Peru´s Cultural Heritage Management, Structural Discrimination, and Communities´ Relationship with Their Past.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Archaeologies and Latin American Voices: Dialogues Transcending Colonizing Archaeologies", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In this presentation, I explain how western-centered ideologies of discrimination are articulated in legal approaches to cultural heritage across the history of Peru. Moreover, I illuminate how this structural problem has been transferred to the cultural heritage management regulations affecting Peruvian communities. Providing the socio-economic, legal and political context from colonial to republican times, I elucidate the relationship between citizens, archaeological sites, and the Peruvian government. The paradox of centering cultural heritage on the construction of a national identity, while at the same time displacing and erasing the voices of those native Peruvian communities closer to that heritage is analyzed. I shed light on the systematic segregation native Peruvian communities and their descendants have experienced in relation to cultural heritage management. Consequently, I highlight Peruvian society’s structural discrimination problems, based on race as well as on class.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Global Archaeologies and Latin American Voices: Dialogues Transcending Colonizing Archaeologies   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow