Machu Picchu is Mexican? Hollywood thinks so.
July 30, 2008
Many Peruvians were more than a little disappointed when Hollywood, in the recent Indiana Jones escapade in Peru, wasn’t entirely accurate. Hoping to see their country on the big screen and their rich history explored by the intrepid archaeologist, they were instead shown a strange land of Mexican mariachi-listening siesta-takers and chicken-filled international airports.
Now Hollywood has another lesson to teach those poor confused Peruvians. Machu Picchu is an Aztec ruin located in the Amazon jungles of Mexico!! Silly Peruvians.
Walt Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua (trailer) will perhaps re-educate the next US generation to enlighten them of this fact that has been carefully researched by Hollywood writers.
As the camera pans over the Inca (not Aztec) ruins of Machu Picchu, it puzzles me as to why they didn’t use a shot of the countless beautiful constructions of left by the indigenous of Mexico. I can only assume everyone in Hollywood is paid terribly, never attended school and can’t afford and internet connection.
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I was recently at the Getty Center here in Los Angeles, at a guided exhibition about the the visual representation of the New World by the first Europeans who arrived in the Americas, and one of the more interesting points was that this mish-mosh of all ‘native’ American cultures started way back then. Lithographers and illustrators would use the same images for Peru and Mexico, or use Mexican motifs in illustrations of what was supposed to be Peru, and vice-verse. It seems that in 500 plus years, people are still doing the same thing, especially in Hollywood. The film Apocalypto also fused Andean and Mayan imagery….
Give an Inca a tour of Europe and the US and he would probably see little difference I suppose…