The people from Descubre Kuelap and the Asociación para la Defensa y Desarrollo de Kuelap (association for defense and development) will organise in july a meeting called “communities and social impacts of tourism” in Chachapoyas, Amazonas, a town near Kuelap, a place in Peru where -believe it or not- I still haven’t visited. For those who are in Peru, or want further information on the subject, I will publish the journey’s presentation gazette and the places where you can get more information.

I International Encounter: Communities and social impacts of tourism organised by the Asociacion para la defensa y desarrollo de Kuelap (ADDK-Peru)

1. Basis

Tourism is one of the most complex activities within the current process of economic globalisation. This complexity is defined by directly using as a trading resource, the individual and culture itself, its historic and contemporary manifestations, besides the natural surroundings of the societies where it develops.
In the last years, modalities such as ecotourism and cultural tourism, that directly involve communities, have gained notoriety. In the case of southern countries, they’re the ones that hold the most important manifestations of our cultural and natural patrimony and are related to them not only in a spiritual, but in a material way, since it’s in these territorial spaces where their traditional economic activities that allow their survival take place.
If we take a look on most of micro or macro proposals or touristic projects in rural or urban areas, wether they’re executed by public or private institutions, we find that the main argument to promote or execute touristic activities is the beneficial results it would have on receptive communities. Although in most cases direct participation -in planning, managing, control and profit from touristic business- from the community is not taken into consideration, the speech always emphasizes on the benefits (direct or indirect) that will fall over the hosts.
But, speech and reality are usually divorced, and we could say that it becomes a constant in development projects that are held in rural communities territories.
Currently, economic policies, specifically tourism policies by the last two governments as part of agreements with international organisations such as IMF or WB, are priviledging the participation of big international investors in the exploitation of our resources.
This vision is put in practice with the creation of institutions such as CEPRI-Turismo (which belongs to Pro Inversion), in charge of identifying, evaluating and promoting resources that can be privatized or given under concession. Within this perspective, the state and private institutions are promoting el Circuito Turistico Norte (CTN), which would become the first great tourism development project for a whole region of the country where this privatization policies would be put into practice, mainly oriented to promote the presence of international investors for the management of our resources, relegating the communities to a subsidiary and accesory position.
This situation becomes tangible with the projects of privatization of Kuelap (main attraction and axis of the CTN) and Playa Hermosa, sustained in a legislation that goes against the communities human and constitutional rights.
Upon this situation we believe it’s an urgent need to hold this I Encounter, as a space of interchange, articulation and proposals facing the problem caused by this activity, and to elaborate unifying criteria that promote a really sustainable tourism, locally redefined.

2. Objective
To develop the basis of an alternative proposal of tourism development of the communities in response to the policies imposed by the state and the private sector.

3. Specific objectives
-To bring a space for reflection and discussion of problems and possibilities of tourism development from the communities.
-To promote the interchange fo experiences among the communities.
-To propitiate the articulation and coordination of communties to strengthen the defense of their human rights and their political incidence in the national scenery.

4. Axis of discussion
-The impact of tourism development in the communities.
-The implicancies of the current tourism peruvian policy in the framework of macroeconomic global tendencies.
-Problems and difficulties of the communities at involving in touristic activity.
-Possibilities of communities for the construction of proposals of sustainable tourism.
-Tourism proposals from the communities.

5. Work metodology
The encounter will take place in three days in which the following dynamic will be developed:

First day/ Presentation and debate on the Touristic problematic.
Motivational conferences, with spaces for questions and debates, will be held in the morning.
During the afternoon, problems and difficulties that communities face towards national and global tourism policies will be analysed.
Second day/ The response of the communities.
Motivational conferences, with spaces for questions and debates, will be held in the morning.
During the afternoon, we’ll work on proposals and possibilities of the communities for the construction of an alternative proposal of tourism.
Third day/ Articulation of strategies towards the construction of a sustainable tourism proposal from the communities.
Motivational conferences, with spaces for questions and debates, will be held in the morning.
Elaboration of an alternative general proposal from the communities for a sustaible tourism.
Fourth day/ visit to Kuelap
The assistants to the Encounter will visit the Great Fortress of Kuelap and interact with the community, proceeding to hold a symbolic assembly as a closure to the event.

