>
> The following paper has been accepted for publication in Tourism
> Recreation Review for No 2
> 1999. Here we reproduce just its Introductory part. For further
> information contact David Barkin at <barkin@cueyatl.uam.mx>
>
> Forwarded by Sam Lanfranco, STRING ListMgt
> <SLanfranco@dkglobal.org>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> NGO-Community Collaboration for Ecotourism: A Strategy for
> Sustainable Regional Development
>
> David Barkin and Carlos Paillés*
> * Professor of Economics, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana,
> Xochimilco Campus, Mexico City and Director, Centro de Soporte
> Ecológico, Huatulco, Mexico. For comments: barkin@cueyatl.uam.mx
>
> In 1984, a mega-resort, designed to attract beach tourism to
> international hotels, was initiated on the south Pacific coast of
> Mexico in the state of Oaxaca. Known as the Bahias de Huatulco, the
> spectacular setting, in a previously isolated region, is home to
> about 50,000 people from four different indigenous groups living in
> some 150 subsistence communities widely dispersed over 700,000
> hectares in the surrounding highlands and a number of small fishing
> villages. The new mega-resort and the accompanying infrastructure
> integrated the region into the international market, sparking a
> self-reinforcing cycle of speculation and investment that
> accelerated the process of social and spatial polarisation,
> impoverishing the native populations and raising tensions throughout
> the region; the destruction wrought by Hurricane Paulina in October
> 1997 suddenly intensified the problems of poverty and environmental
> destruction. Even before the disaster, a local non-governmental
> organisation (NGO), the Centre for Ecological Support (CSE, for its
> Spanish initials), created in 1993 to promote regional development,
> had begun to implement a resource management program for sustainable
> development, by channelling domestic and international resources to
> attack these problems with a series of productive programs designed
> to stem environmental degradation and strengthen the economy.
>
> The isolated existence of the indigenous people who lived in the
> Huatulco region was violently transformed when the narrow coastal
> strip (about 30 km) was expropriated by the Mexican Tourist
> Development Fund (FONATUR) in the early 1980s for a transnational
> beach tourism project. After pushing them from their small fishing
> villages, little thought was given to the local population;
> construction attracted workers of all sorts along with other people
> seeking their fortunes from other parts of Mexico. For more than ten
> years, social tensions rose as five large hotels and many smaller
> installations were built; menial jobs were offered to the natives
> who had taken refuge in the larger settlements dispersed in the
> surrounding mountain communities or in the shanty towns that
> sprouted to attend to the demands of the new industry. The
> prevailing pattern of polarising development characteristic of the
> rest of Mexico became firmly entrenched in this area, with a small,
> prosperous beach front community coexisting alongside makeshift
> facilities for the service workers; the local communities
> increasingly found themselves in dire straits, as national policy
> discriminated against rural production in general and poor,
> small-scale farmers, in particular
>
> In this article we will examine the creative role of a local NGO in
> promoting an alternative approach to development that might
> contribute to reconciling the conflicting interests in the region.
> By explicitly recognising the special role that NGOs can play in
> facilitating community participation, the CSE has facilitated the
> interaction of groups from different cultural backgrounds and social
> classes in what promises to be an innovative program of diversified
> development in which environmental tourism will play a fundamental
> part.
> ------ rest of paper deleted -------See: Tourism Recreation Review
> for No 2 1999, or contact David Barkin at barkin@cueyatl.uam.mx
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 28 2000 - 15:35:31 AST