LIMA, Peru–A local Andean mayor defended her decision to defy a court order and continue construction of a bridge that would create an alternate route to the mountaintop Inca ruins at Machu Picchu.
“I am willing to go to jail,” Fredia Castro, mayor of Convencion province, told reporters in Lima. She has been under intense fire from the central government, which fears a completed bridge spanning the Vilcanota River, 12 miles northwest of the ruins, could land Peru’s biggest tourist destination on UNESCO’s list of endangered World Heritage sites.
Castro argued the bridge would open her province, home to more than 200,000 residents, to tourism. She said it also would break the “monopoly” of PeruRail, owned by the Bermuda-based Orient Express Hotels Ltd., which has operated train service–the only mass transit available–to the archaeological site since 1999.
