(Note: the first two parts of this entry can be found here and here)

Natives tend to develop protection forms against the invasion of tourists. As Quintin states in his note (you can read it here, spanish only), on of the strategies of stigmatization. That is, to consider that someone, for the only fact of being a tourist, cannot be a part of our group. While, usually, proper forms are kept under the presence of travellers, many times condemnatory phrases appear once they’re all gone. The way they dress, they speak, try to be nice, etc, are mercilessly scrutinized. At some destinations, natives literally hate tourists and they barely tolerate them. That they make money from them doesn’t mean they won’t impose limits. Excursus: in some case, they try to discourage the arrival of a certain kind of tourist -for instance, backpackers- to encourage the appearing of others with higher spending power.

Why this interest in establishing distances? wether the traveller likes or not, limits with the native are usually toughest than expected. As if the whole time the interest was to remark who are “us” and who are “them”. Certain areas of the cities can be acommodated for the presence of tourists. But we only have to walk a little further to get easily lost. We’ve entered the land of the native, where most of the knowledge to move around their territory -bus, trains, way of buying tickets, etc- are kept in a trunk of tacit know-hows. And most of the times, these urban spaces are not even shown in guides.

Facing this, it’s not surprising that tourists usually stay limited to certain precise enclaves, in the big cities, where there are many services available for them, and their presence don’t draw attention. Venturing to go further can be complicated and, in the case of many cities, dangerous. Such danger can be real or, in many cases, stimulated by agents of the tourism field, interested in tourists not to spend money outside from the area.

And the last issue, and with this we return to the first part of this post: the perception of the tourist as a business opportunity. For instance, of selling him something or overcharge him, taking advantage of his disknowledge. Things like that happen everywhere, although some of them have it worse -and if you’re in doubt, take a look at this interesting compendium of advice on how to travel around India (spanish only). This perception of the other as “business” is not something only the native perceives; it’s something that tourists and local inhabitants share, and many times increases distrust among them. An interesting case is that of bargaining; whil at many places of the world it’s rather a part of social relations derived from commerce -a traditional form of interacting with the other- many western travellers tend to see it as a permanent attempt to swindle. And instead of playing the game of interaction, they frown and argue the way they’d to it with a swindler.

As you can see, to analyze and describe the forms of interaction between local inhabitants and tourists is definitely complex and varied. Which doesn’t mean it’s not possible to isolate certain types of most usual behavior and practices, particularly when the tourism market is increasingly more globalized.

Some Sundays ago, Quintin, a journalist better known in Argentina as a movies critic, published an interesting opinion column (spanish only) that deals with two aspects of tourism that have some relation with the topic we were discussing some days ago. Let’s start with the first issue: the interaction with natives in the north of argentina -the topic of San Clemente del Tuyu we’ll leave for tomorrow. To read the whole article, clic over the image above this post. Since the article didn’t appear in the Internet, I opted by taking a photo of it, so you can read it.

In 2000 I had the good fortune of visiting a part of Jujuy I didn’t know, and I made it to Casabindo. With only one bus per day, there was no other option than spending the night over. I ended up at the huge lodge destined to the great number of people who arrive to presence the Toreo de la Vincha, the most popular town festivity, every august 15th. The lodge was, when I first arrived, completely empty. It was a little weird to sleep in such loneliness; having thirty empty beds around and just using one of them. At night it got very cold -it was the first days of september. Some hours earlier, I went to the only store in town, where I bought what I could: a couple of sodas, two packages of two months past their due date cookies -they were the newest- and a can of corned beef. That was my dinner. During the day, I strolled around; an extensive puna, almost deserted, under the most gorgeous bright blue sky you could find around. Of course, I went several times to the church to take pictures of the famous paintings of armed angels, an interesting example of Cuzco painting.

