Historical Image of the Day

Sign welcoming visitors to the Civil Rights Trail, marking the march from Selma to Montgomery that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The issues surrounding civil rights tourism are pretty interesting. It's a good thing in many ways. It brings tourist dollars to economically depressed areas. It marks some of our most important events. It's also often controlled by the same white people who opposed civil rights in the first place. It also reinforces very specific tales about racism and the civil rights movement that both blunt the movement's ultimate goals to fight economic and quasi-legal discrimination and make it seem like this is a story of the past. Thus conservatives can construct a Martin Luther King that somehow would support gutting the social safety net and discriminating against immigrants and Muslims.

Historical Image of the Day

19th century log cabin, Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee. Cades Cove is the most popular part of the Smokies, and possibly the most crowded road in the National Park system. It's supposed to represent the ways of the mountain people and provide a sort of 19th century fantasy for visitors. It is however quite a bit of a fantasy. When the National Park Service took it over, they got rid of all the evidence that people used the valley for anything other than subsistence farming, when in fact it had been a resort community as well.

Historical Image of the Day

Postcard celebrating the lynching of Lige Daniels, Center, Texas, 1920

The entire phenomena of lynching postcards are one of the creepiest things in American history. That you'd actually advertise the event and connect it with a specific place in a positive way is absolutely bizarre. But I guess you can sell racism as much as anything else.

Historical Image of the Day

This week's images will be of tourism in the South. This is actually a harder subject than it sounds because few people really conceive of image categories in this way.

I'm also starting to organize the week's images around a book I am reading during a given week. It makes it easier in my mind. It allows allows me to promote a few books. This week's images are inspired by Anthony J. Stanonis' edited collection, Dixie Emporium: Tourism, Foodways, and Consumer Culture in the American South, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2008. Like most edited collections, the essays are mixed, but some are quite fascinating. I read this book in preparation for future discussions of food history in my courses. The book provides relatively few of these and really the title is more than a little misleading on this. But it was interesting nonetheless. 

South of the Border, a notorious tourist trap along I-95 in South Carolina, just over the North Carolina border, circa 1970

Favela Tours, U.S. Edition

Renee has an interesting post on gang tours in Los Angeles. Apparently, the L.A. gangs themselves are playing a major role in organizing these tours. Which is bizarre. From the perspective of people living in those neighborhoods, you do what you have to do to make money. But the people who sign up for these tours are really reprehensible. Like the Rio favela tours, this is totally disgusting and probably populated in part by Europeans hoping to score drugs.

Classic Texas

British tourist shot and killed in Amarillo bar. What could be more authentic than that!!

In all seriousness, why would someone be a tourist in Amarillo in the first place?

Ethnic Tourism

Lisa has a great post slamming on ethnic tourism, or the visiting of strange and bizarre peoples by westerners for their consumption. In particular, she goes after this Washington Post article by Amit Paley who desperately wants to see the Paduang women who wear brass rings around their necks. The article is pretty bad. Paley talks about her quest to see these women in the context of moral complexity. But when it comes down to it, she, like so many other people, really enjoys a freak show and she's determined to see one regardless of what rules she has to break.

When I was 22, I traveled to Thailand. Then, as now, one of the big tourist attractions was to see the northern hill tribes. We trekked along, staying in these villages for a few days. Even to my stupid and uninformed mind at that age, I felt really bad at the time. It felt like we were turning these people into a zoo. At that point as well, a major attraction of these tours was opium and other drugs. At that time, the Thai government didn't have a great deal of control over the northern reaches of their country and it was tolerated. This has since ended through a vigorous crackdown but the tourism continues unabated.

While an interesting part of any trip is experiencing a bit of how other people live, treating ethnic minorities as a zoo exhibit is deeply immoral. I think the entire Thai hill tribe tour industry is unethical. Seeing the Paduang women may or may not be any worse than the average tour. Certainly their are quite complex moral issues with tourism in general and with the Paduang people in general (if it's their traditional culture, should we consider it a human rights violation to crack down on this? Perhaps it is another form of imperialism? Or perhaps the ends justify the means?), but I'll leave this for another time.

Around Latin America (Now With Suriname!)

