Peru Blog 2024!

What a great first week here in Peru! I have been surprised by quite a few things this week (as I have already discussed with some of you) and I'm excited to keep being surprised as the trip continues.  The first thing that surprises me is how Lima's Indigenous history is being used as a marketable city identity (and by whom). While walking around, I mostly felt the presence of colonial architectural planning and/or post-modern urban apartment buildings with the most common interactions of Indigeneity being experienced through capitalist motives. Arguably, one of the farthest characteristics of Indigenous societies. I'll list a few examples that I've seen below:  Here we can see a stall selling hiking clothes inside the Larcomar mall. There are ads incentivizing the purchase of clothing by claiming to donate "2% for the children". There is a "making" of Indigeneity here as this is labelling and discussing Indigenous communities in Peru, but there is ...

I'd first like to begin by noting that these readings (and the first day of the course) have made me think about the architectural impacts of colonialism in a different way. Not only from the perspective of how architectural style can be used in accordance with power, but also how the very act of building and demolishing can dictate the narratives in which power is transferred (or taken). The concept of "urbanism" (Rama, p. 3) as mentioned in The Lettered City is also interesting to me as the very word itself presents a metaphorical push towards a better or more futuristic change, but it also continues to present the colonial control within this change through a very Westernized lens. This also made me think about how colonial and Westernized my idea of the social change towards "urbanism" has been established and influenced.  According to the reading, this need for urbanization is rationalized through the implementation of "order" (Rama, pg. 4). Now t...

Hello everyone! For those of you who I haven't met yet, my name is Julia Moniz-Lecce and I am a fifth-year Sociology major who is also getting a minor in Latin American studies. Throughout my sociology degree, I have taken a primary focus on race, ethnicity, and migration, hence I have found my minor and major to enrich each other in different ways. I'm very excited to expand and learn about the connections between race, ethnicity, migration with the different indigenous cultures once we are in Peru. I first took an Intro to Latin American Studies course as an elective in the second year of my degree, and since then, the history and culture have sucked me in and here I am completing my minor in the subject. So far, Latin American studies have been some of the most rewarding (and unexpected!) courses of my degree. This course seems like the most perfect way to finish off my minor and for those who haven't taken a LAST course yet...you're in for a treat! One of the reason...