Llamasutra?

As we walked around Lima in our first week here, we constantly saw couples holding hands and openly embracing and kissing each other. They even have parks dedicated to love (el Parque del Amor) where there is a giant statue of two people doing just that.

Also while in Lima we visited el Museo Larco, a museum displaying artifacts from each of the time periods and cultures who have lived in Peru. After visiting the main exhibits, we were shown the “erotic gallery” portion of the museum. In there, we saw figurines of males with giant penises, sculptures of people (and of animals) having sex, and other very detailed nude sculptures of males, females, and some of people with both male and female parts. Of course, we all thought they were funny because 1) we are immature and 2) our culture is one that minimizes the presence of anything erotic. In the United States, many of these pieces of art would be seen as inappropriate whereas here, they are just pieces of art.

 

 When we settled into Cuzco and began to walk around, I noticed that many of the shops sold sculptures similar to the pieces in the Museo Larco. Also, many of the stores sell these masks with very long phallic noses, and there are t-shirts with "Cuysutra" or "LLamasutra" that picture these animals in different sex positions. It was just so interesting to see how much more open the culture here is to erotica. On a similar note, I also have noticed that breastfeeding in public here is much more accepted than in the States. During Corpus Christi, Alanna and I were walking around and we saw so many women breastfeeding their babies and nobody cared or thought anything of it. Meanwhile in the US, women are being shamed for breastfeeding in public. Although our culture does use sex to sell products by objectifying both men and women (Abercrombie, Victoria’s Secret, etc.), it does not view nudity and sex and erotica in the same way as the culture of Peru does.