ABSTRACT
In 2019, the World Monuments Fund (WMF), a non-profit international organisation dedicated to the safeguarding and conservation of endangered heritage sites across the globe, included the Sacred Valley of the Incas (in the Cuzco region of Peru) in its annual round of nominations. The reason for the nomination was the perceived threat posed by the projected New International Cuzco Airport in the nearby town of Chinchero, to a highly valued cultural landscape formally recognised as cultural heritage of the nation. Since its inception, this project has been wrapped in regional, national and international controversy, to the point of raising concerns from UNESCO. Yet, regardless of all of the objections, the national and the regional governments are driven by a common agenda of (tourism) development for the valley, and, especially the latter, strongly mistrust any perceived foreign or Lima-based interference. For this chapter, the author (a co-nominator of the WMF) draws from Winter's (2015) concept of heritage as diplomacy to explore the political implications of the WMF's intervention in the Sacred Valley, in a regional context where its involvement may mobilise both contestation and adherence, as well as friction between conservationist and developmentalist agendas. Specifically, the chapter seeks to unravel the various levels and scales of collaboration where the politics of heritage are at work and where heritage as a form of governance is instantiated. The main question is: how does the WMF's international preservation profile fit in within a strongly development-oriented sub-national agenda? Additionally, how are power relations played out in a highly politicised and volatile regional scenario where heritage as diplomacy can serve either to stabilise it or to exacerbate it? Moreover, the chapter asks about the role of the WMF's funding bodies in advancing a conservationist agenda potentially at odds with local understandings and uses of heritage.
