Returning to Q'ero

This book argues that while the commercial expansion of ceremonial and shamanist tourism can be seen as extractivist similar to industrial mining, the assertive form of independence characteristic of the Q'eros appears to remain sustainable in the face of both these extractive threats. While the Q'ero community is internally reinforced by their reciprocal relationship with the same non-human forces these forms of extraction seek to exploit, they are externally reinforced by the global as well as national rise of indigeneity movements. Ironically, given the moral force developed in some aspects of shamanist tourism, it can even be argued that it supports environmental sustainability against climate change, globally as well as in Q'ero. This book analyzes the increasing importance of indigeneity in the national politics of Peru as well as the other Andean nations in the last few decades, but it remains to set this form of identity politics in its wider "intersectional" context of social class and ethnic conflict in the Andes.