprises, 1974), 25 – 33. I reviewed Bradt Guides and Footprint Handbooks, 1970s – present. Many thanks to Ben Box at Footprint for providing Inca Trail materials from the South American Handbook and Peru Handbook.

52. In Inca Trail rhetoric, backpackers are distinct from trekkers. Backpackers do not travel with a tour agency but may hire porters. They bring their own camping equipment


and food. Trekking groups are led by tour operators who hire guides, cooks, and porters, supply camping equipment, and provide meals and other services.

53. Interview, tour operator, Dec. 2008.54. Lower Peruvian hiking numbers may be due to cultural differences in sport and

recreation. Urban Peruvians tend to go to the countryside to have picnics or play soccer, not to camp.

55. See Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976); Victor W. Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology,” in Play, Games and Sports in Cultural Contexts, ed. Janet C. Harris and Roberta J. Park (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1983), 123 – 64.

56. Interview, Inca Trail hiker, Oct. 2008. While hikers were not a uniform group, their identity had shifted from backpackers of the early 1970s. Several of the hikers whom I interviewed, for example, were 20- to- 40- something professionals on the vacation of a lifetime, seeking a respite from their busy lives.

57. Monique Farmer, “High on Peru,” Sydney Morning Herald, 30 June 1994, sec. Travel and Leisure, 45.

remembers, “There was never any doubt in anybody’s mind that it was going to be one of the most popular hikes in the world.”53

Hiking numbers climbed steadily through the 1980s (table 1).54 Not only were numbers increasing, but the trail was on its way to becoming an experien-tial pilgrimage to Machu Picchu. The concept of a pilgrimage is used to explain spiritual and religious quests. The field of tourism studies has appropriated the term to explain contemporary travel motivations and practices. Tourists travel to escape modernity, on a quest for meaning that they cannot find at home. They undertake pilgrimages to ostensibly more authentic places, pilgrimages on which the journey is as critical as the end destination, as is the Inca Trail.55 It is no coincidence that a multiday hike to Machu Picchu became popular soon after transportation was modernized with paved tourism circuits and an upgraded train. The taxing journey to Machu Picchu had always been an important part of visiting the site. Now, the trip had become too comfortable for tourists who wanted a more challenging, more authentic mode of travel: “I was interested in a spectacular way to approach Machu Picchu, an opportunity to see additional ruins, a hiking challenge,” reports one American hiker.56 Walking to Machu Picchu distinguished hikers from tourists who took the train. Hikers felt they had “earned the privilege” of visiting the site.57 One means of creating an expe-riential pilgrimage was making the mountain passes into Herculean challenges to be overcome en route to Machu Picchu. Maps and guidebooks marked these passes and were likelier to name Warmiwañusqa Pass than the human settle-ments along the trail. Experiential pilgrimage tourism builds on scientific rep-


resentations of travel through Inca heritage and wild nature. Guidebooks and trip reports echoed Bingham in interpreting sites in relation to Machu Picchu: “[The route] seemed planned to elicit emotions in a certain sequence.”58 Tour-ists referred to the “impressive series of fortifications” and the wildlife they saw.59 One key difference is that hikers spent less time exploring ruins and map-ping side paths as earlier explorers and backpackers had. They were there to experience natural and cultural heritage but not immerse themselves within it, as they also were on a one- way quest to reach Machu Picchu.

58. Phyllis Rose, “To Machu Picchu, the Hard Way,” New York Times (1857 – Current file), 10 Nov. 1996, SMA24.

59. Susan Beharriell, “Inca Trail to Machu Picchu,” Anthropological Journal of Canada 20 (1982): 25 – 26.

Table 1. Number of Inca Trail hikers, 1984–2006.

Year Peruvian Hikers Foreign Hikers Total Hikers

1984 666 5,597 6,2631985 1,398 5,652 7,0501986 8,879 8,174 17,0531987 6,304 8,834 15,1381988 8,318 10,685 19,0031989 7,437 7,153 14,5901990 3,487 4,453 7,9401991 2,236 4,072 6,3081992 4,341 5,572 9,9131993 6,336 8,504 14,8401994 8,834 14,515 23,3491995 10,105 19,390 29,4951996 14,687 30,475 45,1621997 15,687 34,260 49,9471998 12,923 53,265 66,1881999 6,944 59,294 66,2382000 17,742 53,970 71,7122001 47,026 56,667 103,6932002 62,968 53,406 116,3742003 68,954 57,290 126,2442004 68,131 50,336 118,4672005 74,891 53,442 128,3332006 77,526 52,928 130,454

Source: National Cultural Institute, Cusco.Note: The category “Peruvian hikers” reflects the burgeoning number of porters working on the trail, especially after 2001, masking the declining number of Peruvian tourists.


