This past weekend, we ventured once again into the Sacred Valley on our way to Machu Picchu. We climbed the hills out of Cusco and almost immediately entered into a completely different landscape marked by farming, beautiful natural features including nevadas, and winding roads between the eucalyptus trees. Small settlements popped up every once in a while, with low houses, enclosed yards, and the two bull statues on the roof by the chimney that are a classic show of rural Peruvian Catholicism.
The change from Cusco was drastic, as the hills surrounding the main city are dotted with innumerable buildings and apartment complexes that provide beautiful lights at night, but don’t allow for much of a view of the natural beauty of the mountains. Yet, once you went no more than 15 minutes out of the city, you were greeted by uninterrupted rolling shades of green and stunning mountains.
This area outside of Cusco provides the city with the food and crops it needs to survive. Quinoa, many varieties of corn, grains for the Cusqueña beer, and potatoes are some of the most important crops that sustain life here in the Andes region. Seeing the farmland and the natural untouched land that stretched as far as you could see provided a sense of peace, something that feels rare to me in the US and our globalized world that increasingly focuses on modernity and consumption.
We arrived in Chinchero after an hour's drive. It is a small town with a vibrant alpaca product industry and one of the most decorated Catholic churches in the Andes built on top of an old Incan palace. We explored the hillside on which it sits, just abutting the staggering mountains of the Sacred Valley and saw the beginning of the famed Incan trails that were in use during the Incan empire and now provide daring tourists a chance to relive the strenuous lives of the Incans. But then we turned away from the mountains and saw a huge construction site: the beginnings of an international airport that would allow planes from the US, big Boeing 787s, to land in the pristine highland landscape.
The gray smudge of concrete in the distance marred the greens and oranges of the natural land rolling around Chinchero and leading into the Sacred Valley. As this airport will be an hour or more outside of Cusco, it would take vital tourism away from Cusco and would ruin a large part of its economy. While it would allow easier access to the precious Incan ruins in the Sacred Valley, that wouldn’t necessarily correspond with an increase in care, respect or appreciation for the local Peruvian way of life. The airport removed from the already established city would require more hotels, restaurants and infrastructure to accommodate the flights which would continue to destroy the simplicity of rural Peru and its farms.
As much as I was beyond grateful for the opportunity to see these famed Incan ruins along the Sacred Valley as a tourist, the idea of a new international airport twisted my stomach and worried me for the future of the people and land of the Andes. While it is true that this airport will bring more economic opportunity, it shows little foresight for the damage done to the land and water sources with the added pollution nor for the increased damage to the ruins that will come about with more tourists. In fact, archaeologists are already worried about the erosion of Machu Picchu from the thousands of people who walk and touch its stones everyday. They are on the brink of restricting access or even closing the site to tourism, and what Machu Picchu clearly doesn’t need are tens of thousands of tourists arriving by Boeing 787s each day that might cause the absolute closing of the important site. It is a difficult predicament for a community largely dependent on tourism, one that wants to grow and seek greater heights economically, but one that also deeply values its history and ancient culture and would hate to see it ruined.
Комментарии