I've been enjoying the exchange on cultural tourism, as it resonates with a
number of issues central to my own research on Maya communities' efforts to
become involved in ecotourism in Belize. A number of good points have been
made. I want to throw in a couple more ideas, based on my own work.
Some people in one of the communities I have studied have expressed
expectations that I should work to facilitate the establishment of programs
that would bring students from my university (or others) to their village
to experience and learn about their culture and enrich their village
economy. They have difficulties competing with larger-scale ecotourism
operators in terms of marketing, and this would circumvent that problem.
They are also concerned to incorporate tourism into village life as a means
of generating the cash they need without having to leave the village to do
wage labor elsewhere. While tourism obviously will alter their lives, so
does migration for wage labor. And the latter does not enable them to
pursue agricultural and other traditions to the same degree that
village-based tourism does.
Also, to what degree are these indigenous villagers committing to tourism?
In a couple cases in Belize, a program for university students brings a
number of students into the villages for a short period of time. During
the rest of the year, the village has few visitors. So they commit heavily
to tourism for only one month.
Then there is the question of what culture is. In Belize that is a
contested issue, and the way it gets defined has enormous consequences for
Maya struggles to acquire expanded and more secure access to land. I see
cultural tourism in Maya communities in Belize as part of a struggle over
how to define culture, in which these communities are offering their
definition and seeking support for that definition from abroad.
It seems to me that the question of cultural tourism cannot have a single
answer that covers every situation; rather attention to who is using it for
what purposes might turn up a range of different struggles going on, with
differential outcomes for indigenous peoples.
Dr. Laurie Kroshus Medina
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1118
phone: 517/353-9138
fax: 517/432-2363
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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