As part of this transformation into experiential pilgrimage, the trail went from being conceptualized as part of a network of Inca roads to a solitary trail with Machu Picchu as its sole destination. The Inca Trail was not always the Inca Trail. A 1973 guidebook writes that there are several “Inca roads to Machu Picchu.”60 Six years later, in contrast, “there is only one path which leads up to Machu Picchu . . . this path leads only to Machu Picchu and nowhere else.”61 Maps drawn by the Angles Vargas expedition and early backpackers include paths branching off of the Inca Trail.62 A decade later, these paths receive little or no mention in maps and guidebooks. In 1978, the South American Explor-ers Club, a nonprofit organization that promotes tourism to South America, published a detailed topographic trail map. Trail maps since have come to serve less as pathfinding tools than as symbolic narratives that shaped tourists’ view of the trail (figure 3). In figure 3, a common representation of the trail used by a variety of tour agencies, dotted lines indicate how each day’s hike advances toward Machu Picchu. It also shows a new start to the trail. In the mid- 1990s, most hikers entered the Cusichaca Valley from kilometer 82, not kilometer 88. Trekking companies could bring tourists to the kilometer 82 by bus along tour-ism circuit roads, but had to take the train to kilometer 88. The map uproots and inverts the trail from its surroundings. The background shot of Machu Picchu reminds viewers of the ultimate goal of the hike. Even the trains appear to be progressing toward kilometer 110. Pictures show archaeological sites, not houses or agricultural fields, providing visual prompts that this is a trek through Inca heritage. The (male) hiker with his rucksack is ready to stride through nature and history to arrive triumphant at Machu Picchu.

Residents of settlements along the trail and porters who work on the trail sought to inscribe their own visions of trail space and capture economic benefits from tourism.63 Early backpackers reported that local villagers seemed awed by the presence of white foreigners. Villagers stressed the entrepreneurial nature of tourist encounters: they worked as porters on treks, hired out horses and carried

60. Tord, Guía de Machu Picchu, 12 – 13.61. Luis Guillermo Lumbreras, El Santuario Machu Piqchu (Lima: ABC, 1979), 70.62. Susan Whittlesey and Michael Young, “El Camino Inca, the Trail to Machu

Picchu” (Denver: CinCo, 1978), 16 – 17.63. “Tourist landscapes are cultural battlegrounds where sociocultural differences are

created and negotiated.” Theano S. Terkenli, “Landscapes of Tourism: Towards a Global Cultural Economy of Space?” Tourism Geographies 4, no. 3 (2002): 233. Villager and porter social identities and political economic dynamics are more nuanced than I can address here. Neither porters nor villagers lack agency in interactions with state institutions and trekking companies, although the balance is seldom tilted in their favor.


tourist packs to Warmiwañusqa Pass, constructed campsites, and sold refresh-ments. Porter labor has been critical to producing the touristic landscape of the trail. Porters and cooks carry everything from sliced vegetables to sleeping bags; they set up tents and cook and serve dinner. Unfortunately, they receive inadequate food and shelter and suffer from health problems.64 Hikers cannot help but see (and smell) the porters who continuously pass them loaded with camping equipment. The backstage of tourism, where the scene for “authentic” experiences is set, is highly visible on the Inca Trail.65 Trekkers spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to interact with the porters, especially how much to tip them. State agencies have an ambiguous relationship with porters. They know the trekking industry needs porters but are concerned about their environmental impacts, the image tourists have of porters, and potential social unrest.

64. Irmgard Bauer, “Inca Trail Porters: The Health of Local Tourism Employees as a Challenge for Travel Medicine,” Journal of Travel Medicine 10 (2003): 94 – 99.

65. MacCannell, The Tourist, 91 – 99.

Figure 3. Tourism brochure map of the Inca Trail. This is an image in the public domain utilized by a variety of tour agencies online and in brochures.


