Of Guinea Pigs and Mines: Changing Access to Animal Consumption at Chavín de Huántar (Peru)

Abstract:Food traditions are created, adapted, and reinvented across space and time. However, when an external source seeks to revitalize and commercialize an ancestral social food it can produce negative effects. In this paper I argue that the economic goals of development programs can collide with cultural traditions, specifically within food landscapes. In this study I describe how a mining company in central Peru developed an economic development project in which they distributed guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) to some families, in order to boost their commercialization, with the goal of helping the community to increase other sources of income. However, these animals were traditionally exchanged within the community and their introduction as a market commodity was not well received. Over time, community members lost a way of making and reproducing social ties through the exchange of guinea pigs.