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!