Peru Travel Guide – Travel to Peru

The social organization of communities within the Andes differs significantly from that of Europeanized creole culture. Work, marriage and land-ownership are centered around a complex extended family organization called the ayllu in Quechua which dates back to at least Inca occasions. One of the key functions of ayllus is to organize reciprocal work exchange.

Over the past 400 years, there has been a long process of inter-cultural mixing, developing the mestizo of part-American Indian, part-European heritage. Today the majority of Peruvians would fall into this category. In Peru, you are able to grow to be mestizo not only by birth but by option. Peruvian social divisions can thus be said to be not so considerably racially as culturally defined.