1 Guatemala’s protected areas

Box 9.1 Guatemala’s protected areas

INGUAT's version

Figure 2

CONAP's version

Figures 1 and 2 show the 1994 protected areas of Guatemala – according to two different arms of the Guatemalan government. Figure 1 gives the version according to INGUAT, the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism; Figure 2 according to CONAP, the National Council of Protected Areas, which is charged with overseeing the protection of these areas.

The differences between the two were technically due, in the main, to INGUAT’s inclu- sion of all the areas whose status as a protected area was only proposed rather than actual. But these differences also reflect the roles and outlooks of the two departments. INGUAT is in the business of enhancing the country’s image, of making it look attractive to poten- tial visitors; so it covered as much of the national area as possible with the status of a protected area, with the greenwash of pristine natural areas. CONAP, on the other hand, is more realistic; it was aware that it did not have the resources necessary to oversee those areas which were already designated as protected, still less all those which were proposed.

the infringement of human rights within that country – see the case study of Burma outlined later in this chapter). Our discussion of The Gambia helps to identify different ways in which power is expressed through political processes. It is illustrative of the typical problems faced by Third World countries in their efforts to develop tourism. In this case, the expansion of the sector has been encouraged by the internationally inspired structural reform programmes which have clearly pushed The Gambia along a particular development path. But First World countries also retain the potential to control the tourism industry (especially when much of the industry caters for mass packaged

11111 charters, as in this case).

258 • Governance, governments and tourism Table 9.1 Tourism interest groups

Scale Industry groups

Single-interest groups International

Non-industry groups

WTO/OMT, WTTC,

Occasional environmental World Bank, regional

Environmental and social

or social issues, often development banks,

organisations, e.g., IUCN,

location-specific, e.g., End WTO/OMC

WWF, ECTWT, TEN,

FOE, TIES, Friends of

Child Prostitution in Asian

Conservation

Tourism (ECPAT), Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAGM), Burma Action Group (BAG)

National National tourism

Single-issue environmental industry associations

Environmental and

groups, e.g., those opposing (e.g., BTIA), trade

consumer organisations,

airport development, Surfers unions, national

e.g., National Trust,

Against Sewage professional and trade

Tourism Concern,

Wilderness Society,

associations

Sierra Club, Audubon Society, ANCON (Panama)

Local Chambers of

Groups opposed to tourist commerce, regional

Local government;

development in a specific tourism business

rate-payers and residents

location, e.g., anti-resort associations, local area

associations, e.g.,

development groups promotion partnerships

Talamanca Association

for Ecotourism and Conservation

Source: Adapted from Hall and Jenkins (1995)

Tourism as politics

Chapter 3 showed how political economy critiques have revealed the shortcomings of Third World tourism and how tourism is an additional element in uneven and unequal development. However, this has not prevented countries which pursue socialist strate- gies and ideologies from dabbling in tourism, and in some cases arguing for forms of tourism that are not subordinating and are responsive to the issues of power and control exercised by the First World so heavily criticised in the political economy framework. As Crick (1989) argues, in some countries this has resulted in seemingly glaring contra- dictions to the anti-colonial ideologies adopted by newly independent countries. Indeed, as Chapter 3 showed, some critics suggest that tourism may help to maintain systems of neo-colonial power and control.

Tanzania is a frequently cited example where an emphasis on tourism development in the 1970s ran contrary to the anti-colonial socialism adopted by Nyerere in the wake of independence and the policy of self-reliance pursued by the government (as discussed in Chapter 2). The Tanzanian intellectual, Shivji, was critical of the separa- tion of politics from economics: ‘The justification for tourism in terms of it being “economically good” though it may have adverse social, cultural and political effects, completely fails to appreciate the integrated nature of the system of underdevelopment’ (1973, quoted in Crick, 1989: 321).

Other independent countries pursuing socialist ideals have also explored the devel- opment of tourism. In Cuba, for example, as much effort has been put into widening the appeal of Cuba as radical chic, with solidarity and study tours, as has been devoted to stemming the foreign exchange leakage characteristic of other destinations in the region. In order to reduce the leakage of foreign exchange, Cuba has established a

Governance, governments and tourism • 259

tourism industry that seeks, if uneasily, to separate tourism spending from the national economy, and forces tourists to buy goods and services in foreign currency (mainly US dollars).

Following a successful coup d’état in 1979 in Grenada, a regional neighbour of Cuba, Maurice Bishop, head of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), acknowledged the shortcomings of mass tourism as it existed in the Caribbean and started to identify the basis of an alternative type of tourism. Outlining the parallels of tourism with colonialism which we discussed earlier, the socialist Prime Minister argued:

in the early days and even now, most tourists are white. This clear association of ‘whiteness’ and ‘privilege’ is a major problem for Caribbean people just emerging out of a racist colonial history where we had been so carefully taught

13111 the superiority of things white and inferiority of things black. (Bishop, 1983: 69)

Bishop elaborated his ideas further at a Caribbean regional conference on the impact of tourism, where he identified the need to replace ‘old tourism’ with what he termed ‘new tourism’. Along with Jamaica under the socialist leadership of Prime Minister Michael Manley, Bishop attempted to chart the development of a tourism designed to escape the problems that had been associated with ‘old’ tourism, bound up with ‘colonial and imperialist connotations’.

It was foreign-owned and controlled, unrelated to the needs and development of the Caribbean people, and it brought with it a number of distinct socio- cultural and environmental hazards such as the race question and undesirable social and economic patterns such as drug abuse and prostitution.

(Bishop, 1983: 71) Bishop’s vision was for a ‘new’ tourism to escape these characteristics. It was to involve

all people (as both ‘guests’ and tourists); it would seek to create linkages between the different sectors of the economy; and above all it was conceived as a tool for develop- ment. However, the construction of Grenada’s airport, a key part of the country’s attempt to attract tourism (see Box 9.2), encapsulates and symbolises the political nature of tourism development. Bishop was murdered in October 1983 and with him died this vision of new tourism. Of course, it is questionable whether such a vision was realis- able given the context of uneven and unequal development in which Third World tourism operates.

A rather different aspect of the inherently political nature of tourism is the way in which the USA sought to destabilize both Grenada and Jamaica, under Bishop and Manley respectively, through negative publicity and foreign policy statements that were hostile to both countries (Thomas, 1988). In the case of Grenada this is particularly poignant. Grenada quickly gained an extraordinary international reputation, with Fidel Castro assessing that in conjunction with Nicaragua and Cuba they were representative of ‘three giants rising to defend their rights to independence, sovereignty and justice on the very threshold of imperialism’ (Clark, 1983, quoted in Thomas, 1988). As Thomas concludes from the radical agendas pursued in these countries and the reworking of tourism that they advocated, ‘they confirmed that any attempt at radical social reorgan- isation in the region would be met by insistent efforts on the part of the US to desta- bilise the process (or worse), especially if the proposed reorganisation involved new

11111 options for foreign policy and external relations’ (1988: 246).

260 • Governance, governments and tourism