A New Environmental Problem

Early reports of the trail characterize it as a trip through nature and heritage. They also take care to note its environmental problems. Of the five hikes men-tioned in a 1974 backpacking guidebook, only the Inca Trail is “abused by litter- bugs,” a place where “hikers com[e] across piles of human excrement.”66 Guide-books emphasized how the aesthetics of the touristic landscape were being damaged by this pollution. The Inca Trail was represented as a hike through wild nature, but not pristine nature. Soon after littering became identified as an environmental problem, it became a tourist attraction in its own right. Similar to how earlier tourism planning shifted between state and private control, so too did tourism management in Machu Picchu. A coalition of Peruvian trek-king agencies formed the Peruvian Association for Adventure and Ecotourism (APTAE) in 1983. APTAE and a US conservation organization sponsored trail cleanup treks, which became an annual tradition. Tourists paid to clean up after other tourists. APTAE also set voluntary standards for environmental behav-ior by its members. The rhetoric of blame for the trail’s environmental prob-lems reflects underlying notions of appropriate tourism development. The 1974 guidebook held individual “lazy” and “selfish” hikers responsible for littering. Ten years later, guidebooks and operators attributed littering to backpackers as a class of tourists. Environmental impacts increased with more people hiking the trail. They also reflect the change in tourist identity from explorers to expe-riential pilgrims. Backcountry- savvy climbers had been succeeded by “people who got off the train with a bottle of coke and a can of beans.”67 Tour operators admit that they, too, once harvested firewood and camped in archaeological sites. APTAE members asserted that most damage was caused by fly- by- night Cusco agencies that didn’t adhere to the voluntary environmental standards. Blame for tourism impacts was cast upon undesirable agencies and tourists.

The creation of the Historic Sanctuary in 1981 did not lead to significant management interventions. Trail rules were promulgated but not enforced. Part of the problem was how cultural and natural heritage management was divided between the National Cultural Institute (Instituto Nacional de Cultura del Péru, or INC) and the Natural Resources Institute (Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales, or INRENA). The INC successfully staked claim to the trail as part of the sanctuary’s cultural heritage and captured the $6.35 charged for entrance tickets. It did not undertake environmental management of the

66. Hilary Bradt and George Bradt, Backpacking along Ancient Ways in Peru and Bolivia, 26.

67. Interview, tour operator, Dec. 2008.


trail, however. INRENA and its predecessor the Forestry Center were respon-sible for natural resources but were too underfunded and understaffed to under-take trail management. Tourists, guidebooks, and tour operators continued to voice concerns about solid and human waste strewn along the trail.68 In Cusco, a variety of institutions sought to increase their stake in the sanctuary and fill the trail management vacuum by creating the Committee for the Administration and Control of the Inca Trail. Members included UNSAAC, tour agencies, the municipality of Cusco, and offices of various ministries.69 The committee publi-cized its own set of trail rules. Hikers were supposed to carry out their garbage, travel with tents instead of sleeping in caves, and cook with camping stoves, not firewood. With only a few INC wardens working along the trail, however, there was little rule enforcement.

The establishment of the Historic Sanctuary did not improve conserva-tion significantly. It did lead to more development. It drew the trail into the tourism- for- development rubric that long had encompassed the archaeological site of Machu Picchu. State projects sought to improve the trail’s modernity and heritage to further development ends. In 1984, the INC secured funding from the Plan COPESCO to carry out archaeological restoration, trail restoration, and signage projects along the trail. The Plan COPESCO also funded a hostel and UNSAAC biological station at Wiñay Wayna. INC trail restoration went beyond repairing the inlaid stone surface to display Inca heritage and aid hiker movement. It recreated an idealized Inca road. Bingham observed the first signs of a stone road near Runkuraqay. The INC extended it back to before Warmi-wañusqa Pass. Tourists think they are traveling on an Inca road, but this is INC stonework, not Inca stonework.

Hiking numbers continued to climb until 1988, when a combination of Shining Path assaults, economic turmoil, and a cholera outbreak decimated foreign tourism to Peru (table 1). Cusco was not a hot spot of violence, but two attacks did target tourism to Machu Picchu. In 1986, a bombing at the San Pedro train station in Cusco damaged the tourist train. In 1988, sabotage

68. “Camino Inca a Machu Picchu en pésimo estado de conservación,” El Sol, 13 July 1983.

