The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Heraldo Muñoz, is traveling to Peru this Wednesday to participate in the official act by which the Qhapaq Ñan will be declared World Heritage as recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) last Saturday, June 14, 2014.
For the first time in 40 years of existence of the World Heritage Convention, six countries, namely Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru gathered together to file an application for a cultural site that represents a highly valuable common heritage.
The Andean Road System Qhapaq Ñan, known as Inca Trail, is the most important road infrastructure of the Andean area. This over 30,000-kilometer long road network would connect several productive, administrative and ceremonial centers built throughout more than 3000 years of Andean culture, covering an extensive geographical area from the Western center of Argentina and Chile to the south west of Colombia.
The Incas articulated the Tawantinsuyu, through a road network at a continental scale; its roads are an invaluable expression of the organizational and planning spirit of the available workmanship and represented a key instrument in the unification of a social, political and economic model both physically and organizationally.
The road network across the Andean Mountain range has been used at different times of history for the movement of people, armies and caravans in the carriage of goods and raw materials. Today, it has several uses in everyday activities and rituals, the knowledge of the great diversity of road constructive techniques as intangible cultural heritage still remains.
The official act, led by President Ollanta Humala, will be held at the Pachacamac Sanctuary, in the location of Lurin.
Learn more at the website of the National Library's Chilean memoir:
http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-3374.html