Ivan Piedrabuena
The Tourist Action as a means to achieve the original good living
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Ivan Piedrabuena
The Tourist Action as a means to achieve the original good living
The province of Misiones, home of one of the 7 Wonders of the World, Iguazu Falls, located in the North of the Argentine Littoral, is home to 124 Mbya Guarani communities, several of them are located near tourist corridors that receive more than 2 million tourists per year and large economic enclaves (Industrial, Agricultural, Productive).
We can say that this context should be very favorable for the spillover effect (1), however, over time it has become clear that this effect does not occur in the Mbya Guarani nation. These communities remain trapped in a Western perspective of development and, despite the circumstances, remain firm in their convictions of spirituality and connection with nature.
This constant dilemma confronts them with the difficult decision of either adapting completely to the Western world of the Juruá (2), sacrificing their culture and identity, or continuing to live according to the teachings of their ancestors, respecting their oral culture. Their challenge is to find a balance that reconciles these two very different visions of the world in order to survive, I say survive, because existing in a society that takes gross per capita income as an indicator of the progress of societies, automatically places them in a position of extreme vulnerability. Far below the poverty line, with unemployment rates of over 96% and high illiteracy rates. In this sense, the concept of unemployment mentioned refers to a neoliberal approach and from the perspective of white analysis which is the dominant culture; since the concept of "formal employment" in the Guarani communities has another look.
(1) Spillover effect: economic concept that suggests that the benefits of growth and wealth generated in an economy will "spill over" to the lower strata of society.
(2) Juruá:Guaraní expression to refer to the western white man.
This is due to a set of conditioning factors, mainly in the planning and execution of ineffective public policies in the most elementary fields, this conditions the future of the generations of young Mbya, who struggle daily with the conflicts generated by this situation. In this scenario, we see that the lack of job opportunities and / or intercultural education, which integrate the other as different, tourism is interposed as an activity that, if done in a planned manner from its conception, can be a means to achieve progress in terms of economic, educational and when done under a model of community type, generates an inclusive participation, incorporating women in a new role, raising the self-esteem of young people and generating an internal synergy extremely interesting to analyze.
If we take the analysis of tourism as a psychosocial fact, where there is an encounter between people and this encounter should lead to personal growth, from the exchange of knowledge in a respectful environment, that is when tourism action really takes place. The communities find in tourism a way to work with dignity by being themselves, where travelers come to know and learn about their culture and worldview in an environment of respect and equality.
This psychosocial fact, on the one hand, encourages the Guarani youth to continue learning about their culture, since much is overshadowed by daily stimuli. On the other hand, they build awareness and break old paradigms. Working in the territory, these last two components can be made visible in concrete examples. In the first case, we say that tourism encourages the Guarani youth to continue learning about their ancestral culture.
The dilemma of whether it is really useful for a young person to learn to make handicrafts in a community in the middle of a biosphere, given that there is nowhere to market them, young people are forced to go out in search of something that will generate economic income, and therefore automatically put their cultural practices in second place, which, following the line of analysis, in the current reality in which they are immersed, are not profitable. We can say then that the tourist action could also value the Mbya gastronomy, rituals that can be shared with the Juruá, and above all their worldview regarding people and nature.
In addition, there is a need to break with old paradigms through a change of attitude that begins in the communities, it is related to the generalization that is typical of human beings, that everyone is "lazy" do not want to work, or worse. On the one hand, this and on the other hand, there is a tendency to fill a void in our society through "philanthropic" or charitable actions that simply feed the ego and vanity of those who organize and those who carry out the actions that without realizing it, instead of doing good to the public to whom the action is directed as it should be in reality, are generating more conflicts.
A concrete example is that of the schools, where solidarity collections of clothes and non-perishable food are usually organized and trips are made to the communities to deliver them, these deliveries always end up in more internal conflicts in the communities because, it is not enough for everyone, it is not enough in most cases and it only deepens the inequality gap placing the Guarani being as a subject of charity. I am not saying that these collaborations do not end up helping some families, it clearly helps, but what I have witnessed so far is that, through tourism, this circle can be broken. One of the triggering questions of this research is: Is tourism one of the ways to go from being a subject of charity to a subject of rights?
Instead of a trip to donate things, an educational trip is organized, where first before leaving the classroom, they learn about the basic aspects of the Mbya Guarani culture, about their history, about how they lived before, during and after the expulsion of the Jesuits. After this induction to the culture, they travel to the community, where to enter they must pay a fee that includes a guided tour by members of the community, a snack consisting of products made there with the Mbya identity and a souvenir necklace.
This has already been done, not systematically, but with people of different age groups and the results indicate that, if approached from this perspective, and in the community they visit, they find a clean, tidy space, a guide who is prepared to interpret their culture and download information in an orderly manner so that those who listen can really learn what they are seeing, what they always had there beside them, but had no idea that this is how they are exposing it. This produces a break in that old paradigm and automatically begins to look at the communities from a different perspective. We would not only be breaking with the old structures but also, by systematizing community-based and self-managed tourism, with a system of reservations, distribution of the groups equitably as well as the roles within the communities, we would be generating between 10 and 15 direct jobs for each community, and by being of a community nature, which invites a small percentage of the funds to be allocated to community issues, we would also be improving the quality of life of all the families.
If through a community fund it is possible to improve the handicraft space, it favors the families that exhibit their products there, if it is possible to equip a Guarani kitchen, it generates more genuine employment in an area to be explored and improve the Mbya tourist experience, if an antenna for internet signal is acquired, it not only serves to solve the operational issues of tourism activity, but also for the education of children even more so in these times of the digital era.
It is extremely important to find a balance and a fair intensity between the three dimensions, economic, socio-cultural and ecological, that promote sustainability. It is evident that an excess in one of the components has a direct impact on the others, as well as the lack or exclusion of a dimension when talking about sustainability.
In order to collaborate with this transition to the original Good Living, we must include in this perspective the element of interculturality, which is fundamental for the progress of all the actions to be carried out. The good news is that the old paradigm is changing, the young Mbya Guarani people who decided to form a network, adapting the tools imposed by the dominant culture to the extent that makes it possible to implement the tourism we describe, integrating the various efforts of different actors, and placing themselves at the forefront of their present and their future, is really having an unprecedented progress, managing to place indigenous tourism as a new organized segment in the destination, weaving alliances, building institutionalism and programs that seek the regeneration of the environment seeking to consolidate itself as a key player in offsetting the carbon footprint of the great mass of tourists visiting the region.
I will continue to accompany from very close to really understand in depth the scope of the implementation of a project linked to tourism in a living culture on the verge of extinction.
Author: Ivan Piedrabuena
The Tourist Action as a means to achieve the original good living
Prof. Tourism Guide, specialized in Tourism, Governance and Local Development.
Development Department, Huttopia Ibérica, Latam & Caribbean.
General Director of the Ministry of Tourism of Misiones Argentina - Iguazú Delegation (2015-2022).
Co-founder of Mbyaenturismo.org
The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.
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