Lessons from History

You run into all sorts of colorful people when you travel alone or in small groups. Our collection of brief acquaintances in Peru included a friendly man who was developing a trip for R.E.I. members to Peru, an eccentric self-proclaimed shaman woman (that was Madeline's find!), and a British grad student studying the ancient history of the underworld (or something like that). We also briefly met a Computer Science professor from Florida, and I thought I'd relate the conversation we had.

Upon hearing we both studied History, he asked us what we thought was the most important lesson that can be taken away from the history of Peru. We both decided that it related to colonial relations, imperialism, and the gradients of power between so called developed and developing countries. I don't remember what his response was to this, but the question he raised is interesting to consider. I've thought more about it, and here's what I've come up with. I'd appreciate any feedback...

During Spanish and Portuguese colonialism, residents of what we call Latin America were exploited in many ways - natural resources were extracted, people were enslaved, and customs were suppressed. This conflict of cultures shaped what makes Latin America special today, but it also left many wounds- poverty, environmental degradation, political corruption, and hierarchies in society, to name a few.

The lesson to be learned comes from realizing that these wounds haven't healed. The colonial period technically ended in the 1820s as revolutions led to independent Latin American nations, but as of today, the region still has not gained significantly in terms of worldwide power gradients or escaped cultural stereotypes related to the capabilities and intellectual capactiy of indigenous peoples. Latin America is no longer officially under European control, but over the past hundred years, it has still been exploited by wealthier countries including the U.S. in what some describe as neocolonial relationships.

When talking to the Floridian professor, our specific examples for Peru were the debate about Yale's "plundering" of artifacts from Machu Picchu (and the U.S. ideas of imperialism and culturism that could have caused this) and trends of natural resource extraction by foreign powers that continue today (19th century rubber, 20th century guano, 21st century oil). Maybe if more people in the U.S. made connections between colonial and modern Peru and realized that our policies toward Latin America are still contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, political corruption, and societal hierarchies, then somebody would be inspired to work towards changing this relationship.