-For all the talk about the (il)legality of Manuel Zelaya trying to get a vote on whether or not Honduras should have two-term presidencies or not, Colombia has fallen by the wayside a bit. Nonetheless, efforts to amend the Colombian constitution to allow Alvaro Uribe to run for a third term continue, and the issue continues to cause some civil-but-intense debate in Colombia. The Catholic Church in Colombia has finally come out strongly against a third consecutive term for Uribe (though it seems open to the possibility of Uribe leaving after two terms and returning for a third later). I find it interesting that people who are so outraged at Zelaya simply trying to get a vote on whether Honduras should have two terms (even if it doesn't include him) are for whatever reason very quiet on the situation in Colombia. I think Lula put it best: "One re-election is understandable but two is monarchy." (And you'd think that, with comments like that, the right in Brazil would stop freaking out about Lula trying for a third term, but they haven't.)

-It happened awhile ago, but I was unable to get to it due to travels and then hosting travelers. The Peruvian Congress overturned President Alan Garcia's decree that would have opened the Peruvian Amazon (including large portions of indigenous reserves) to logging, oil drilling, and the construction of dams. The congressional vote was an overwhelming repudiation of Garcia's move, garnering an 82-14 vote in favor of overtuning the decree. The decree led to protests from Peru's indigenous groups, protests that escalated to violence and the deaths of upwards of 30 people, and even racist charges from within Garcia's administration that the killed Indians were not "victims". Not surprisingly, these events have led to Garcia "enjoying" the lowest poll ratings of his administration and one of the lowest in the world, as only 21% of Peruvians had a "favorable opinion" of Garcia after the clashes and the congressional vote.

-Yesterday, I commented on prosecutors going after human rights abuses within the Military Police in Brazil. Gancho has a similar report for abuses within the Mexican military and the challenges in effecting reform institutionally.

-There is good news on human rights abuses in Argentina, though, as the highest criminal court ruled that Carlos Menem's disgraceful 1990 pardon of the junta leaders during Argentina's "Dirty War" (during which the military government murdered as many as 30,000 civilians) was unconstitutional, and that the life-sentences for Gen. Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera should stand.

-Speaking of Argentina: Buenos Aires is commonly tourists' (especially European tourists') favorite stops when they go to Latin America. Gringos love it for a number of reasons, and while I'm perhaps too harsh or general in my assessment, those reasons usually have to do with the fact that Buenos Aires is "European," and so it feels more "civilized" (and my charges against tourists aren't baseless: I've honestly heard Europeans (and, to a lesser extent, Americans) describe Buenos Aires as "just like home," "more civilized," "better-built," and "cleaner." Really). I also know some portenos who hate how much Buenos Aires has basically become a playground for European and American tourists, leading to skyrocketing prices that make many of the "finer" parts of Buenos Aires inaccessible to Argentines. Well, a recent study reveals the very ugly side of Buenos Aires, the side tourists don't see/look for: four million people in Buenos Aires live in poverty, with 1.2 million classified as "indigent." Buenos Aires is a complicated place, and there are legitimate reasons to enjoy it and to dislike it. However, I've never seen anywhere that so successfully tried to conceal its racism and poverty so strongly while catering to Europeans. It's definitely one of the most disgusting aspects both of the global tourism industry (including the tourists) and of Buenos Aires itself.

-Just north of Argentina, there is an interesting effort in Brazil to create a second state-owned oil company. The proposed company, Petrosal, would "manage sub-salt oil assets," while Petrobras remained focused more on regular petroleum deposits, supply and demand, and regulation. I don't know if it would radically alter the structure or functioning of Brazil's largest state-owned company, but it is an interesting proposal as much from an infrastructural and developmental standpoint as from an economic standpoint.

-Also in regards to Brazil: in one of the fascinating vagaries of the globalized world, Indian companies are looking to outsource some of their IT centers to Brazil. Who knows - maybe down the line, tech calls for computer help will involve a Brazilian accent.