In the article, Quintin tells how tow people that wanted to make a video in the north were constantly “bothered”, and asked for money to let them film. These practices are not unusual. At my stay in Casabindo, it wasn’t easy to talk to people. In particular, the youngest only approached me with one purpose: to ask for money. I don’t see anything condemnatory in this attitude; it’s basically a business opportunity for people who have very little. Because Casabindo is really a very poor town, apart from the most visited routes, appearing on the maps barely once a year. I felt almost tempted to make a parallel to what Riszard Kapuscinski said about Africa, which I cited in the previous post: why not ask a person that obviously has more than me? why not ask for money to someone who wants something -an “authentic” film- and that has equipment worth more than what many people earn in a whole year -or at least months- in Argentina?

Let’s go deeper: why does a child, for instance, only approach us if he gets us to give him some coins? First, because the esporadic but constant presence of tourists have placed them in contact with a kind of people who obviously have more than they do. While tourists and travellers many times believe natives should approach them only for “affection”, what happens is that many times they see us as a business opportunity. And that is one of the reasons why they tolerate us there. Facing the simple and moralist sentence of some (”how can it be? human relations have commercialized so much”), I’d remind them that without that possibility of material benefit, many small locations would long have prohibited tourism or the insisting presence of curious visitors. Maybe, at some point of history, those strangers that arrived caused surprise and interest; that period is long gone now, and it’s increasingly more difficult to escape the mechanism of human relations proposed in the tourism market.

Far from understanding this “hostility” as a secret, as Quintin somehow states, it’s more about situating the practices: facing someone who wants to obtain something, I demand something in exchange. The most “typical” pictures are paid. Natives know what tourists and travellers are looking for with their cameras; they’ve gotten used to conceiving a “typicity” of their aspect precisely in function of the possibility of exploting their image in commercial terms -even when this only provides them little money everyday. Would you like to have someone film you any time a day, in your everyday labours, as if you were lab rats? I don’t think so. I’d say no native likes it. In return for the annoyance, they’ll ask for something. And what do they find? Paraphrasing Kapuscinski, a group of frowning tourists/travellers who might even turn their back at you and walk away!

In Senegal, there’s only one international (train) line -to Bamako, Mali’s capital- and one national, a short one, to Saint Louis. Bamako’s train rides twice a week and the Saint Louis train, once a day. Therefore, it’s quite usual that the station is deserted (…) Only when the sun shines over the city, the first travellers appear (…) A little earlier I met, at the platform, a young couple from Glasgow that were travelling through Western Africa from Casablanca to Niamey (…) The train broke at the big station of Tambacounda (…) It seemed we’d be stranded for a while. Shortly, a group of curious local people gathered around. I tried to encourage the scottish to join me off the train to look around and talk to the people. They refused. They didn’t want to meet or talk to anyone. They refused to establish any relation at all and wouldn’t visit anyone. If anyone approached them, they’d turn around and walk away (…) This attitude of theirs was a result of a brief but bad experience. They were convinced of one thing: if they talked to someone, this person would always end up asking for something, taking for granted diverse things: that they could get him a scholarship, find him a job or give him money (…) These kind of complaints had soon begun to be repeated. They didn’t know how to react. They felt powerless. Finally, dissapointed and defeated, they’d made a decision: no contact, encounters or chatting with anyone. And they were true to their determination. I explain the scottish that their interlocutor’s demands are a consequence of the conviction, shared by many africans, that white people have everything. Or have much more than the black people, at least. And if a white person crosses his path it’s as if a hen laid a gold egg for them. They have to take advantage of the opportunity, they can’t let it go (…) Although there’s a difference of habits and expectations in this. The african culture is one of interchange. You give me something and it’s my obligation to retribute you. And not only my obligation. My dignity, my honor and my humanity demands it. In the course of interchange, interpersonal relations adopt its highest form (…) In such culture, everything becomes a gift that demands to be compensated. The unretributed gift is a burden for the person, his conscience bothers him, and even can cause him some disgrace (…) Many misunderstandings arise when one of the parts doesn’t understand that values of diverse nature are susceptible of being interchanged, for instance, that simbolic assets are changed for material ones and viceversa. If an african man approaches a couple of scottish, he will provide them lots of presents: his presence and attention are gifts, also by pointing out some thiefs they are providing information, safety, etc. It’s logic that such a generous man expects some retribution that satisfies his expectations. Nevertheless, he sees, astonished, that the scottish frown or even turn their back on him adn walk away!