6. Motivational Conferences
For the development of motivational conferences we consider necessary the convocation of actors who work and experience the touristic problematic from a local perspective, understanding it as part of international economic process. These conferences will help us understand the complexity and implicances of global and local tourism current tendencies.

-Native indian towns and Tourism
Moira Millán
Mapuche Puelche Williche Coordinator, Esquel, Argentina.

-Construction of communities strategies towards a sustainable tourism. Towns culture, tourism merchandise?
Claudia Maria Coceres
Asociacion Cultural Naya, Buenos Aires, Argentina

-Resistance, fight and organisation: the experience of Prainha do Canto Verde, Brasil
Esther Neuhaus
Instituto Terramar, Brasil

-The state’s tourism policy and its implicances: the case of Kuelap
Rodrigo Ruiz Rubio
Asociacion para la Defensa y Desarrollo de Kuelap, Amazonas, Peru

-The contradictions of the Tourism Project Playa Hermosa
Rossiter Rosales Medina
Tumbes Rice Producers Comitee, Tumbes, Peru

7. Participants
This I Encounter will congregate representatives of communities and organisations related to tourism from several points of the country, with emphasis in those inserted in the Circuito Turistico Norte. It will be open to researchers and people interested in the problemati of tourism and communities.

8. Date and place
The Encounter will take place during July 15 - 17, 2004 in the city of Chachapoyas in Amazonas, Peru.

9. Consult
(email) infokuelap@yahoo.es
[email]contactos@descubrekuelap.com[/email]
[url=http://www.descubrekuelap.com]www.descubrekuelap.com[/url]

10. Organised by
Asociación para la Defensa y Desarrollo de Kuelap ADDK

The tourism business in Argentina hasn’t stopped in diversifying. An interesting example are the tours to football games, in particular those by Boca and River teams. In today’s edition of the business newspaper El Cronista Comercial -the internet edition is paid- there’s a note that describes how three local companies, dedicated to this topic, operate: Cancha VIP, Tangol and GoFootball. The market gets more interesting every time; for example, in the last game between River and Boca, 500 international tourists assisted, leaving 20 thousand dollars in tickets sales. The note doesn’t state any other numbers.

Cancha VIP is joint venture of the Clarin group and the marketing company Des Idea Group. For now, the provide services to 120 people a week, not only tourists but also Buenos Aires citizens from private neighborhoods. The idea is to give their customers a complete service, transportation from their homes to the stadium and back. The price of the service, 160 pesos -about 54 dollars. Tangol, another company, works mostly with latin american tourists. In fact, the firm publishes their services mostly in tourism publications and brochures delivered in hotels. The price of the service is about 100 pesos, something around 33 dollars. Finally, there’s GoFootball, which the note doesn’t give any more information about.

In the imaginary of journalism -at least in well done journalism- there’s always the idea that one doesn’t have to innocently believe in what the other says. That facts have to be contrasted. Checked with other sources. Things others tell us respond to their own interests, and as journalists, our interests are: we care about finding the truth, showing what’s attractive, even when interviewed people don’t like it. It’s our note, not theirs.

Now, well, in this note published by the newspaper Clarin, in their travel supplement, the journalist does the exact opposite: she assumes as her own the whole imaginary of San Antonio de Areco, which tries to sell itself as some sort of origin of “authentic creolism”. Along the note, all the common places on Don Segundo Sombra -one of the main works on argentinean gauchesque- are repeated, thus reinforcing the imaginary that’s being tried to be sold to us, through markenting. As journalists, can we quietly accept that our note matches the same arguments that would sell in a touristic brochure? Obviously, not.

As journalists, weren’t we supposed to always question what we were told? It looks like travel supplements in Argentina follow the same path: too much publicity disguised as notes, but zero journalism. Is the same thing happening in the rest of Latin America? I guess I should start reading other newspapers online.

