Making the Modern Destination: Early Tourism Promotion in Cusco, 1920–35

Contemporary Cusco is defined by its emergence as an international travel destination.  However, Cusco’s recent embrace of tourism has deep historical roots.  Before a tourism economy could develop in Cusco, local and national elites had to establish political and cultural frameworks that envisioned it as a tool for regional modernization and progress.

This presentation examines how, starting in the 1920s, Cusco’s elites began to view tourism as part of larger efforts to assert their region’s modernity.  Earlier travel narratives had depicted Cusco as an exotic and backward Andean region.  However, by the 1920s cusqueños began to use the discourse of tourism to highlight their region’s inherent compatibility in a modern world.  These numerous pamphlets and guides argued that Cusco’s Indian identity – previously seen as an obstacle to modernization – appealed to modern elite travelers.  For these authors, tourism provided a key link between Cusco’s indigenous past and the modern world.  Using early visitor guides and articles from the local press, this presentation traces theses early effort to promote tourism in Cusco to the city’s tercentennial celebrations in 1934.  During the ceremonies marking three hundred years since the Spanish re-foundation of Cusco, local elites employed the modernizing discourse of tourism to lobby the national state for restoration funds and highlight the national importance of the region’s folklore.

By examining how local elites employed the language of tourism as part of these larger efforts to re-imagine Cusco as a modern region, this presentation contributes to recent scholarship highlighting the modern aspects of Peru’s indigenismo movement.  This presentation also illustrates how tourism’s early association with modernity and progress in the 1920s and 1930s helped persuade both local and national elites to embrace it as a tool for regional development later in the twentieth century.