Riszard Kapuscinski, “Madame Diuf returns home”, at Ebano. Barcelona, Anagrama, 2000.

Some time ago, I talked about how uncomfortable it is for many travellers to find it impossible to establish an interaction with many natives without this implying, in a certain moment, the possibility of a material interchange or a commercial transaction. Put simply: that in many places, people only approach us to sell us something, recommend a hotel, a tour, to get something out of us. In that occasion, I wondered (spanish only):

Why would a person who lives in a touristic location approach a particular tourist, when he sees thousands every week? Do we think we’re special, the “nice tourist” everyone was expecting?

And I answered myself:

The truth is that, if they tolerate our massive presence it’s so because they can profit from it. It it didn’t exist that possibility, they would’ve already invited us not to show up there ever again.

Kapuscinski’s text cited in the beginning of this post is related to this concern: what do we do when the expectations of an interaction don’t match? It’s somehow what the anthropologist/psiquatrist Gregory Bateson stated with his notion of metacommunicative frame: to be able to establish an interaction, the participants must be clear about certain common premises. In the case of the scottish and the africans, they both don’t share the metacommunicative frame. While for the scottish, the phrase that organizes the frame is “this is a conversation motivated by a personal sympathy” (which taxatively excludes the possibility of an interaction motivated by material interests), for the africans, the premise would be “this is a business opportunity”. Such disagreement in the basis of the interaction lead to a conflict and eventual rupture of the communication. But the interesting thing is that both parts operate from a common sense notion; the other’s attitude, in this frame, is incomprehensible, and eventually, annoying. It’s not about one of the parts being right; in its way, both sides of the interaction proceed in the way they assume as “socially natural”.

Facing this, it’s understandable that both, natives and tourists, in multiple occasions are unable to communicate in the terms they both state as “natural”. First, their metacommunicative frames are organised from quite different implicit assumptions. While tourists assume natives should talk to them because they find them “interesting”, the other side sees them as part of a big poorly differentiated mass of visitors they can profit from; otherwise, their presence there wouldn’t be welcomed. In fact, tourists are not welcomed everywhere; certain areas of the city and towns are usually prohibited, and their presence doesn’t generate much pleasure.

Starting from here, a wide field opens up, going from the common sense to the construction of the difference between natives and tourists. But we’ll talk about that later.

This week I published a brief note about the conflictive relation between tourism and the ocupation of land that was taking place in the location of Tilcara, in the argentinean province of Jujuy, which is visited by thousands of tourists every year. Starting on an email and a note published in Salta Libre, I told some of the things I’d read, and asked if anyone could provide some information.

Now, Jaro Godoy, the author of the note in Salta Libre, answered my questions and extends some of the topics in his note. He authorized me to publish the text, so I’ll copy it below:

Dear Jorge: I’m very interested in giving this topic the difussion it needs, the problem is worsening with the passing of he days, there’s much injustice from the usual generals, I’ll give you some details:

The intendent of Tilcara, authorizes without reason, the construction of more hotels, hostel, sidewalks, casinos, and now there are rumours of a night club. The intendent pays no attention to any accusation. The Province Government has just sold land in Yacoraite (an archaelogical site), where 15 families have lived their whole lives, to Mr. Adrian Garcia del Rio.

The UNESCO has sent fonds to some organizers, all of them with economic mindsets, who don’t really care about preserving these lands, such as Mr. Jose -Architect “Champa”, who has a Tea House in Tilcara and land properties in Juella. They’ve made a congress in the Hotel del Turism in Tilcara, to -in theory- help the tilcaran people. In that congress only 7 tilcarans assisted, the rest of the people were outsiders who intend to keep building hotels destroying nature. The Patrimony of Humanity was made with economic reasons and was thought for big opportunist enterpreneurs to buy land without caring for anything at all.

A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF HOSTILITY AND PERJURY:

On saturday 10, 2005, a City Commissary, evicted the young mother Mariela Cemarrelli -Sister of Cachamay (a very popular tourist guide)- from the home the Government gave to her deceased mother many years ago -Fiscal land in B°24 Viviendas- Malka, this sir in complicity with Judges and the Police, proceeded to evict without pity this woman and her two children, who at this moment have nowhere to live.

