“Eating the Barrio”: Gastronomy and urban change in Santa Cruz, Lima

Abstract

This article explores the impact of the gastronomic boom on gentrification processes in Lima, Peru, during the last two decades. It is an ethnographic study conducted in 2012, 2014, and 2016 in the Santa Cruz housing development, which used to be a working-class neighborhood located in the Miraflores district. The central focus is the analysis of the personal narratives of change and belonging of residents, workers, and visitors, supported by photographic practice. In particular, it is based on the experience of Carlos, a young actor who after living several years in London returns to Peru to start a business and, taking advantage of competitive prices in Santa Cruz, opens a gourmet bakery in the neighborhood. Using the notion of “cosmopolitan imagination,” we show the different ways in which Carlos recontextualizes his experience in London in the specificity of La Mar, negotiating the limits, meanings and values of the places, people, and cultural practices that arise from inhabiting this space of change. Ultimately, Carlos’s bakery becomes a meeting point for linking or negotiating different strategies and experiences of belonging to the area, materializing power dynamics that emerge inside and outside the business, thus shaping the commodification of Santa Cruz.