The residents and merchants of Machu Picchu Pueblo, began an indefinite strike this Wednesday morning in support of the hundreds of tourists who have been stranded in the place for days, waiting for tickets that allow them to enter the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu.
With a march through the main roads of the place, where they asked all the inhabitants, as well as national and foreign tourists, to join their protest, the protesters demanded that the authorities solve the problem of lack of tickets, and not let visitors stranded to their fate.
“We live from tourism and we demand respect for the tourist, enough of so much outrage, so much inconsideration, they get to know Machu Picchu and leave empty-handed and with a bad experience, is this how we are going to reactivate the economy of Cusco? ? So we want more tourists? For this to happen?” said Ana Puma, a participant in the march.
The mayor of Machu Picchu, Darwin Baca, confirmed to Correo that he started a strike in his town, where the situation is very heated, and larger protest actions are not ruled out, because more tourists continue to arrive despite not having more tickets to the sale.
“There is a resolution of 2020 that unfortunately has reduced the carrying capacity of Machu Picchu, that causes us to have this type of problem, we ask that the Ministry of Tourism, of Culture, meet and solve this issue, we cannot allow this outrage, we have to help tourists who are already here by selling them tickets here, not in Cusco”, said the mayor.
HOARDING AND BAD MORNINGS
The main claim and possible reason why so many tourists cannot access to buy tickets is because large-scale tourism agencies would be buying tickets wholesale, leaving small agencies and even private tourists without an option, who no longer manage to acquire access.
This has resulted in complaints against some Cusco Culture officials, in charge of selling tickets for Machu Picchu, who are even accused of being orchestrated by a ‘mafia’ that enables access by the hundreds only for some tourism companies.
In this regard, the director of the Decentralized Directorate of Culture of Cusco, Mildred Fernandez, traveled to Machu Picchu to evaluate the issue and find a solution to the conflict that has been registered by the entrances for several days.
“Since Sunday, the capacity has been increased by a thousand more, but the problem is that these thousand additional tickets, according to complaints, disappear in seconds, that is why we are going to take into account a ministerial resolution from 2018, which says that tickets are non-transferable, not neither dates nor names can be changed, this will prevent operators from massively copying tickets and small operators will be able to access these tickets”, he referred.
SOLUTION.
It was learned that there are no more tickets available until August 19, so the authorities held an emergency meeting in Machu Picchu until the early hours of last Wednesday, agreeing to release more spaces per day in order to placate the need for entrance tickets.
According to the director of Culture Cusco, because it will no longer be possible to change names or dates on tickets already purchased, hundreds of these spaces cannot be used, therefore they will be free spaces for the access of new tourists.
Thus, about 150 accesses could be released for Machu Picchu at the moment, but this must await an evaluation and approval by the governing bodies of Machu Picchu, until then no one else will be able to enter the ancient Inca city.
“We have met until two in the morning today with the mayor, residents and representatives of Machu Picchu, this is a problem that we are going to solve but respecting the capacity, we want to show the maximum entrance to Machu Picchu and we are going to try to the deceived tourists enter and that they are waiting”, he concluded.
Meanwhile, the panorama in Machu Picchu continues to be chaotic, hundreds of national and foreign visitors queue in the street and even spend the night on public roads in order to get an entrance ticket, while many others block the exits and entrances of the trains and the blocking of buses and access to the world wonder is speculated.
The Machu Picchu authorities have called for a strong hand against the informal travel agencies that send tourists to Machu Picchu without having already purchased entrance tickets. In order to sell tourist packages they are deceived and made to believe that once in Machu Picchu they will get tickets in the normal way, when the locations have already been sold out until mid-August.
