Citizen Campaign Pushes UNESCO Status for Lima's Pre-Colonial Huacas

More than 600 archaeological sites survive within Lima, a metropolis of 11 million people — and a citizen-led campaign now wants a selection of them inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Red Lima Milenaria, the group behind the initiative, recently launched a public campaign to gather citizen support and establish partnerships with organizations working in heritage and related fields. The goal is to prepare the framework for a formal nomination submitted by the Peruvian state. The campaign frames the effort as a way to improve conservation conditions and public awareness of the sites that resisted European colonization.

The timing is deliberate. Peru holds municipal elections in the near future, and the campaign wants the future of these sites placed within the broader debate over how Lima develops.

"UNESCO recognition would bring greater international visibility to this extraordinary heritage," said Javier Lizarzaburu, founder of Red Lima Milenaria. "For the people of Lima, however, the real challenge is to recognise the huacas as an essential part of our identity and integrate them into the life of the city."

What the huacas are

The endangered sites are known as huacas (or wak'a) — commonly understood as sacred places believed to hold spiritual power and a connection to ancestors or deities in traditional Andean culture. According to César Itier, the word "huaca" actually meant "split," referring to portable stones considered fragments or duplicates of a mythical ancestor residing on a hill. The term applied to the sanctuary that housed these stones, to the divine ancestor himself, and to the stone amulets that emanated from him.

Today the surviving sites sit embedded among the homes, roads, and high-rise buildings of contemporary Lima. Many face intense urban pressure and inadequate maintenance.

The campaign's argument

Red Lima Milenaria also aims to correct what it sees as a distorted historical record. "For almost five centuries, the capital's dominant historical narrative has largely treated the colonial period as its starting point," the organization states.

The list of candidate sites testifies to the diversity of societies that once inhabited Peruvian territory. It includes monumental structures built of earthen materials and ancient irrigation systems still in operation.

A preliminary survey accompanying the campaign places Lima among a small group of capital cities — along with Amman, Yerevan, Jerusalem, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Manama, and Beirut — that retain architecture dating back approximately 4,000 years or more within their urban or metropolitan areas. The campaign's outreach efforts target that international significance.

The candidate sites

The group of potentially nominated sites includes:

• El Paraíso huaca in the district of San Martín de Porres (2000 B.C.)
• The Pucllana huaca in Miraflores (5th century A.D.)
• The Campoy fortress in San Juan de Lurigancho (12th century A.D.)
• Sections of the Surco Canal in San Borja, among others

What UNESCO requires

The bar is high. Two thousand years ago, civilizations beyond the Maya and the Incas flourished — the Han Dynasty in China and the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean basin. For these Andean sites to receive comparable recognition, the application must demonstrate that the cultural sites are historically authentic in materials, design, and setting; meet at least one of UNESCO's ten official selection criteria; and show they have adequate local legal protection, among other requirements of the multi-step nomination and evaluation process.

The initiative coincides with reconstruction movements across the continent responding to socioeconomic inequality and structural historical injustices — raising questions about the very definition of heritage.

Elsewhere in Latin America, the heritage conversation is widening. Frida Escobedo Studio is designing a renovation and underground extension for the Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in Buenos Aires to mark its 25th anniversary. The Argentine International Architecture Biennial celebrates 40 years this year with representatives from more than 55 cities worldwide in a free, open program running five weeks. In Chile, "Oficios en obra," a learning and collaboration event centered on Valparaíso's traditional construction trades, runs October 9–11.

If the nomination advances, the campaign's larger test will be whether Lima's residents come to see the huacas not as obstacles to development but as an essential part of the city's identity.