-I've written before about lawsuits involving banana companies and workers in Latin America before. While it's practically history now (it happened back in 2007), Suriname entered the fray, as former workers who lost their jobs in 2002 when the state-owned banana company Surland closed filed a lawsuit against Suriname's government, alleging they were underpaid on their back-wages. The lawsuit also alleged that the government (which restarted banana production in 2004) was firing employees who are trying to organize a union in the industry. I have no idea how this turned out. But we need more news from Suriname. (Seriously).

-Finally, a belated R.I.P. for Hortensia Bussi, the widow of Salvador Allende, who passed away on June 18 at the age of 94. Far from being a quiet victim, Ms. Bussi had been heavily involved in social justice before Allende's 1970 election, and continued fighting for human rights and social aid after his death.

Misdirected Blame for Violence in Favela Tourism

Both Erik and I have made my opinions on favela-tourism clear before, and like Randy, I fully believe that this is still exploitive. But two comments on this story. First, the fact that tourists' lives are suddenly in danger because they are meeting armed narcotraficantes face-to-face is absurd. Quite honestly, if there is any danger (and there probably is - tourists don't know when rival gangs or the police are going to invade a favela, resulting in a gun-battle), tourists have been exposed to it for years. When I first went to Brazil in 2005, some British tourists were telling me how they did this favela tour, and saw three kids walking by with M-16s, and their tour-guide said that they were all under 20, and that one of them was one of the top men in the drug gang, had already killed over 20 people, and was still a teenager. So any notion that there is a new element of danger simply because now tourists can meet these people face to face is ridiculous. The danger's always been there.

Secondly, while I again think the whole practice of favela tourism is disgusting and exploitative, the company owner is right on this:

The tour company has been accused of glamorising criminal activity.
But the unrepentant owner of the agency involved says the presence of armed men in the favelas is the fault of the authorities, and they should clean up their own act before starting to criticise him.

He's unfortunately right - he's neither responsible for the presence of armed men, nor is he guilty of glorifying the drug trade in the favelas. Until the police actually do something productive to combat the drug industry in the favelas (and there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of ways the police could improve here), and until the state actually makes a strong effort to help the poor who live in the favelas (with Sao Paulo offering a good model on how to do this), problems like poverty, gang warfare, and police and drug lords killing innocent people will not go away, and any attempt to force a tourism company to stop these tours in the hopes it reduces violence is blind and only further denies the true social problems at hand.

Stupid, Despicable Tourists

When I first traveled to Brazil, I spent a month living in a hostel in Rio, and this past December, we also had a Finnish friend of my wife stay with us for several days in Rio, so I'm not just makign this up when I say the following: European tourists are not nearly as "enlightened" and innocent as they think they are. From my own experience, they still have a very strong colonialist mentality in which the world is their playground for them to romp on the beaches and stare at the poor people some in order to be more "enlightened" before going to hang out with other tourists at the tourism-based nightclubs, living it up and complaining about the lack of amenities in whatever locality you are in. They are there to gain status in their home countries, buy some stuff as proof they were there, and that's it. (And lest I be charged with being unfair, this isn't random opinionating - I lived in a hostel for over a month the first time I was in Rio, and you constantly had to deal with tourists, generally European, there).

Every time I think maybe I'm too critical, stuff like this happens:

The angry mayor of Easter Island says he wishes the Finnish tourist accused of chipping an earlobe off an ancient statue could have his own ear clipped off as "justice." The 26-year-old Finnish tourist [Marko Kulju] has issued a public apology through a Chilean newspaper. He says he regrets the incident that has caused an uproar on the South Pacific island, a Chilean territory.

What the hell is this idiot thinking? No, wait, I know: "Hey, how cool would it be if I cut a piece of this historical statue off and took it home to show my friends? History shmistory; culture can go to hell. It's the ultimate tourist gift!!!" Honestly - tourism by its very nature is exploitative, but this is just sickening. Cutting off the guy's ear isn't enough - Chile should strip him of his passport and send him home. Words don't describe what a loser this guy is. Honestly...

Slum Tourism

I've railed before against slum tourism, but I guess it's time to do it again.

The best part about this article about slum tourism around the world is the question the Times asks its readers, "Is taking a tour of a slum or other poverty-stricken area voyeurism or tourism? Um, both. Isn't tourism inherently voyeurism, at least when in the developing world? That's not a general slam on tourism, just a seemingly obvious statement.

