Prologue: A Personal Journey
Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel:
excerpted from The Paving of Paradise and How You Can Stop It
by Deborah McLaren/Kumarian Press 1997
My reasons for supporting change in the tourism industry came about through my
own personal experience. I began to think about taking a vacation to Jamaica
several years ago. I had heard about the island all of my life and looked
forward to going there. As a child, I watched home movies of my missionary
grandfather working in Jamaica. I particularly remember a film where about
twenty or so people were dancing outside under some trees. What I always
remember most from those films is the spirit and joyousness the people
projected.
My interest in Jamaica and Jamaican culture continued to take various turns
over the years. During the early 1970s when I was living in a small town in
northeastern Oklahoma, some of my friends started a band and began singing the
revolutionary reggae songs of Bob Marley. At that time, I was growing up in an
economically depressed rural area and grappling with social and cultural issues
of my own. I could identify with the meaning and message of struggle. Over a
decade later, with more experience behind me and enough money to make the trip,
I went to Jamaica to look, idealistically, for a chance to better understand
the meaning of the revolutionary spirit. What I found was very different from
what I had imagined. I had not realized the depth of the realities of struggle,
racism, and oppression--the sheer poverty that many Jamaicans live with every
day, the historical oppression and hardships the culture had experienced. I had
simply glossed over a lot of it. I bought into the dream that I could go to
Jamaica as a package-deal tourist and have a profound experience with local
people. In fact, I did have a deeply profound experience, but it was not the
type for which I was searching.
The plane landed at Montego Bay and I was immediately besieged by hawkers and
hustlers, self-styled entrepreneurs in an economic situation born directly out
of the business of tourism. I didn't even have time to look around as I downed
my welcome-to-Jamaica-shot-of-rum because I was so preoccupied with the
hustlers: "Like a beer for the ride, mon?" "Need some ganga, girl?" "You need a
man like John to show you around."
I stayed in a hotel arranged as part of a package deal with an airline. The
resort was advertised as set in a "historical plantation in Old Jamaica," and
was run by mostly British and American expatriates; its fences and golf course
still depicted the continuing features of a colonialist plantation, strong
symbols of a time that never seemed to pass for some. It was a beautiful beach
resort, surrounded by imported comforts from home, while local people were
banned from the beach and lived in a makeshift service village across the road.
A sign near the fence at the end of the hotel beach said it all: "NO LOCALS
ALLOWED." The tee-shirts and bikinis in the souvenir shop were imported from
the U.S. The restaurant staff explained the food was also shipped in from
Florida.
I didn't have much of an opportunity to meet many local people on the "Old
Plantation." Most of the locals were too busy working in their service jobs.
One morning, determined to see a more realistic side of the island, I crossed
the main road and boarded the local bus into Montego Bay. The guards at the
gates of the hotel eyed me suspiciously. Some older women waiting for the bus
cast an amused glance. A dilapidated old school bus pulled up and I boarded,
along with the older women and a young man holding a live chicken. A
hand-painted sign over the driver's seat reflected a contemporary social issue
for Jamaicans, "let us stay sober on our journey." My whole experience that day
was one of hustlers, drug dealers, and more hustlers. I was unable walk around
freely without an offer for a "guide," to buy some "smoke," or to inspect the
local wood carving shops. It was off-season and the tourism-dependent economy
was in its downswing, and people were desperate. Shopkeepers even sent people
out into the streets to round up tourists to bring back to their shops.
One evening I went to Montego Bay to hear some reggae music. After a
considerable search, I finally found a small club for locals. As we listened to
the music, a bus load of tourists stopped by. The tourists rushed in and
immediately began to complain to the deejay about the music. Soon, Michael
Jackson, Madonna, and Whitney Houston began to croon over the speakers while
the tourists danced. After an hour or so the bus load of tourists left and the
American pop tunes were put to rest for the next round of tourists. The reggae
and ska came back on. "The tourists," explained the deejay, "they like American
music." The revolutionary songs of Bob Marley had no voice in a carefree
holiday market that depends upon providing pleasure for wealthy foreigners.
During the rest of my stay in Jamaica I tried to meet some local people
without being inundated by a large population of tourism entrepreneurs. I was
taken to other all-inclusive resorts around the island and to "beautiful local
destinations" like Dunns River Falls, where I climbed the waterfalls with
several bus loads of tourists and didn't see one local Jamaican enjoying the
area. What I did noticed were the social discrepancies that distanced tourists
from the local population. I noticed the way the local people reacted to me as
a wealthy tourist with money to burn. I noticed the creation of a fantasy
tourism culture that by no means represented the real culture of Jamaica. I
noticed the almost entirely British and American management at the hotels. I
noticed the dying reefs just off the beaches, polluted from unregulated waste
from the resorts; the high price of black coral, disappearing quickly because
of the excessive demand by tourists; the stench from piles of accumulated
garbage behind the beautiful artificial resorts; pristine lands being converted
into more tourist accommodations; and the fences that blocked the local people
from the beach.
