There's a photo journal about life as a porter on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu on the BBC website: http://tinyurl.com/49pxb

Last year a daughter of a friend visited Peru and took the hike to Machu Picchu. She said that at one point she did a small kindness for one of the porters and he beamed explaining that no one had ever done such a thing for him before. No way of knowing how common being totally ignored is for those employed in the tourist trade in developing countries but it must be abysmal to work so hard for so little and be invisible.

Cheers, Pat