But very little good comes out of this slum tourism. At the very best, local people will sell tourists a few trinkets. OK, whatever. But most people going on these tours are going to observe poverty on a superficial level. They might go back and tell their friends about it but they aren't really going to do anything. The article argues that poverty isn't going away if we don't talk about it. That's true but exploiting that poverty for profit isn't going to make it go away either. It's really pretty disgusting.

The article ends with this:

Mr. Fennell, the professor of tourism in Ontario, wonders whether the relatively minuscule tourist revenue can make a difference. “If you’re so concerned about helping these people, then write a check,” he said.

Yep. Your first-world banking account has much more potential to help people than buying a trinket from a hawker. If you want to fight poverty, awesome. But this exploitative slum tours are a new low in the dark history of tourism.

The Tourist's Constant Search for Authenticity

I found Karen Robinson's blog about the Pan-Am Games interesting. Not for the review of the games themselves, which I care little about. But rather it's a solid example of the search for authenticity among tourists when traveling in the developing world.

Robinson chooses to avoid the Hard Rock Cafe and other tourist traps. That's good. Instead, she did this:

"Friday night we opted for the authentic Rio experience rather than the touristy (and perhaps non-existent - I don't think our jumpers were there) party at the Hard Rock Café. Our trusty taxi driver Edmar, after giving us each a hand-made fridge magnet as a souvenir of our visit, dropped us off in the Samba-friendly neighbourhood called Lapa. We had an incredible evening of eating, drinking and absorbing the scene, which I have to say ranks up there with some of my most memorable cultural experiences. The street life was everywhere abundant: people dancing, live music inside and out, and guys walking around the sidewalks selling Tequila shots to anyone sick of Caipirinhas. We particularly enjoyed staring at the transvestite prostitutes, and bless their kinky little hearts, they appeared to enjoy our stares too."

I've been to Lapa, and it's really cool. The music is hot and it's a lot of fun. I'm sure she had a great time. However, the text is interesting for what it tells us about tourists' mentality. First, I'm not sure how "authentic" it is to be receiving refrigerator magnets from your taxi driver. But more importantly, what is authenticity anyway? Doesn't your sheer presence at Lapa change the place? Hasn't the fact that thousands of tourists go there every year had an effect? Was it ever an "authentic" thing? Doesn't that assume some sort of solid base of fact?

The answer is within the text itself. The tequila shots show how Brazilian culture has changed. I don't know if the tequila was introduced for the tourists or if the Brazilians like tequila over caipirinhas themselves. It doesn't matter. What matters is that at some point, alcohol from different nations have been introduced to Brazil. That's fine. Music from around the world, including modern American music, has affected Brazil. So has clothing, food, and speech from other nations. Brazil does things differently than other countries, as do all nations. They integrate those foreign influences into their own culture.

But let's stop pretending that something is authentic, as if we have discovered this untouched thing that helps regenerate our souls. Because that's what the search for the authentic often comes down to--westerners trying to find something real in their lives. Brazil is a great place. Rio is an awesome city. Lapa is a really cool neighborhood. Go there. Enjoy it. Have your tequila or your caipirinhas. But let's stop pretending that we are discovering something untouched in other cultures.

I should say that I don't mean to pick on this particular writer--you see this everywhere, not only in music, but in religious ceremonies, food, drink, clothing, customs, etc. And I find it really annoying and deeply condescending to people.

Via Global Voices Online

The Absurdity of the "Seven Wonders of the World"

So, the new Seven Wonders of the World were just named. I suppose I shouldn't care about these things so much, since they are virtually meaningless. But both how the sites were named and the sites themselves bugs me a lot.


Here are the named sites:


• The Great Wall of China
• Petra in Jordan
• Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer
• Peru's Machu Picchu
• Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid
• The Colosseum in Rome
• India's Taj Mahal



No doubt all of these places are really cool. The only I've been to is the Jesus statue in Brazil. It really sets off the city. You can see it from almost anywhere. It adds a great deal to Rio's atmosphere and helps make it one of the coolest cities I've ever visited. But I have problems with it's inclusion on the list. First, there is no way that it should be on there over Angkor Wat. Second, when it comes down to it, it's a goddamn statue. That's it. It's a cool goddamn statue, I'll give you that. But how it is a wonder of the world? I don't really know and I can't think of a good argument for it's inclusion.