69. Establishing committees to address environmental problems in the Historic Sanctuary was one means by which state institutions sought to establish authority over the protected area. The 1988 fires prompted a multi- stakeholder committee to create a management plan. Michael Dove et al., “The Concept of Human Agency in Contemporary Conservation and Development,” in Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology, ed. Bradley B. Walters et al. (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 229.


70. It also is attributed to a falling- out over drugs. Huayllabambans maintain that the Shining Path didn’t operate in the area.

71. John Brooks, ed., South American Handbook, 1988 (Bath: Trade & Travel, 1987), 747.72. President Fujimori’s “Fujishock” policies helped stabilize inflation. Shining Path

leader Abimael Guzmán was captured. The government created PromPeru, a state agency dedicated to improving Peru’s image abroad.

73. “Camino Inka a Machu Picchu está siendo destrozado,” El Sol, 3 Oct. 1994. Even though ecotourism became a buzzword in Peruvian conservation and tourism planning in the 1990s, the Inca Trail was never brought under the ecotourism umbrella. Parks in Costa Rica and Mexico have explicitly promoted ecotourism. Evans, The Green Republic, 215 – 36; Simonian, Defending the Land of the Jaguar, 167 – 69. In ecotourism, development is added back to conservation. The Inca Trail was already embedded within development. Ecotourism in Peru is a marketing technique to denote outdoor- oriented tourism in the Amazon, not the Andes.

derailed the train, killing Peruvian and foreign tourists. The 1988 murder of two trail tourists was attributed to Shining Path violence.70 Guidebooks warned tourists about robberies on the trail, urging them to hike in groups, be careful with their belongings, and avoid camping near human settlements.71 More tour-ists started hiking with trekking agencies because of security concerns. Tour-ism to Peru rebounded after 1992.72 Inca Trail tourism was more resilient than other hikes in Peru as it appeared more secure with its organized treks and safety in numbers. One legacy of this era of violence was to expand the role of private companies on the trail.

The uptick in hiking numbers led to renewed calls for improved environ-mental management of the trail.73 INRENA, INC, tour operators, and villagers detailed several types of environmental impact along the trail corridor, includ-ing erosion, wildlife disruption, campsite crowding, and vegetation trampling. The main issues of concern in management rhetoric continued to be solid and human waste, reflecting how the trail’s environment was narrowly conceived, spatially and conceptually, as a touristic landscape. The drastic increase of hik-ers in the 1990s meant that earlier technical solutions were now inadequate for dealing with wastes. In the 1970s, hikers were told to dig personal latrine holes. APTAE operators began to haul chemical toilets in the 1980s. Other operators erected small tents over pit latrines. Campsites were surrounded by a minefield of hastily filled- in latrines. Hikers complained of feces along the trail and toilet paper strewn around like confetti. The INC constructed flush- toilet restrooms in 1996, but these were few and far between and lacked adequate septic tanks and maintenance. For years, the principal solution to solid waste was annual volunteer cleanups. In the mid- 1990s, the INC placed trash cans along the trail (see figure 4). Wardens dumped receptacle contents into open pits away from


the trail to await annual cleanups. Trail brochures stated “do not litter” and “carry out what you carry in,” but convenient, brightly colored trash cans told tourists that “leave it behind” was also okay.

A 1996 debt- for- nature swap with Finland called the Machu Picchu Pro-gram provided funding for INRENA ranger stations and park rangers, finally allowing INRENA to have more of a presence on the trail. Relations between the INC and INRENA were too tense to allow them to collaborate effectively to solve complex environmental problems, though. These institutions were not the only ones wrangling over the sanctuary. A variety of regional and national offices sought to assert authority over “the goose that laid the golden egg.” A multiagency committee set out to create a sanctuary management plan. The 1998 plan set broad goals for the trail, which more firmly established it as a touristic space for “visitors [to enjoy] its cultural and natural values.”74 The plan did not articulate specific policies for how to achieve these goals. Also in 1998, University of Cusco scientists wrote the first environmental assessment report for the sanctuary. This report did not include scientific studies of tourism’s impacts. It perpetuated an aesthetic approach to environmental problem solv-