The situation in Tilcara is getting more dangerous every passing day, today the few tilcarans left are at risk and there’s no law that protects them.

We’re exposed to strangers coming with documents, taking away the little the’ve got left. And that belongs to them for human and moral rights.

It’s up to this, my friend, the little information I can share with you about the obscurity around this topic, that no government wants to deal with, much less intervene.

The touristic enterpreneurships are multiplying these days, of course camouflaged behind big walls, but soon they’ll see the light, when there’s nothing we can do to stop it, the land since it was declared patrimony has raised in some cases 3000 %, it’s a big business for certain dark sirs who ride around in their Mercedes and dissapear.

If anyone wants to add or rectify some information, you have the comments space to your disposition. I’m really interested in digging more into this problem in Tilcara, which is not only quite interesting, but it hasn’t been boarded by the argentinean media.

During the last weeks, I’ve received many chain-style emails, unsigned, which stated that several evictions had been taking place in Tilcara in the last weeks. The email said that people who had been living for a long time in Tilcara and who were part of the original communities of the area, were being displaced from their land, for the purpose of building touristic enterprises in the site. The topic grabbed my attention, of course, and the first thing I did was write to some media of the argentinean province of Jujuy to verify the information. The answer I got was that they knew about the email, but there was no source that certified the truthfulness of the version, so there was no news.

But since the subject seemed interesting for this blog -you know, here we’re quite far from spreading out the vision of “everything in tourism is positive”- I kept sending some emails around, to find out more about this. The issue gained even more potential when I came across an article in the Salta Libre site (spanish). There, some of the eviction situations were told citing names and last names. And it states the following:

“Men and women, who have taken care of the land and its animals for centuries, have been dispossesed of everything they own by unsensitive death merchants. They are being kicked out without compassion for lacking the papers that today the law remembers to demand from them; of course it’s late now, their land, the one they’ve cultivated sowing corn, watching for their goats, their lambs, their chicken, already have new owners in papers, land owners avid of increasing their fortune, occasion pirates that glanced at the business oportunity, corrupt officers that sign buy and sale papers within a week; the land is being literally “cleaned” to build new houses, hotels, and everything that helps to the modernization of the worldly patrimony of humanity in tilcaran land, its legitimate owners are abandoned to their fate in disgraceful huts, and soon will become slaves of their own land.”

These days, I’ve sent several consults to diverse sources to check the veracity of the information, and to see what’s the relation between this situation and the important growth tourism is having in this area. If anyone has more information, leave your contribution in the comments area. If you prefer to contact me, privately, to hand me more information, you can do so at jorgegobbi@gmail.com. As long as I recollect new information, I will publish it here.

The travel experience does not begin when we set foot in the airplane or bus. It begins much before, when we have a vague idea of the places we’d like to know. That idea can later be shaped into travel preparations. Finding out costs, evaluating its impact on our income, getting the tickets, searching for information, packing. This slow process of preparations is as much part of the travel as the trip itself. And it usually is the most stressful period, since when we’re on the road things happen much faster -and we realize that most of the research was quite useless.

Now I’m at that process previous to movement, reading and searching for information about the south of Brazil -that is, from Rio de Janeiro to Porto Alegre. Tourism in this area is focused on the beaches, but in my case I need to move around. If I stay longer than two days in a beach I frankly start to get bored. So, my ideal is to visit several points along the 14 days I’ll be in Brazil.

Unfortunately, quality tourism information about Brazil doesn’t abound in Argentina. Since, apparentely, it’s been taken for granted that most argentineans go to Brazil to lie down on the beaches all day, it’s quite hard to find decent guides. Forget about buying the Lonely Planet. Maps are not easy to find either; although in this case a map edited by De Dios Editores is available and it’s interesting for the map itself only, since the information it provides is quite limited, and it’s targeted to the middle/high class. So if you’re in Argentina and want to check a guide in english, Amazon is the only way. Of course, it’s costly; to the value of the book, add US$7 for each volume and US$6 for total shipping charges. For example, The Lonely Planet Brazil, priced at US$17.81 ends up costing US$30.81. Which is something, in a country where the exchange rate is higher than in other Latin American countries.

