Chinchero

So, I took the day off from recoding data and learning Quechua to check
out the Incan ruins and market in nearby village of Chinchero.
Beautiful little town--I've put some pictures up on my Picasa account,
and you can get to them by clicking on the link (a picture of an
indigenous woman) over in the sidebar.

Chinchero is another place where you're surrounded by history. Farmers
still work in the shadow of Incan terracing, and the (stunning) village
church is built on the site of an Incan religious site. People also
speak Quechua in the market to one another, and the locals wear
traditional costume, and probably not only for the tourists. In the
market, you can see indigenous families and friends eating together,
sharing their meals communally.

It's neat to hear people speaking Quechua in these places, even if I can
only understand a little.

I don't envy the lives these people hold--Peruvian peasants are tough,
and many of them live lives that many of us would find unimaginable.
But it's good to see that their strong social bonds have, in many
places, survived the changes of the modern age, at least so far.

In the course of my Quechua lessons, we've spent a lot of time talking
about the process of modernization, and the ways in which urban
in-migration, technological modernization, and resulting cultural
changes have left a lot of poor urban residents without either a
connection to their ethnic and cultural roots, or the ability to take
advantage of many of the things the urban world offers.

I wonder if there's something of a Samuel P. Huntington-esque story here
in which social bonds and informal, traditional institutions (like the
Quechua tradition of communal labor) are unable to deal with the large
numbers of people and more complex problems of the urban world. On the
other hand, urban areas of Peru and other parts of the developing world
have yet to develop the complex institutions of the developed
world--things like effective police forces and educational systems.
Maybe, despite his authoritarian apologetics, Huntington got it right.

On the other hand, a lot of the developed world lacks these things, as
well. One might argue that parts of New York, possibly the most
developed place on earth, lack effective law enforcement and educational
institutions.