74. Plan maestro del manejo del Santuario Histórico de Machu Picchu (Cusco: INRENA- INC, 1998), 72.

Figure 4. Crowded campsite along the trail. Photo by Keely Maxwell.


ing by focusing on how trail trash, sewage, and construction were displeasing to tourist eyes.75

The 2000 Trail Regulations

The “Regulation of Tourist Use of the Network of Inca Trails in the Machu Pic-chu Historic Sanctuary” was approved in 2000 and came into force in 2001. The regulations were several years in the making through a process that involved state heritage conservation and tourism agencies, the Machu Picchu Program, and tour operators. Regional and national offices sought to benefit from and mark their authority over tourism to Machu Picchu. The form and impact of the regulations reflect how the trail was managed as a place for appropriate tourism development and an aesthetic touristic landscape, not solely as an environmental problem. Historic shifts between state and corporate tourism management took a new turn with the rules, which were created in a political climate of promoting free commerce and capturing tourist dollars.76 With more tourists arriving in Cusco than ever before, the rules were one more means by which regional and national actors molded the trail’s heritage and modernity for the tourist gaze.

The regulations made significant changes in trail management. First, tour-ists could no longer hike as individual backpackers but had to be accompanied by an official guide or travel with a trekking group. Backpackers who chose to hike with a guide could not hire cooks or porters, reflecting how the rules served to regulate labor and commerce as much as they did environmental behavior. The official rationale for this change was so state agencies could hold someone accountable for littering, campfires, and other environmental infrac-tions. Rangers didn’t have the authority to sanction offenders directly. Under the 2000 rules, trekking companies paid a deposit to receive a trail operation permit. If anyone in a trekking group violated a rule, rangers issued a ticket and the company paid a fine out of this deposit. A company’s permit could be revoked for too many violations. This rule provided a means of controlling undesirable tourists (i.e., backpackers) and trekking agencies. In practice, while rangers did issue tickets for violations, it was difficult to ban an agency outright.

75. Republished as Washington Galiano, Situación ecológico- ambiental del Santuario Histórico de Machu Picchu (Cusco: Machu Picchu Program, 2000), 54.

76. Under Fujimori’s policy of privatizing state- owned businesses, the railroad was given in concession to an international conglomerate in 2000. PeruRail, the new train operator, prohibited tourists from taking the local train for 30 soles round- trip. Tourists had to take the Backpacker Train, which cost $30 round- trip in 2001 and $96 in 2009. The government also privatized the hotel at the site.


Tour operators in danger of losing their permits complained strenuously, claim-ing that the 1993 constitution guaranteed them a right to free commerce on the trail.77 The rules provided a new arena for state and corporate contentions over authority and control of tourism to Machu Picchu.

The second change the regulations made was to establish a carrying capac-ity: only 500 tourists and trekking employees could begin the trail each day. The trail was closed during the rainy season in February to allow it to recuper-ate. A trekking group could have a maximum of 16 tourists and up to 24 porters, cooks, and guides. The goal of the carrying capacity rule was to limit over-crowding and environmental impacts during the tourism high season. Instead of having a thousand- plus people start the trail daily in July and August, hik-ing was to be spread out year- round. Since 2001, an average of 537 people per day hike the trail, so the rule has been relatively successful. However, there are more people on the trail than ever before: 132,500 in 2008 vs. 103,700 in 2001. This growth in total numbers reflects the increasing amount of labor neces-sary to produce the tourism experience sold in trekking packages. The carrying capacity rule intensified tour operator competition. Agencies reserved entrance tickets up to a year in advance to secure slots. It also led to a new form of com-merce as an underground ticket market flourished. Tour operators reserved tickets under dummy names then sold leftover slots to another agency. By 2005, this market had closed, as rangers at the trailhead started to verify that names on entrance tickets matched tourist passports. Requiring tourists to travel with tour operators and limiting the number of tourists per day has increased the cost of hiking the Inca Trail significantly. In 2000, tourists could find a trek for $80 per person. In 2008, the lowest- cost treks charged $420 – 500 per person. Some of this increased cost reflects operator expenses necessary to comply with the new rules. It also reflects how formerly high- end services (such as dining tents, folding tables and chairs, and hot washing water) have become normalized as modern comforts that trekkers expect to have on the trail and for which they are required to pay. Tourists do not complain about this tilt in the relation between modernity and heritage. Instead, they laud guides and porters for their attention to detail and excellent service. Trail hiking has moved further along the axis from exploration to experiential tourism.

