          
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Post-Revolutionary Tourism Florence E Babb Tourism, many reckon, is the leading industry in the world today. Unlike other industries in the global economy, tourism has as its principal product whole regions and nations. “Branding” nations to sell them to international travelers is the mission of leagues of employees in tourism ministries and private companies. Frequently, national heritage is a calling card for tourism development, offering something more meaningful than the formula of “sun, sand and sea” to lure travelers. Beckoning Visitors
One recent Times article describes the positive economic impact on Laos following UNESCO’s decision to name a town a World Heritage Site, calling it the “Best Preserved City in Southeast Asia”—with the result that “tourism has rescued the town.” Another article touts South Africa, and Johannesburg in particular, as revived and ready for visitors. Whereas in the past tourists have often flocked to game parks, in post-1994 democratic South Africa, many wish to discover the country’s national museum of apartheid atrocities and to visit Nelson Mandela’s prison cell. Still another article invites readers to consider the advantages of travel to Libya, long viewed as a despotic nation and now a “must-see destination.” The writer points out that much of the appeal is the attraction of the forbidden, at least for US residents who were banned from travel there for 23 years, and that Libya’s reputation as a dangerous place actually serves to draw more travelers. In Chiapas, Mexico, site of the Zapatista uprising a decade ago, San Cristóbal de las Casas has garnered a record number of tourists and a Times reporter states that the rebels have served as a “radical-chic” attraction. Similarly, El Salvador has emerged from civil war in the 1980s to post-conflict tourism, which relies not only on the country’s lush natural landscape but also on its rich cultural heritage. And the movie The Motorcycle Diaries, based on the journal of a young Che Guevara as he traveled through South America, has sparked more travel in that region, so much so that the Bolivian government has recently promoted the “Che Trail” taken by the older, seasoned revolutionary, to enhance tourism. China and Vietnam have also experienced tourism booms, and the cachet of Mao and Ho Chi Minh helps lure visitors to discover what was once off limits. Cultural Politics of Tourism
More visitors to Nicaragua are now inquiring about murals painted while the Sandinistas held sway, those few that were not painted over by post-revolutionary governments that sought to erase all memory of the social transformation that had taken place. While it is still easier to learn of 19th-century conflicts than those of the last few decades, travelers are seeking and finding traces of revolution in museums and on the T-shirts and postcards sold by street vendors. Certainly, in Cuba there are ubiquitous monuments to the revolution on proud display alongside the remaining big American cars of the 1950s and the now revived Tropicana Club. Che’s famous image appears on ashtrays for sale to tourists in the most exclusive hotels. Even if travel is still prohibited to US citizens, visitors from Canada and Europe have made tourism Cuba’s economic salvation since the lean years following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Tourism in post-revolutionary sites is no panacea, however, and it tends to attract many of the same problems found in other developing nations where travelers are flocking. Nicaragua and Cuba are among the many societies that contend with, and are sometimes complicit with, increasing sex tourism and other “vice”-related activity, even if these are officially viewed as “social deviations.” Havana’s streets fill with jineteras (prostitutes) every night as a consequence of the vastly greater earnings associated with plying the tourist trade than with engaging in state-sanctioned employment. The lucky ones will develop amorous relationships that include receipt of both monetary rewards and gifts, for the duration of a brief vacation or sometimes longer. Nicaragua’s cities have also attracted travelers intent on sexual relationships ranging from fleeting encounters to more “permanent” arrangements, for example among retirees looking for the company and household services of much younger women, even teenagers. Tourism as Development
As nations give themselves a makeover for tourism, heritage is rarely forgotten but is reinvented to suit current predispositions—both those of tourists and of nations themselves. While such reinvention is not unique to the post-revolutionary and post-conflict societies I am examining, the forms it takes can offer significant insights into these nations’ efforts to retain and redefine as well as market their cultural heritage during periods of abrupt political-economic transition. Florence E Babb is the Vada Allen Yeomans Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Florida and president-elect of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. She is the author of After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua (2001) and of “Recycled Sandalistas: From Revolution to Resorts in the New Nicaragua,” American Anthropologist 106(3): 541–55 (2004). |
|||||||||
|
Questions
or comments? We want to hear from you! Copyright
© 1996-2006, American Anthropological Association |
|||||||||
