Heritage Appropriation and Commoditized Spirituality: Q’ero Mysticism & Andean New Age Healing

Abstract

With the onset of 2015, globalization is perhaps one of the most dynamic issues concerning the social sciences. It is critical to map all fields of the human/cultural experience that are susceptible to manifestations of globalization in the growing international tourism industry. In this study I have focused on the evolution of the Peruvian Andean highlands’ massive tourist industry, including a specific analysis on the Paz Y Luz Healing Centre, in order to address spiritual tourism and its appropriation and commodification processes. In my exploration of Andean mysticism and the concept’s effect on local cultural heritage, I have found it essential to consult Foucauldian understandings of the gaze, as well as several other perspectives on the role of ritual elements in the construction of spiritual realities. Subsequently I have been led to perhaps a predictable conclusion: spiritual tourism is a living relic of colonialism. It dilutes the cultural and spiritual heritage of peoples like the Q’ero for consumption by tourists, who use the gaze and its created ‘other’ to validate their own construction of spiritual realities.