Linking LivelihoodsLinking Livelihoods

… at first the Spanish Conquerors, now the agencies and tour operators, all of them trying to squeeze to most out of the indigenous communities. Many of those tour operators abuse the communities’ innocence, and of course their inexperience in commercial affairs. They promise capacitation in useless topics, build infrastructure which is never really used or buy computers, mean whilst the community members do not even know what windows means in their language, not to mention the usage of an operative system. All of that for the moderate price of making the communities sign in many cases one-sided contracts in order to use their tourist enclaves along the routes of the Sacred Valley and Inka Trail.

Our work here? Basically it is letting the communities know that they can be the ones taking advantage of their natural and cultural heritage, that they do not have to work as guides or mule drivers for the agencies, that they are capable of getting the most out of their touristic potential, and, of course, of being the brokers of their true culture, whilst taking care of their cultural, natural and social capital because nobody else than themselves is better able to do so.

Design : Jose Manuel Jurado and Remi Mackovcin and Text: Marcel Kellner
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