On my last day in Jamaica, I walked down the road to a horse stable where I
met Joseph, a guide. While we rode around the hillside through some villages,
which were conspicuously different from the hotel paradises I had been a part
of, just outside of Montego Bay, Joseph related some of his story. He had grown
up in Jamaica and spent four years traveling, as a worker on cruise and fishing
boats, throughout the Caribbean and to ports in Europe. Joseph was interested
in people. In fact, he said it was this interest that motivated him to work on
the boats and was why he was currently employed as a guide at the stables. He
wanted to see the world, especially the United States. In the U.S., Joseph
said, "people have more opportunities, a better way of life. There people do
not have to live in poverty. In the U.S., people have good jobs and a good way
of life that is better than here in Jamaica." A devastating blow occurred, he
said, when he was laid off his job on a cruise ship just before he was
scheduled to go on a trip to the United States. The trip was something he had
anticipated for years and his disappointment was still visible. His interest in
the U.S. had nonetheless continued to grow since then. As we rode our horses
through a shantytown, Joseph made a remark about his missed opportunity that
struck me, "Oh well," he said, "I will prepare myself so that I will understand
more when I go there."
As I recall my whole "tourist trip" to the island, my time with Joseph is one
of the best memories: it was a human connection. Unfortunately, our unequal
tourist-guide relationship prevented a real friendship from developing. I
believe we both had stereotyped images of each other. I had gone to his country
ignorant of his very real situation, looking for a highly idealized culture. I
also believe that the very nature of tourism created idealized images of our
respective cultures: my image of was one happy revolutionaries and his image
was one of wealthy vacationers with no responsibilities at home. The tourism
industry enforced and encouraged the distance between tourists and locals. It
reinforced a negative self-image for Joseph. No mechanisms were offered, nor
had I initiated any, for fostering friendship or gaining more insight. I wanted
to tell Joseph that the U.S. wasn't as ideal as he thought it might be, but who
was I to talk? Since then I have thought about Joseph's wise words many times.
I decided to prepare myself for the realities of another culture and country
and to find ways to represent myself more realistically.
Although I believe I continue to learn from my experience, I went to Jamaica
completely ignorant of the cultural, economic, political, environmental and
social realities. The manufactured tourism that the industry sold me was very
different from the social messages I saw on the bus and the warnings posted to
the hotel fence. The shantytowns I rode through on my horse, where small
children peered out of windowless homes with no electricity, was very different
from the smiling Jamaicans I had seen on tourist brochures. I found myself an
uneasy voyeur in a country with which I had no real connection.
Since my Jamaican trip I have visited many other countries and traveled
extensively throughout the United States and other countries. I’ve noticed how
tourist information does not depict the economic, social and environmental
realities in most destination communities. Nor does it depict the negative
impacts created by the tourism industry itself. I’ve also met people who are
working for changes in tourism in their communities.
Over the years I have continued to explore my reasons for going to Jamaica. I
was not able to contact much real Jamaican culture because of the culture that
tourism had imposed. Why did it seem as though tourism controlled Jamaica, and
Jamaica had no control over tourism? I am disturbed by my own projections of a
culture and people that only exist as a commodity cooked up and dished out by
the travel industry and the media. How did this happen? Did the colonial
plantation-cum-resort I stayed at represent something more controversial,
something that is still being perpetrated? It is an uncomfortable but essential
exercise to explore my own motivations. Although uncomfortable, in retrospect,
I am thankful for the seed planted in Jamaica that started to grow into a
larger sense of what tourism is about and how broad and sometimes devastating
its effects can be.
My own participation as a tourist propelled me into a process of critical
analysis and a conscious effort to support change within the industry. From
this perspective, my goal is to demonstrate how traditional tourism
development, especially in countries in the global South, has been unplanned,
basically because it follows a western model that is highly
consumption-oriented, often at the expense of the environment and culture.
Tourism's overwhelming growth has been destructive to both ecology and people
in host destinations. This book will also discuss the roots of tourism in
colonialism and the continuation of racism and commodification of cultures that
tourism perpetrates.
You can contact Deborah McLaren at DMcla75001@aol.com. Order the book from your
local bookseller or by contacting Kumarian Press, 14 Oakwood Avenue, West
Hartford, CT 06119. Phone orders: (1-800-289-2664); Email: kpbooks@aol.com
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