Can Peru Manage Machu Picchu?
By José Gabriel Chueca, The Art Newspaper © 2000
When Alejandro Toledo took office as Peru’s president last August, he pledged to work towards “a fairer country, with more jobs, without corruption, with more justice and equality for all.” After years of corrupt and authoritarian rule by Alberto Fujimori, this was never going to be an easy job, but the restoration of democracy and the election of Toledo, a former shoe-shine boy and Harvard-educated economist of Indian blood, gave Peruvians reason to hope in the possibility for real change.
The first indications of Toledo’s intentions for Peru’s cultural policy are encouraging. The president has set up a National Commission of Culture which is run by people who have distinguished themseleves in the arts, the sciences, and the humanities.
The commission’s mandate is to develop a reasoned State cultural policy, the first move towards the rationalisation of Peru’s cultural and educational administration, which for decades has been implemented by a host of different organisations, many of them running virtually independently and with very little accountability.
Disappointed Finns
One of the commission’s first tasks will be to overhaul the management of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is Peru’s main tourist attraction, visited by over 300,000 people a year. It is a significant source of revenue for the impoverished country; up to 11 September, tourism was the only sector of the Peruvian economy to maintain growth in the midst of a general recession.
The management of the site, however, has been ineffective at best, disastrous at worst. None of the bodies charged with its protection (the State, local councils, assorted others) has agreed on how to distribute the profits generated by the site, let alone on the crucial issue of its conservation.
Machu Picchu’s problems date back to its discovery by the outside world in the early 20th century. A host of building projects took place before the site was listed in 1981: roads, a hydro-electric plant including a dam in 1963, and railways.
In 1998 the government of the then President Fujimori set in motion a plan to construct a cable railway up to the citadel. The project was finally suspended four months ago and a congressman recently announced that an inquiry into the matter has now been launched.
In 1983 Unesco, the United Nations’ cultural branch, listed Machu Picchu as a World Heritage Site because of the importance of the archaeological citadel and the richness and diversity of the natural setting. Although the Unesco listing does not come with any funding, it is important in raising the international profile of sites and in encouraging funding from, and collaborations with, foreign governments and organisations.
But just a few years later Unesco considered removing Machu Picchu from the World Heritage Site list after it emerged that between 1973 and 1997, 15,600 hectares of trees, pastures and wet woodlands had been destroyed at the site through fires and lack of urban planning for the nearby village of Aguas Calientes. The village has 2,500 inhabitants and has grown significantly in the last five years, leading to the pollution of the river Vilcanota-Urubamba. A rural population of some 140 families who farm in the vicinity have also led to difficulties in protecting the site.
Unesco reconsidered its decision following a 1998 report on the ecology of the area which determined that there was still enough bio-diversity to justify the World Heritage tag.
In an accumulation of woes, a ridiculous accident occurred in 2000 when a crane (which should never have been allowed into the site in the first place) toppled over and broke a part of the Intihuatana, an ancient sun dial, during the filming of an advertisement. The investigation to determine who was responsibile sleeps on.
Most of Machu Picchu’s problems arise from the number of different bodies and institutions running the site. It was this administrative chaos that led to the squandering of the money given by the Finnish government in 1996.
Finland gave Peru $6.1 million under the Machu Picchu Programme which involves an exchange of debt in return for allowing international scholars access to work and research at the site. The money was to be used for conservation and research at the site. A Peruvian debt of $25 million was also cancelled. By 1999 Peru had still not lived up to its end of the bargain. In 2000 the Finnish government sent a delegation to report on the situation. This put the agreement in jeopardy but finally led to changes that have started slowly to turn the wheels of bureaucracy.
In the words of the Finnish ambassador to Peru, Mikko Pyhala, the problem “was due to conflicts between institutions and authorities, resulting in conflicting orders. They produce laws and decrees that do not synchronise.”
An effort at direction
A management unit was created three years ago to achieve agreement between the bodies charged with running and protecting the site and to implement a master plan based on the recommendations of numerous organisations and approved by Unesco.
Although much remains to be done (assessment of the real cost of running and maintaining the Sanctuary, the introduction of security measures, effective monitoring and control of access to the Inca Trail etc.) it is fair to say that some progress has been made.
The rubbish dumps of Agua Calientes have been sealed off, a new water and drainage system has been installed and the Inca Trail has been cleaned. Signposting and designated camping areas should follow soon.
Tourism is being controlled more effectively, although this is a slow process as it requires asserting authority over more than 200 tourist agencies. A limit has recently been imposed on the weight the porters, who carry tourists’ packs, may carry, and their fees have increased. A limit of 500 has been set on the number of people allowed on the Inca Trail at any one time.
The Machu Picchu Programme, which is run with Finnish money, has published material on various aspects of the ecology of the site, together with scientific bulletins. It is also training the guides who accompany tourists on the Inca Trail and has already trained 20 site wardens.
The new management unit’s tasks will inevitably take time, with the risk of further damage-it has already been accused of inefficiency-but at least no one directly affected by how the site is run is being overlooked now.
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