Saving the Nazca Lines: An Ancient Site as a Post-WWII Battleground

Abstract

The ancient Nazca Lines site comprises a massive archaeological treasure located in Southwestern Peru. These magnificent geoglyphs have lain etched in the arid desert floor for over 2,000 years and were designed by an indigenous South American civilization known as the Nasca. The Nazca Lines site spans roughly 170 square miles of unfenced land in the Ica region of Peru. These massive geometric and anthropomorphic figures, best viewed from the sky, continue to puzzle scholars with unanswered questions about their purpose and the mechanics of their origin. In 2013 a reporter for El Comercio broke the news that a mining company called Empresa de Agregados Calcáreos Gálvez built a limestone quarry atop the Nazca Lines, destroying a section of the site.

Despite the intrinsic cultural value of the Nazca Lines and the presence of national and international entities assigned to safeguard it, Gálvez entered the site undeterred and set up their limestone quarry. This dissertation asks what factors led to this moment wherein a mining company damaged a 2,000-year-old archaeological site. Prioritizing limestone mining over protecting indigenous cultural heritage conforms to a larger historical trend of placing mining above indigenous communities in Peru. This problem has contributed to an adverse social, political, and cultural climate, and has exacerbated racial divisions and supported the marginalization of indigenous Peruvians.

This single event in 2012 was one manifestation of longstanding racial, social, and economic issues. Historians, anthropologists, and economists have provided investigations of Peru’s prioritization of mining over guarding its indigenous communities’ interests. Mining has habitually taken precedence over indigenous land and heritage not only because of the windfall it temporarily offers, but because of the deeply rooted disregard for indigeneity in Peru. I contend that systemic racism had tangible and devastating effects on Peru’s indigenous cultural heritage. The continuous choice of extractive mining over preserving cultural patrimony both illustrates the relationship between the State and indigenous communities and opens the door for future corporate interests to destroy the Nazca Lines and other archaeological treasures. This project highlights how the intersection of racial discrimination and the fraught history of extractive mining contribute to the erasure of indigeneity in Peru, and that this deletion has been intentional throughout Peru’s history. For these reasons, the ancient Nazca Lines site has become a post-WWII battleground for opposing interests. This dissertation covers the 1940s through the 2010s because during these decades Peru also saw economic declines, military dictatorships, civil war, an increase in women’s activism, and a complicated relationship with the mining sector which set the stage for the 2012 Gálvez incident.