The new rules mandated a 2001 increase in the trail entrance fee from $17

77. Fujimori’s neoliberal economic policies supported a pro- business climate. Peru’s National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Intellectual Property Protection ruled that the INC could not charge a different price for Peruvians and foreigners in Machu Picchu, a sign that free commerce trumped access to cultural heritage.


78. Twenty- five dollars went to the INC for entrance to Machu Picchu; the INC and INRENA split the other $25 for entrance to the Inca Trail.

79. Law 27607, 6 Dec. 2001.80. While porters applauded this change, they also were complicit in circumventing

the weight limit by sneaking around checkpoints to deposit loads to pick up, or redistributing loads unequally after a checkpoint.

81. Keely Maxwell and Annelou Ypeij, “Caught between Nature and Culture: Making a Living within the World Heritage Site of Machu Picchu,” in Cultural Tourism in Latin America: The Politics of Space and Imagery, ed. Michiel Baud and Annelou Ypeij (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 177 – 96.

to $50 per hiker. It also required the INC to split the fee with INRENA.78 By 2008, the fee had climbed to $86 per hiker. Proponents of the higher fee argued that it reflected what tourists were willing to pay for improved environmental management. The INC and INRENA used this revenue to hire new trail war-dens and park rangers. They also augmented their general office budgets. Machu Picchu had come full circle from its initial representation as a regional cultural project to be firmly fixed in development as a global commercial enterprise. No longer were Peruvians enticed by special packages to become acquainted with their national patrimony. Instead, they were priced out of experiencing the trail’s natural and cultural heritage.

The 2000 regulations and a 2001 Porters Law established a minimum wage for porters and a maximum weight for porter packs.79 Previously, trekking porters had carried 40- to 50- kilo packs. Now, they were limited to carrying 20 kilos of group goods and 5 kilos of their own equipment. To keep track, rangers weighed porter packs at checkpoints along the trail and recorded the weights on porter entrance tickets.80 Porters were no longer allowed to enter Machu Picchu but had to hike down from Wiñay Wayna to the train; this fur-ther distinguished tourists from laborers on the trail. These changes in labor have brought serious consequences for villager livelihoods.81 Local porters who hauled packs to Warmiwañusqa found themselves out of a job. There were fewer independent backpackers to hire local porters for a day. More and more trekkers gave their pack to a trekking porter to carry for the entire hike, indicating how trekker identities and norms for modern comfort along the trail have shifted. Women who sold sodas to tourists for a living found their income reduced sig-nificantly with fewer hikers on the trail. Sanctuary managers had long regarded these activities as inappropriate within the touristic space of the trail. The trail was a place for tourism, not a “commercial venue,” they complained. They also censured villagers for contributing to the waste stream by selling plastic soda


82. Elsewhere in Peru, informal vendors are persecuted because they don’t fit into state visions of appropriate economies. Hernando de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 62 – 71. Tensions over vending are exacerbated in cultural heritage tourism destinations, where vendors are seen as polluting cultural heritage and the tourist experience. See Griet Steel, “Dishing up the City: Tourism and Street Vendors in Cuzco,” 161 – 76; Quetzil Castañeda, “Heritage and Indigeneity: Transformations in the Politics Of Tourism,” 263 – 95; and Walter Little, “Contesting Heritage in Guatemala,” 217 – 44, all in Cultural Tourism in Latin America: The Politics of Space and Imagery, ed. Michiel Baud and Annelou Ypeij (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

bottles. The new rules indirectly helped control these “inappropriate” forms of tourism development.82

The one regulatory requirement that directly addressed environmental problems made trekking groups weigh their trash at trail checkpoints. If trash weight decreased from one checkpoint to another, INRENA could fine the tour operator for littering. This rule has helped decrease the amount of trash dis-posed on the trail. Still, trekking garbage more often than not wound up in an unsanitary landfill outside the sanctuary. The environmental impact of hik-ing was shifted geographically but not reduced significantly. Sanctuary officials and trekking agency staff note that the trail is cleaner than before. It is dif-ficult to say whether environmental problems have been mitigated overall since there has been no formal impact assessment of the regulations. Park rangers now spend much of their time weighing porter packs, checking entrance tickets, and weighing garbage. There are more rangers than ever on the trail, but they no longer have the time to attend to all of their natural resource management responsibilities. They are more engaged with tourism management than envi-ronmental problem solving.

