The touristic appeal of the abject: Tourism, displacement, and visibility in Cusco, Peru (ENG)

Over the last four decades, the urban revitalisation of Cusco’s historical centre has been displacing popular subjectivities and rendering them abject. Simultaneously, the tourism industry re-signifies and re-introduces some practices associated with abject subjectivities to the touristic sphere, presenting them as mystical multi-sensorial experiences; both processes are inextricably entangled. The increasing depopulation of the historical centre (Villegas & Estrada, 1990; Estrada & Nieto, 1998) is generally associated with the physical eviction and material dispossession of lower-income residents in favour of tourist facilities. However, geographer Michael Janoschka’s analyses of gentrification in other Latin American cities show how displacement is also bound to the dispossession of symbolic, social, and cultural capital. 

The urban revitalisation of Cusco’s Historical Center specifically targeted the sanitation of the San Pedro market and the eviction of street sellers. These policies hit female racialised street and market vendors the hardest. Many female street vendors have resorted to dressing in elaborate local costumes and allowing tourists to photograph them in tourist streets and squares (Ryser, 1997; Seligman, 2004). In this way, they avoid the risk of losing their merchandise while being evicted. Simultaneously, the prosecution of drug dealers, affecting almost exclusively local, young, racialised men, still enables drug consumption by tourists in several clustered nightlife establishments around the main square. Furthermore, the psychedelic experiences associated with the consumption of hallucinogenic native plants are represented in street murals funded by the municipality. Both female street vendors and murals are consistently represented in brochures, tourist guides, and even the Ministry of Tourism advertisements. 

To understand why both processes are connected, I will first address the material displacement and symbolic dispossession induced by urban revitalisation policies that render some subjectivities abject. Then, I will address how the invisibility of abject subjectivities, practices, and habitus eases their reintroduction to the touristic spatial realm as commodities. Finally, I will address how the contestation of this process produces new subjectivities.