According to Hospitality Newswire (requires free subscription), african governments expect that the growth of tourism in that continent helps in the reduction of poverty. Those of you who follow this blog, know that I’m pretty eskeptical on this kind of affirmations. It’s true that the growth of tourism creates work in the private sector, and many times serve to enhace the importance of certain urban areas. But, on the other side, it requires of important investments in infrastructure, made by the public sector. How are these investments financed? In many cases, with more foreign debt, as the Hospitality Newswire states.

Not to mention some occasional situations that favors tourism, such as the raise of dollar exchange rates in certain countries, which benefits the arrival of tourists who find lower costs. Couldn’t this be considered almost an implicit susbsidy? Other activities are damaged by a high exchange rate.

Does tourism growth provoke what some economists call “leak effect”? That is, that higher incomes in this sector help others, through the raise of the demand of products and jobs. But these effects are, surely, limited to some sectors. Can tourism really help to fight poverty? Very unlikley, without income redistribution policies, more and more regressive at most part of world. As I previously commented about the touristic appreciation of certain city areas (in the entries titled “touristic bubbles”, here and here, spanish only), public investment in tourism sometimes ends up sinking certain uban areas in the total darkness, when leaving them apart from touristic circuits. Particularly, in the United States of America, for example, these areas are usually the poorest and the ones that have the highest difficulties in infrastructure.

I don’t think you can mecanically say tourism fights poverty. Under certain circumstances, it can help to reinforce inequalities.

Some people say that from modernity there’s nothing left but ruins. That the acceleration of the speed of accumulation methods have sent it to the chest of memories. And there’s someone who dedicates to search for the graphic testimony of this progressive eldering. In Modern Ruins, Shaun O’Boyle and Wendy Lewis O’Boyle dedicate to the recopilation of photographic testimony of these locations in ruins, that no for nothing correspond to some of modernity’s most representative places: factories, railway stations, assylums, hospitals. Sunk in abandonment, the image of these places, once full of life, cause a particular nostalgia for an order of things that today seems intimate. Nothing like the kind image of memories to make you forget that in those places some of the worst kinds of modernity domination were executed (via Space and Culture).

By the way, in the main page of the site, you can find an interesting sample of travel pictures. Maybe, some of the places in ruins photographed by the O’Boyle will get to become some sort of modern form of domination.
A shopping center or mall, for example. Or a stride by expensive restaurants. Who knows.

According to the english sociologists Scott Lash and John Urry, the main interest in the tourism industry, when constructing expert knowledge, is to guarantee tourists a higher security in their travel, thus minimizing risk.

It’s known that we can always travel on our own; this will surely be cheaper, but will leave us vulnerable to any problem we might have in our destination. That is, we’ll have to figure on our own a series of inconvenients in lodging, transportation or food, in an unfamiliar place.

Tours, packages and other organised trips solve this inconvenient; travel agency services allow us to minimize destination problems. And, if there’s any, the agency will fix it. Of course, there’s a central point here: many people are not in the economic conditions to afford this service. So security has a price tag that not everyone can afford.

I bring this topic in relation to the great motivation that’s being referred to when talking about the poor perfomance of world numbers in tourism in the last two years: the fear of tourists to move around after the lack of security shown behind the terrorist attack on september 11. While this point plays an important role, I tend to think that the main reason of tourism growth desacceleration is linked to the bad economic performance in Europe, Japan and the United States. In this last case, besides, there’s the growing restrictions to the enter of foreigners, which unencourages the arrival of new tourists. Let’s not forget that the situation of North America -falling, for three years in a row- is quite worse than the rest of the world’s, which has recovered quite rapidly from the 2001 disaster.

Sometimes I feel that so much emphasis in the subject of “security” tends to hide the most general problem of the low growth of the world economy, the empoverishment of middle classes and the changes in the labor market, due to the growing flexibilization of laboral relations and regulations of leisure time.

If nothing strange happens, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) expects this year to reach a growth rate of 6%, a number not usual for a few years now. The billing of the sector for the whole year would be of $5500 billions.