With the new rules in place, tourists began to arrive in Cusco to find the Inca Trail already full. Tour agencies encouraged disappointed visitors to instead take “alternative Inca Trails,” the name they gave to other treks around Cusco and Machu Picchu. Backpackers and trekking operators had hiked these paths for years until the Inca Trail came to dominate tourist expectations of what hik-ing in the Andes meant. The emergence of the term “alternative Inca Trails” indicates how pathways throughout the region have become reoriented relative to the Inca Trail. The spatial scope of touristic space has expanded once again. The INC encompassed alternative Inca Trails within the region’s cultural heri-tage and charged entrance fees. Trash is piling up on new routes, too, indicat-ing that the Inca Trail’s environmental problems have not led to a systematic rethinking of how to avoid impacts elsewhere. Tourists have not been happy


with the limitation on Inca Trail entrance tickets. While the trail is increas-ingly constrained socially and spatially, it remains an experiential pilgrimage. A hike on an “alternative Inca Trail” is simply not the same. Tourists who went on alternative treks admitted that their trips were “just as beautiful,” but they felt the stigma of not having been able to hike the real Inca Trail.

Past and Future Touring

The Inca Trail serves as a cautionary tale for other tourist destinations. It dem-onstrates the rapidity with which environmental impacts arise, nearly concomi-tant with the advent of trail tourism itself. It also illustrates the challenges in managing tourism’s environmental impacts. Trail management was hampered by how the social construction of the trail as natural and cultural heritage was reinforced institutionally by dividing its management between the INC and INRENA. Tourists, the principal actors in terms of sheer numbers, appeared most fleetingly on the scene, with a “tourist gaze” that provided a distorted view of the trail and little voice in environmental policies. The advent of trail cleanup hikes reflects a larger trend in “voluntourism.” Volunteers left feeling good about having helped the environment, but their very presence allowed authorities to avoid more comprehensive problem solving. Tourism influenced how state and corporate interests defined and managed environmental prob-lems. Their aesthetic approach articulated environmental problems in terms of how trash and human waste impacted the touristic landscape, not sanctuary ecosystems. Other environmental concerns received little mention in scientific reports and conservation policies.

Trail regulations instituted management practices that may appear logical, even inevitable, given the environmental problems at hand. When we examine the larger political, economic, and cultural context in which these policies were created and deployed, however, we see that their outcomes are not nearly so logical. The regulations implemented a carrying capacity, but the total number of people on the trail has not decreased. The means of achieving environmental goals has relied on regimenting tourist behavior and porter labor. Success is measured by proxy, the number of tickets stamped, rather than by scientific assessment of changes to the trail’s environment. The form that these regula-tions took shows how they were used to promote appropriate development, not just to improve the environment. More tourist dollars were funneled to state agencies and tour operators, but villager livelihoods were negatively affected. There were more rangers on the trail, but they had to spend their time moni-toring trail checkpoints, not natural resources. The increased price of entrance


tickets and treks reflects the internalization of environmental costs. It also reflects the modernization of trekking services, a new shift in the trail’s heritage and modernity. The lack of transparency about how, precisely, increased costs have benefited the environment exemplifies the difficulties of charging tourists for environmental services.

The environmental history of the Inca Trail illustrates the processes by which tourism has become an important driver of social and environmental change in Latin America. This essay has shown how tourism causes biophysi-cal changes to the environment, and how the “tourist gaze” has shaped how environmental problems are defined and solved. This gaze has imperial roots in scientific expeditions and was transformed by a variety of local to interna-tional actors who sought to promote development via tourism. Environmen-tal management strategies are not necessarily a product of a pro- conservation trajectory in environmental values and park policies. Instead, we must under-stand conservation policies within the historical context of heritage sites and protected areas as places for development, not just places for conservation. The Inca Trail’s landscape stems from new hybridities of the traditional dichotomi-zations of nature/culture and development/conservation. It obliges us to rethink what Latin American environments are, and for whom, as well as how they are changing.

Documents

Keely 2012 Inca Trail