The Visual Economy of Andean Childhood Poverty: Interpreting Postcards in Cusco, Peru

This article examines the production, circulation, and consumption of postcards featuring depictions of "poor Andean children" in tourist markets in Cusco, Peru. We argue that a range of actors participating in this commodity chain-including image producers, tourist and local consumers, child vendors, and volunteer coordinators-are involved in negotiating meanings of childhood and poverty. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, we emphasize that even as political and economic conditions and structural inequalities allow for the reification of images in stereotypical ways, it is important to pay attention to how producers, vendors, and consumers creatively appropriate, resist, and rework ideologies through their interactions with each other and with the images themselves. It is in the circulation of ideology and flexibility of practice that people perennially re-create social discourse and representation, and transactions involving these images in the Andean tourist market can shape not just readings of images and perspectives about childhood poverty, but economic livelihoods as well.