Abstract:
The gastronomic boom that Peru experienced has led Peru to be awarded as
World’s Leading Culinary Destination by World Travel Awards for eight consecutive
years, from 2012 until 2019. The gastronomic effort was motivated by Peru’s strong
commitment to rebuild Peru’s image abroad through its national cuisine due to the
terrorist attacks and crises that the country experienced years ago. Aware that the
nation has outstanding taste in its national cuisine owing to its fusion of culture, Peru
began to build their nation branding abroad through gastrodiplomacy. The
government together with some Peruvian chefs who pioneered Peru's gastronomic
boom, then launched a campaign called “Perú Mucho Gusto” to promote Peruvian
cuisine and Peru’s culinary destinations. This thesis aims to examine the conduct of
Peru’s gastrodiplomacy through the Perú Mucho Gusto campaign toward the United
States from 2012 until 2019, highlighting the roles and actions taken by Peruvian state
actors and non-state actors in their gastrodiplomacy activities. This thesis uses the
qualitative research method in the making as it is considered to be the most suitable to
analyze and explain the gastrodiplomacy efforts Peruvian government and Peru’s non-
state actors have been doing in the US, which are obtained from e-books, journals,
theses, government documents, articles, reports, news, websites, official government
websites, and official organization websites. The main theories used to analyze this
case are public diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy, and nation branding since those theories
are correlated with the topic discussed in this thesis; and the author also uses the
planning communication strategy based on Juyan Zhang to analyze and break down
the Perú Mucho Gusto campaign strategy and implementation in more detail. The
result of this research shows that the awareness and popularity of Peruvian cuisine
among the US public are rising due to the high demand for Peruvian restaurants
opening in the US, and dozens of famous local media
publications and food enthusiast testimonies on Peruvian cuisine and Peru as a
culinary destination country; the raising interest of American tourists to visit Peru
with its cuisine as their motivation; and the positive impacts of Peru’s
gastrodiplomacy in the US to Peru’s economic growth, especially in trade (export-
import of the food supply chain), tourism, and employment.
