Pozuzo – Erhalt und Verfall deutscher Ethnizität am Ostrand der peruanischen Anden (Pozuzo – Preservation and Decay of German Ethnicity on the Eastern Rim of the Peruvian Andes)

In the middle of the 19th century, following the recruitment efforts of the Peruvian government, numerous families, most of them poverty-stricken, emigrated from the Alpine region to the Peruvian Amazon region in the present-day department of Pasco (Oxapampa province). Among other things, they founded the Pozuzo settlement there, displacing the indigenous population of the region. Over the decades, the German-speaking population – after many failed attempts with a wide variety of products and accompanied by processes of marginalization and displacement both within and outside the comunidad – built up a small-scale dairy farming industry and used their contacts with Austria to establish a tourism industry in the region that romanticized Germanness. Today, it is part of the political and economic elite in the community, using the Spanish-speaking and indigenous population as cheap labor. Despite its relative prosperity, it continues to enjoy the “development aid” of associations and circles of friends from Tyrol not least to maintain Tyrolean language and cultural practices “brought with them”.