Explorar recursos

Latin American development politics include manifold interventions in rural areas, among them extractivist industry. Paradoxically, scholars have adopted the term neo-extractivism to criticise left-led governments' justification of natural resource use to provide welfare to the population. This research embraces neo-extractivism to understand socio-environmental changes introduced through tourism initiatives in Ecuadorian rural landscapes. While the case in the Pacific coast of Santa Elena relates the promotion of small-scale tourism in rural areas to enclave economies, the case in Ecuadorian highlands incorporating the Qhapaq Ñan project relates community-based tourism expectations with developmental practices. Ethnographic accounts and qualitative analysis reveal practices leading to intense use of local resources, commoditisation of material and immaterial resources at local level, and the social stress on development projects. In this way, a neo-extrativist gaze shed light on the intersection of rural studies and anthropological approaches of tourism in the Andes. 

Local endogenous developments have sprouted worldwide under the economy-environment reconciliation premise in response to the sustainable development discourse. Debates on how sustainable development protects the environment tend to idealize and romanticize locals’ interaction with nature in rural areas. However, few discussions focus on how the developmental discourse pervades the local imaginary of progress while preferring ecosystems' economic and recreational value over their ecological significance. In Ecuador, a Latin American country on the Pacific coast, rural seaside communities navigate between their economic survival and the transformation of pristine beaches into beautified sandy beaches, usually protected by seawalls. Indeed, villagers on the coast of Ecuador promoted the construction of seawalls because they would also afford protection to their tourism-dependent economy.