I also protest it's inclusion because Lula and the Brazilian government made its inclusion part of a nation-building project. Evidently, the same thing happened in Jordan. You couldn't look in any direction in Rio without seeing a damn sticker telling people to vote for Christ. That these things get involved in national politics is hardly surprising. I half-expected Americans to be up in arms because the Statue of Liberty wasn't voted in, which would have been absurd. But this leads to a larger question: should these questions be voted on by the general public? Answer: no.


UNESCO has distanced itself from the vote. The organization runs the World Heritage Site program. The Christ statue is not a World Heritage Site. Yes, that's right. Evidently, it is a wonder of the world, but according to actual experts on these matters, it is not worthy of World Heritage designation. This is no snub of Brazil. That nation has 17 World Heritage Sites. Thus, not only is UNESCO saying it is not worthy of its designation, but that Brazil alone has at least 17 other places more worthy. Nor is UNESCO biased against architectural sites. Among other recent designations was the campus of UNAM, the big public university in Mexico City. Brasilia is a World Heritage Site, as are buildings, both historic and modern, around the world.


So, the Seven Wonder vote is a joke. It was influenced by the tourism industry, nation building exercises, and already existing knowledge of places. All of these places are already heavily overtouristed, and no doubt it will only increase. Meanwhile, if you really want to see some cool stuff around the world, check out that World Heritage Site list. Wow, I'd love to check some of that out!

Sickening Tourism

I am totally disgusted by the idea of favela tourism. Having spent some time in Rio recently, Mr. Trend talked to me about tourists (mostly Europeans) who come to Rio and take a day trip to a favela so "they can know what it's really like." Now, while I think people do need to understand world poverty, this is not the way to do it. Hey!--Let's go spend a night at the bed and breakfast in the favela. Maybe we'll hear some gunshots! Wouldn't that be romantic! Even better, maybe we can score some cheap drugs while we're there!!!

I will give Europeans as a whole a bit of credit in that, as a broad generalization, they seem to know more about the places they are traveling in than Americans. But playing tourism to watch the misery of others is wrong, wrong, wrong.

God knows Brazil has it's problems. Class and racial prejudice are two big ones, and they feed into the divide between the favelas and the rest of Rio. But I'm not sure how this is helping in the least. Rather, these tourists are turning poverty into playtime. New forms of colonialism/imperialism are created every day.

Tourism in Malaysia

CNN has an interesting article about Malaysia aggressively pursuing tourists. I am of 2 minds on Malaysia. I have written about the negatives of traveling here before, particularly the massive destruction of their forests for palm oil plantations, making riding through the country incredibly dull and depressing. There is much to see in Malaysia--cities such as Malacca and Penang played key roles in world trade as early as the 13th century. Malacca especially has some very cool historical artifacts and museums. The country is quite diverse, with Malays, Chinese, and Indians all living together, at least in the cities. This also means an incredibly variety of amazing food, something that is certainly important to me. And where the jungle hasn't been destroyed, it is amazingly beautiful.

But Malaysia wants to have it both ways. They want to bring in the tourist dollars going to Thailand without actually protecting their environment. They figure that if they can keep tiny areas protected, they can make boatloads of money destroying the rest of their forests. To some extent, maybe they can. But how much money has Thailand made by banning logging? Tons, because the forests are in decent shape. Yes, there is some illegal logging and yes, much of the logging that would have been done in Thailand is now in Burma and Malaysia. But from the long-term perspective of national interest, Thailand made an incredibly smart move. Malaysia isn't looking that far ahead. It's all about the instant cash there and you can't build a tourism industry, especially one with ecotourism at its center by only thinking about the money. Money is central to all tourism projects and that's fine. But it's not enough for long-term success. Malaysia has the potential to be a world-class tourist destination. Malaysia can make a ton of money of tourism for a long time to come. But attracting rich Western tourists will run into a roadblock when they realize how screwed up so much of the country is.