After CEDET, we traveled to the Afro-Peruvian Museum. It's run by the government and they had closed it indefinitely, but agreed to open it for our group. We arrive and all signed in. Then our tour guide, who we later learned was just a governmental civil servant - not officially trained in the artifacts or cultural aspects of the museum.

He started with the history, showing us the salve ports and geographic profile of how Afro-Peruvians arrived to Peru. Then moved on to the exhibit with pictures of how they tortured and punished the slaves to make them submissive and scared. We moved on to the "cepo" which was a long wooden shackle -like device. He explained to us what it was used for, then asked while laughing, if any of us would like to try it. This offended and confused many of our participants. It was the topic of heavy discussion later that night because we couldn't understand if they asked everyone that question, if people actually wanted to try it to experience what it was like, if the guide thought it was funny to ask a group of people of color to do something so inhumane, or if he was so culturally insensitive that he didn't realize how offensive that question was.

We proceeded through the tour and learned that similarly to the U.S., domestic slaves were able to work for their freedom or buy their freedom. We saw that currently the Afro-Peruvian communities are in the coastal towns that were formerly slave entry ports. They also had 4 different caste systems - one that started with the mixing of Spanish and Black people, one that started with the mixing of Spanish and Indigenous people, one that started with Indigenous and Black people, and the last that started with Black and Mulato (Spanish and black). The most interesting thing was that no matter where you started, as long as you kept mixing with Spanish blood, you could "start over" or re-white-ify yourself.

The religions of the slaves were much different than the religion the Spanish were practicing. It was said that one of the ways the slaves gained more equality was to assimilate to the religion of the Spanish. We saw brands that they burned into the slaves - many of them interestingly had crosses as part of the symbol.

There was one room that had instruments the slaves created out of whatever they could find. Donato, being of proud African descent, sat down on the cajon and started to play. Then he got up and played a different percussion instrument while Tim played the cajon. We got it on video.

After the tour, Caro and I ran into someone else who was at the museum. He told us he was a healer and told us to go to a city hours north of Lima for the best Afro-Peruvian museum. He was a very sweet, genuine man and it was such a pleasure talking with him. His name was Florentino.

Despite the tour guide, it was a great place to see and learn about how this group is viewed within the larger society of Peru.