Much of the research was made through the Internet. For this purpose, Writeboard is a very useful tool. My wife and I have been adding info -hotels, schedules, bus costs- in a collaborative way. For those of you unfamiliar with this site, the functioning is simple: we provide a private website, one that has a password; then, we add the addresses of the people that will participate in the contents; and later, they’ll get their passwords by email. And that’s it. Then, you just have to add text as in any other wiki. The good thing is that many people can add information to the same page without having to exchange emails the whole time -besides, this kind of information is hard to consolidate. As soon as I organise the contents, I will add the info in the WikiNomade (spanish only).

And for now, we’ll keep on with the research. At least, until the ends of january, when we leave Buenos Aires and its ferocious summer.

These days a series of advertising spots about Peru, that seek to build a country-brand through the slogan “Peru. The Inkas country”, are being broadcasted in local television. This cut is an interesting one; first, because it privileges an area of this country that is precisely the one that gets most tourism. Of the three spots that I could watch, two are in the highlands -Puno and Cuzco/Machu Picchu- and one in the forest -and that one I barely saw it once, I don’t even remember what it was about. I wonder if this decision linked to the topic of country-brand is at all right, even when I assume there’s a good market study under these spots. Shoulden’t they emphasize other regions of Peru that have great tourism potential? I’m thinking Trujillo, with Chan Chan and the different huacas in the area; Kuelap; Lambayeque, with the Lord of Sipan tomb; Iquitos; Pucallpa; Mancora; Nazca; among other destinations. I know some will say: but, aren’t these destinations well known? The truth is, at least here in Argentina, only those of us who have visited these places have an idea of how interesting the north of Peru is. The problem is: is “The Inkas country” a slogan wide enough to include destinations that we associate to other precolombine cultures such as Chimu, Mochica, or Nazca and Paracas? It is clear that most of the tourists who think of Peru, they associate it with Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Now, well, is it necessary to advertise to reinforce this image? or should we make our bet to diversify the supply and help tourism in Peru lose its dependency on Cuzco?

By the way, the spots are frequently seen at National Geographic channel, on cable tv. If it’s going on any other channel, let us know.

An almost common sense overlook would say those touristic destinations that suffered some natural or man-caused disaster, such as earthquakes or terrorist attacks, suffer a very important economic damage. The reason is simple: tourists stop visiting the area because they fear for they safety. You know, there’s nothing less attractive for tourism than lack of safety.

But it seems like we’ll have to change our minds about this. According to the International Herald Tribune, touristic destinations that suffered some kind of disaster not only recovered quickly, but even surpassed the figures in revenues and number of tourists they had before the problems.

For example, Sri Lanka, which last year was affected by a tsunami and no less than 30 thousand people died or are missing, this month has the highest reservations number in its history. In october 2002, more than 200 people died in Bali in a series of attacks to places frequented by tourists. While it’s true that, after the attacks, the number of tourists went down to less than a million, in 2005 almost one and a half million will have visited the island. In Phuket, Thailand, more than 500 swedish people died because of the tsunami; less than 12 months later, the swedish are flying in larger numbers towards Phuket than before the disaster. And something similar has happened with London, which hasn’t had any bigger issues since the metro attacks. The interviewed people in the Herald note say that even destinations that has had quite bad publicity due to unsafety issues, such as Brazil, are getting increasingly more reservations.

Some of the explanations coming from travel agents and specialists are quite impressive. Some say that the war with Iraq and the topic of terrorist attacks has become an everyday issue, and doesn’t impact tourists anymore. What yesterday was a big shocker, today is commonplace. No matter how, the important thing is that the destination gets publicity, even negative.

Of course, this mediacentered explanation -the media has banalised disasters and attacks- shouldn’t be easily accepted. It’s obvious something is changing in the tourism market, to the point that tourists, once reluctant to visit any minimally insecure destination, are now willing to run risks, not taking too seriously natural disasters, and visiting a greater variety of destinations. Taking risks was once a travellers patrimony. Are tourists becoming more and more travellers?