Carriers

 A common practice that caught my eye while visiting Peru, especially in the historic city of Cusco, is the amount of lower-income, mostly Indigenous, workers, that spend their day selling a variety of different souvenirs, trinkets, and other items by carrying an often-times gigantic sack on their back. In class, we learned that these people are called cargadores (or carriers) and have been a historic working population within the city of Cusco, as we read through the autobiography of one in class. 

To me, this work seems physically taxing, as I'm sure many of the cargadores often carry more than their own body weight just to be mostly ignored by wandering tourists. Most of the items they sell are not high in price and are just tourist keepsakes, so I cannot imagine many of these workers earning more than a few soles a day. Sometimes, I would see these workers late at night sleeping on the street, indicating they had nowhere else to go home, and I felt immense sympathy. At the end of the day, I sense that this population is probably more vulnerable and that there is some action that is needed to ensure workers are able to get better jobs in Cusco and throughout Peru.