Over Thanksgiving and for the first week of December I was
in Lima. The volunteers were all staying
in Miraflores, the most touristy part of the city. We do this because the tourist part of the
city has things like falafel and grocery stores with Heinz ketchup and Honey
Bunches of Oats. The appeal is obvious.
It also has people selling souvenirs and art. As a friend and I walked along a block,
admiring and occasionally harshly judging the art, I noticed that there was an
abundance of paintings of Cusco, of Machu Picchu, of women in traditional
Quechua garb, of bright-eyed Peruvian children in traditional clothing, and of
llamas. And I have wonder, do all these
artists really feel compelled to continue paint these already well-recognized
symbols of Perú? Does it fill an artistic need of theirs? Do they paint them
because they enjoy it, or because they think they’ll sell? Do they all have secret stores of paintings
that are of things other than women in skirts and hats selling potatoes? Is
Machu Picchu and llamas what they think of when they think of Perú?
Besos!
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