
Tourism
Winter 2002 | Volume II, Number 2
Table of Contents
Editor’s Letter →
by June Carolyn Erlick
Focus on Cuba and the Carribean

The Old, Havana Way
Havana, the gracious Antillean metropolis opening into the straits of Florida, has grown at a very slow pace compared to most other major Latin American cities. Its historical heritage, found in …

The Caribbean
Tired of the same old vacation on a sandy, sunny Caribbean beach? Are you looking for a little more excitement? how about some rum, rumba, and roulette at a glittery cabaret with fantastic sensuous dancers? …

Tourism Development for the Cuban Economy
The post-war boom, as well as the modernization of transportation and communications, has led to rapid growth of the tourist sector, particularly in countries in the process of development….

Caribbean Tourism and Development
Mass charter tourism is the cornerstone of development plans in the Caribbean. Unparalleled tourism investment in the post-World War II era has boosted a tourist influx of unprecedented dimensions …
History, Culture and Identity

Recreating Chican@ Enclaves
Centrally located between southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, is a hundred-mile long by seventy-mile wide intermountain basin known as the San Luis Valley. Surrounded on the east …

Tourism, Carnaval and Citizenship
It’s Carnaval 1996, and I am in Salvador for just two weeks to do fieldwork. My colleagues in São Paulo, usually respectful of my efforts as a participant observer of various forms of associational …

Sex Tourism in Latin America
Sex tourism—travel to engage in sex for money—shares a lengthy and sometimes colorful history with that of adventure travel and tourism in general. Literature investigating early travel involving …

Rio de Janeiro’s Favela Tourism
I first stumbled upon the existence of favela tourism in the glitzy lobby of a Copacabana hotel. Amongst flyers at the reception desk announcing visits to the city’s famous sights, such as …

Photoessay: Puerto Rico’s Tourism
Christopher Columbus, who one might consider Puerto Rico’s first tourist, was mesmerized by the island—its climate, its beauty, and yes its resources, from whence it got its name “rich port.” …

Musical Tourism
A lively three-dollar cassette with a photo of an old Mexican fiddler on the cover inspired me several years ago to journey from my home in Mexico City to a little-known hotlands town in western Mexico …

Human Rights Tourism in Chile
Most tourists to Chile are tempted by opportunities to see blue glaciers in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego or sample wines in Chile’s trendy vineyards. I also wanted to visit the National Stadium. …

Food and Culture: A New Sustainable Tourism Product
More than a hundred years ago, waves of immigrants arrived in South America. Many of these were to settle in the countries that today make up the MERCOSUR (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) …

Crafts in the Guatemalan Highlands
Tourists often seek handicrafts as a reflection of genuineness of the culture they are visiting. These products are more than souvenirs; they are complex reflections of multiple cultures, …

Boycott as Political Instrument: the case of Guatemala
After spending much of the previous six years traveling through Guatemala, photographer and writer Jean-Marie Simon published Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny (1987). This book …
Sustainable Tourism

Restoring a Ravaged Venezuelan Coastline
Dramatic floods ravaged the Caracas seaside known as the Littoral in December 1999, ripping up houses and literally re-shaping the coastline and beaches. Less than a year later, I joined several …

From Trek Leader to the Research Track
I earned a living for many years making the world a smaller place. I led treks into the remote and mountainous terrain of Nepal, India, Bhutan and Tibet, escorting small armies of intruders from North America …

Ecotourism in Chile
From the point of view of a scientist, the worldwide surge in ecotourism is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, who can deny that interest and exposure to nature ecosystems provides an …

Community Ecotourism in the Global Economy
(Napo Province, Ecuador) The RICANCIE community eco-tourism project in the lowland Quichua Indian community at Runa Huasi embraces two rivers. Winding northward through Amazonian indigenous lands …

Certifying Sustainable Tourism
Environmental practices strongly influence the way tourists choose their vacation spots. Increasingly they expect to see methods in place to protect and conserve nature in the areas they visit….

Agricultural Tourism
Colombia’s coffee zone with its rolling green mountains has long been associated with steaming hot cups of coffee and ruana-clad peasant farmers in the classic style of Juan Valdez. …
The Business of Tourism

Let’s Go
Acapulco was covered in water. After days of constant downpour, the gushing, bubbling water had overrun the inadequate sewer system. In its merciless drive towards the ocean, the flood …

Brazil
Did you know that Brazil has awe-inspiring sites, such as the Iguazu Falls, the Itaimbezinho, and the Amazon rainforest, as well as 2,000 miles of virtually uninterrupted soft white beaches? …

After September 11
The September 11th terrorist attacks brought a more immediate sense of crisis to an industry already experiencing a need for restructuring. With the sudden stoppage of flights and the ..
Thinking on Tourism

Tourist Photography’s Fictional Conquest
Recently, while walking across the Harvard campus, I was stopped by two tourists with a camera. They asked me if I would take a picture of them beside the words “HARVARD LAW SCHOOL,” …

Tourism’s Landscape of Knowledge
Tourism research and scholarship is a fairly new interdisciplinary field, and I hope to offer an abbreviated pastiche of this expanding field of knowledge, culled from my own experience….

Tourism and the Archaeology of State – Facing Challenges: the Case of Copan, Honduras
For many nation-states, the achievements of their illustrious ancestors are the source of immense pride, and a focus for national identity. …

Nine Quandaries of Tourism
International tourism presents itself as straightforward, passive and benign, yet it is complex, interesting and important, full of contradictions and depths. Tourism is the world’s largest export …