Seven years ago, Natalie from Belgium met Carlos from Peru. But the story that unfolds isn’t just another cross-ocean romance that you are all familiar with — they not only married and lived happily ever after, but also started a social enterprise together.
According to TripAdvisor’s statistics, the Machu Picchu of Peru is the second most visited attraction in South America. However, the other side of the coin is that Peru’s tourism is highly concentrated on well-known attractions like Machu Picchu. As a result, only these few places gain development opportunities from tourism, whereas poorer regions of Peru, especially those inhabited by indigenous communities, remain the other side of the story.
That’s why Natalie and Carlos started Alternative Peru, a social enterprise that leverages responsible tourism to help indigenous communities.
Photo from Aleternative Peru Facebook Page
Although Peru has become an upper-middle income country since 2008 thanks to its free-market reforms from 1990s on, inequality still shadows the country, especially its capital Lima.
If you look down upon Lima from above the air, you will notice a six-mile-long concrete structure dividing the city’s rich and poor. On one side, there are white mansions with pools, while on the other side, there are informal settlements made from plywood, whose once-bright color has been overshadowed by dust.
Most inhabitants of these informal settlements belong to an indigenous minority named Quechua. Twenty years ago, these Quechuan moved here and built these settlements from scratch in escape of war. Despite continuous expansion, this conglomerate does not have water, electricity, and sewage supplies due to the absence of government permission and regulation, not to mention the lack of economic and educational opportunities.
As a result, poverty brewed crimes. Incidents of robbery and stealing began rising in the neighborhood, and mansion owners from the richer side were so disturbed that they decided to build a barrier to keep the indigent out.
Over the past 20 years, this wall of barrier has been expanding and stretching under government’s tacit permission. Alfredo, a Quechuan tour guide and a partner at Alternative Peru, told me that he could emphasize with the anxiety of those mansion owners. Yet still, he added after a long sigh, “Who would have resorted to robbery and stealing if there were an alternative?”
By “alternative,” Alfredo means a new possibility of life that many of these people have not been able to imagine.
Photo from Aleternative Peru Facebook Page
“Statistics show the average income for indigenous Peruvians is only half of that of the non-indigenous.” He said, “But it’s not because we’re not hardworking; rather, because we are historically marginalized and the most common job for us is to be a domestic worker.”
Having work-traveled in several Asian countries, Alfredo saw the potential of responsible tourism in solving this social issue. What if these indigenous people could feel free to embrace their cultural traditions without stressing about their income? What is they can work for tourists in a self-fulfilling way? What if, instead of working for affluent families in the other side of the wall, they can directly connect to tourists, who can expand their horizon of their world?
Resonating with the value of Alternative Peru, Alfredo joined the team as a partner along with many indigenous Peruvians like him.
Photo from Aleternative Peru Facebook Page
As defined by the Cape Town Declaration of 2002, the value of responsible tourism lies in “making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.”
There are four key elements in responsible tourism:
- Encourage tourists to build meaningful connections with local people;
- Bring economic opportunity to local communities and reduce inequality;
- Preserve and promote the understanding of the local culture
- Minimize the negative environmental effect.
Despite these multifaceted elements, Alternative Peru’s approach to responsible tourism is as simple as one sentence: connecting indigenous people with tourists, and hiring indigenous people for who they already are.
Photo from Aleternative Peru Facebook Page
In practice, visitors do not end their tour in Machu Picchu, but go on to visit a nearby indigenous community in the heart of the Andes mountains. Along the tour, indigenous people like Alfredo are hired as tour guides, drivers, host families, and many more are paid for teaching visitors what they do in everyday life: beekeeping, handcrafting, fortune-telling using coca leaves, etc.
In order to minimize the impact of commercialization on the local communities, Alternative Peru constantly changes the families and individuals to cooperate, which is enabled by its resourceful native indigenous tour guides like Alfredo and Eveli, who know almost everyone in the community.
Furthermore, tourists also visit local NGOs and social impact projects with Alternative Peru. For instance, when visiting the ancient Inca city Cusco, Alternative Peru will take visitors a little further to Casa Mantay’s studio, where this social enterprise provides young mothers aged 12-18 with food, shelter, and training and helps them sell handicrafts in high-end venues. According to Alfredo, “many of the visitors continue supporting the program even after their tour.”
Photo from Aleternative Peru Facebook Page
Another NGO partner is Casa de Panchita, which educates children about their rights as domestic workers. According to statistics, one out of every five Peruvian preschoolers have worked as domestic worker at least once. Eveli used to be one of them.
“I started to work at the age of 7, and it was Casa de Panchita that taught me about my rights at the age of 13.” This changed Eveli’s trajectory of life ever since, and now, as she proudly says, “I’m a tour guide and partner at Alternative Peru.”
Therefore, synergies are created not only between tourists and local indigenous people, but between Alternative Peru and other social enterprises and NGOs as well.
An alternative traveling experience for visitors, an alternative possibility of life for indigenous people, and an alternative approach to solve social issues. That’s the inspiring story Alternative Peru brings to us.