INTRODUCTION

Cultural Heritage Management (henceforth, CHM) is a long-term and integral strategy for planning the development of a valley or a region for its preservation and the dissemination of its cultural heritage resources to the public. CHM’s strategy is not unlike a multidisciplinary research project, integrated by a set of successive and linked phases: planning, study, preservation, presentation, promotion, sustainability.

Peru’s cultural patrimony is characterized by a diverse and complex set of cultural resources, which are especially rich for the pre-Hispanic era. These constitute the main pillar in the government’s quest for new activities and attractions to support a rise in cultural tourism from national and international visitors. Archaeological heritage can provide solid foundations to CHM plans, but ethnographic and historical resources should complement it as cultural heritage in Peru. For instance, north coast sugar cane mills of the nineteenth century agro-industrial era, and certainly the many Colonial era monuments, could be viable targets of incorporation into a CHM strategy. Improving roads to these many attractions would facilitate the creation of a cultural heritage network and ultimately benefit local populations. This kind of broad assemblage of resources will be vital, but not sufficient, for creating a successful CHM project.

This chapter is written at a time when the field of cultural heritage management in Peru is at a crossroads: only recently is the management of cultural heritage being addressed as a complex network of organizational resources [Note 1], rather than a strategy that pinpoints investment in discrete resources. The creation of a network is an important

Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell. Springer, New York, 2008

Operational concept in the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage and the development of “cultural districts” or tourist regions.

The success of a CHM project resides in the diversity and integration of cultural as well as economic and social resources at different scales; the project may not necessarily be geared towards tourism (Navrud 2005). Such “networks” also require an improvement of services so as to create viable and sustainable cultural regions. Indeed, CHM projects should also encompass sanitary, ecological and transportation components. While conservation of monumental heritage may have benefits for tourism, ultimately CHM will be successful in the preservation of heritage for future generations only if it addresses current infrastructural problems as well as ideological domains.

The concept of a long-term and broad strategy geared towards managing a cultural resource is still imprecisely understood in Peru. Moreover, government institutions do not have the capacity to implement such strategies, but this is hardly surprising. CHM is a highly specialized and complex endeavor more often undertaken by private/public consortiums and seldom by government agencies alone. In Italy for instance, despite the large bureaucracy dedicated to heritage, CHM projects, such as those for preparing plans to manage World Heritage-listed sites, are made by private consultants, sometimes at the request of local and regional governments. These management projects, suspicious to public administrators, do not have “carte blanche”; rather, they are often implemented with government experts and supervision. These projects are often created as “joint-ventures” where the skills of several parties are put to work. In contrast, another source of “heritage” work is the very active, unsupervised and often faulty interventions by very independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a variety of activities, from health to heritage preservation.

CHM projects are not similar to what in the United States is called Cultural Resource Management (CRM). CRM has also existed in the Peruvian cultural arena for about two decades. Peruvian CRM surged after legal requirements in heritage norms mandated preliminary surveys in areas being developed by mining and oil companies. Peruvian CRM projects are conducted by private teams and address heritage resources in an “environmental impact” framework and with a “rescue” or “emergency” character. Emergency work unrelated to land development is also conducted by the National Institute of Culture/Insi-tuto Nacional de Cultura (hereafter INC) on a very limited basis [Note 2].

CHM projects are thus complex endeavors that encompass issues ranging from political to financial; require a staged and planned development; and spring from the input of diverse sectors and institutions joined by common goals towards cultural heritage preservation. These common goals can range from producing an active and public archaeological site, managing a fragile site in a pristine and delicate environment, creating an integrated, rich and diverse tourist region, or redesigning the urban setting of an historic city.