The problems behind the imposing Machu Picchu in Peru

Peruvian accountant Cecilia Fiestas and her teenage daughter, Ximena, made sure. They didn’t want anything to go wrong on their trip to Cusco. They were already aware of the complaints of some tourists on social networks for having made the trip to what was the capital of the Inca Empire and not being able to visit Machu Picchu, due to fraudsters who offer access tickets by falsifying web pages.

In addition, he had seen recurrent images on Peruvian television news showing local and foreign tourists making huge lines to unsuccessfully buy an entrance ticket for the same day to what is considered the best tourist attraction in South America, according to World Travel Award.

“We managed to get to the citadel without any problem because, to make sure, we took a package from a serious travel agency and we already had everything coordinated,” she told the Voice of America.

Currently, Machu Picchu has a permitted daily capacity of almost 4,500 people, almost double what was approved by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture in July 2020, following a UNESCO recommendation to safeguard the site, which has shown wear on the soil and rocks. .

But there has been an ups and downs in the number of visitors that should be allowed in the enclosure, which has caused problems and confrontations between tour operators, authorities and the locals themselves.

“There is a greater demand to visit the Wonder, so both tourists and the population demand to return to the amount allowed until July 2020 (of almost 6,000 people per day),” he told the press. VOA from Cusco Neil Castro, licensed and consultant in tourism and representative of the Municipality of Machupicchu before its management unit. He also stated that the measure taken to reduce the admission capacity was given “without any assessment or technical criteria.”

He argued that the Management Unit of the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu decided three months ago to increase to 5,044 visitors per day, but this measure has not yet been implemented. It is pending to evaluate the proposal and apply it if approved.

“The increase to 5,000 per day the number of tourists visiting Machu Picchu violates international standards that oblige Peru to preserve it and not destroy it. It paves the way for UNESCO to declare it an endangered world heritage site. The Sanctuary must be saved,” former Foreign Minister Manuel Rodríguez Cuadros reacted in a tweet when this decision was made known.

For his part, the former Minister of Culture Luis Jaime Castillo. He maintained that in 2017 there was that warning and for that reason a series of recommendations were given. “Peru assumed a series of commitments with a UNESCO mission that came to Peru to carry out a review. The message was: if the State could not solve the matter, it was going to include Machu Picchu in the danger list”, he stated.

Discrepancies

But there are divergent opinions such as that of the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Machu Picchu town, John Santos Gonzales, who stated that the new number of open quotas to enter the Inca citadel will boost the reactivation of tourism.

“The increase in visitors is good, but some actions must be taken so that it does not affect the citadel, such as generating a visiting schedule. “I agree that there needs to be more care for our wonder and I know that there are many tour agencies that are offering tickets when there are no more,” she said.

He denounced the existence of unscrupulous people who promote informality, create chaos and deceive visitors. “A structured plan should be drawn up to see how ticket sales will be, but we have to support formal companies,” he said.

risks

The renowned Peruvian archaeologist Fernando Astete, who for decades was at the head of the patronage of the Inca site, warned in 2019, in his work “30 years of experience at the head of Machupicchu”, that climate change and the management of mass tourism are the major challenges that the citadel will have to face.

“It starts to affect the wear on the soil and rocks. An average of four thousand people visit us every day, in which four hundred used to live,” she said, adding that the wonder of the world was designed for a maximum of 1,500 people.

In his work he stated that climate change is a challenge for its conservation because some rocks darken and the soil deteriorates. Many of the walls of Machupicchu, he maintains, have darkened. As the temperature rises, the flora that was at a lower geographical level also rises and settles on the walls causing deterioration, he reviewed.

The sanctuary, admired for its architectural beauty and with areas of greater biodiversity in Peru, houses more than sixty archaeological monuments articulated through a complex network of Inca trails, and the visitors it receives from different parts of the world allow a strong economic movement in towns nearby.

Machu Picchu was recognized by UNESCO as a Historical and Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1981 and could be declared a heritage site in danger if the Peruvian State neglects the commitments it made to protect it, one of which was better management of visitors.

Foreign and national tourists often complain about the train service that runs along the route to what is also considered one of the modern wonders of the world and about the presence of informal travel agencies that deceive visitors.

“Many visitors prefer to process the visit to the citadel with a well-known tourism agency because they fulfill what was promised. There are also people who have been scammed by contacting third parties from Lima who in the end never gave them anything, “she told the VOA the Anthropology student, Silvana Villanueva.

In addition, the constant protests of residents, with roadblocks even, to demand attention from the State, has given more than one tourist a hard time.

This week workers from the Culture sector protested to demand that the collection from visits to archaeological sites, such as Machupicchu, not be administered by the central government and announced the suspension of attention in several tourist attractions, including the Inca citadel.

In recent weeks, numerous protests and debates have taken place in different sectors of Cusco in order to seek measures to reactivate the ailing economy.

For example, in the town of Aguas Calientes, from where the sanctuary is accessed, a few days ago the inhabitants took to the streets to ask the government to start works to build the defenses of the Alcomayo river, which crosses the town of Machupicchu, whose waters overflowed and flooded much of the town in January this year.

The residents denounce that this inaction by the authorities affects them enormously because most of the tourists do not stay in the town because they consider it a danger and that fact affects their economy.

In Cusco, some 130,000 people depend on tourism directly or indirectly, and what is expected is that they take care of their goose that lays the golden eggs.

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