ECOTOURISM: Aspirin for the countryside?

Abstract

Instead of financially subsidizing poor rural communities in Huatulco Bays, Oaxaca, in the name of social justice, the Mexican state has made them responsible for their own survival by converting them to rural o community-based tourism, an economic system in which the community is self-employed instead of selling their labour force. This is the neo-liberal alternative to continue being a peasant. In the field of tourism, ecology has become disengaged from the utopic idea of a counter culture which was non-consumer and anti-materialistic, to focus now on the commoditization and “folklorization” of nature and culture. Rural communities have become self-employed ventures that provide large hotel agencies with exotic excursions and function as outsourcing companies that work for travel agencies and transportation owners. By taking into account the ecotourism as practiced in Huatulco, it has ceased to be an alternative concept and has become a complementary activity to the tourism industry.

Keywords: Ecotourism and neoliberalism. Exotism and touristic industries. Rural communities and folklorization. Huatulco Bays-Mexico.