review

Paradise: a nice place to visit --- maybe

by W. E. Gutman

The late prime minister of a small Carribean nation once told me off the record: “Come now, you can’t expect us to survive on sugar cane, rum, nutmeg and an occasional goodwill visit by the Queen Mum, can you?

“We have no choice but to invite the world. And the world invades us by the planeload. And with every cruise ship full of chic bleached blondes and white-shoed tycoons coming down the gangplank, we put on our affable, soft-spoken, happy native faces. They all head for gated, ‘all-inclusive’ resorts. They see neither the grinding poverty nor hear the unremitting murmurs of discontent. Word gets around that the natives are smiling. Seduced, they keep coming back.

“We just can’t do without these part-time interlopers. Our very existence belongs to them. If this goes on, we may never learn what it is we can do without them.”

A Maya tribal chieftain recently echoed a now familiar grievance. “Since colonial times, foreigners have usurped our national patrimony, plundered our resources and deprived us of our hereditary rights. Not only did they snatch and parcel out among themselves gold, arable lands, wells, water rights and large stretches of pristine coastal areas --- they also gained political clout, a status that empowers them to further steal and exploit our people.”

The Maya have only grudgingly endured the passive role imposed on them by tourism, something they characterize as “a mercenary commerce.”

“Tourists trudge up the hill and gawk a the ‘quaint Indians’ and take photos of our grass huts and womenfolk and children. Or they marvel, for an hour or two, at the tattered vestiges of the ‘mighty Maya’ before retiring to air-conditioned hotels ---- none of which we own --- and dining in eateries none of us can afford to patronize. We’ve never seen a centavo from the proceeds collected at our historic sites or a fraction of the tourist dollars spent in local establishments.”

This familiar and recurring cry of the heart is reprised and telegraphed with poignant resonance in “Rethinking Tourism & Ecotravel,” an anthology that explores the history and development of tourism. 

Edited by Deborah McLaren, a columnist and the director of Indigenous Tourism Rights International, this powerful exposé brings to light how mass tourism erodes local economies, degrades the environment and sucks local people into a global economic maelstrom from which they can never escape.

With annual revenues of more than $3 trillion, the economic impact of tourism is second only to that of the weapons industry. If tourism is good for tourists and the industries that serve them, how good is it for the host?

What we learn from this highly readable and disturbing collection of case histories, now in its second edition, is that tourism has brought about “very stark and painful consequences for host communities. Developers fill in swamps, mangroves and coral reefs, causing a chain reaction that hurts fishing, reduces the supply of fresh water for irrigation, and shrinks the land base. Local people are relegated to infertile lands or degraded settings in nearby cities” while the environment and artificial “cultures” are recreated atop the ruins of the real thing.

Tourism relies on powerful marketing strategies --- not always principled. It subsidizes biased journalism, rewarding writers who focus on the positive and steer clear of critical analysis. Travel brochures weave magical dreams of paradise in countries that the mainstream media and relief organizations consider destitute and dangerous. Ads gloss over the economic, environmental and social problems in the areas they promote. Travel agents, a dying breed, add to the conspiracy by recommending destinations they know little about. Often, tourism abets human rights abuses by collaborating with oppressive governments in the race for the almighty tourist dollar.

Costa Rica, considered the ecotourism model of the world, is a prime example of a nation that exploits nature and locals by selling lands, building megaresorts and otherwise paving over paradise. Costa Rica, which runs a great public relations engine, has become the ultimate ecotourism lie that its neighbors are now trying to emulate.    

A travel monthly recently ran a bewildering article about Honduras. Directed at backpackers, the feature painted an idyllic portrait of a nation now awash in bloodshed. It said nothing about the assassination of homeless minors by agents of the state, gangs, death squads, kidnappings, armed assaults, burglaries, horrendous vehicular accidents, day-long power outages, and the ever-present threat of mosquito-borne diseases.

When challenged, the editor, who has never been to Honduras, referred me to the author, a backpacker and aspiring writer who, it turned out, had only been in Honduras for a week and, filled with youthful exuberance and idealism, created a mythical locale that only the supremely naïve could ever fall for.

Winter is a great time for snowbirds to head for the sunwashed shores of a distant atoll. Next time you book passage to some exotic destination, bear in mind that tourism doesn’t just package and sell products and services. It also sells beaches, mountains and other natural sites, as well as cultures and people. The problem is that these businesses do not own what they sell. As the saying goes, paradise is a nice place to visit. Maybe. But you wouldn’t want to live there, a conclusion even natives have sadly reached.

Rethinking Tourism & Ecotravel, 240 pages, $23.95, is available through Kumarian Press, 1294 Blue Hills Ave., Bloomfield, CT 06002. (800) 289-2664. Fax (820) 243-2867 or www.kpbooks.com.

W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. He lives in southern California.