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Ecotourism

False Marketing: 'Ecotourism' Exoticizing the Primitive

One of the reasons that ecotourism to Vicos and Taquile is appealing is that tourists believe, and tour companies advertise, that tourists will see people living as they have for centuries, unchanged. Tourists often believe they will see people "frozen" in time. Even the enlightened non-profit tourist organization, Crooked Trails' website, states that Vicos has had little contact with the outside world. In truth Vicos is perhaps one of the Andean communities with the most contact with outsiders. Both Vicosinos and Taquileans have international travel experience, participating in activities such as the 2006 international meeting of the Slow Food Movement in Turin, Italy and a retrospective conference on Vicos at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in the US.

Tour companies romanticize the Inca past and it is common to encounter the terms "Indians" and "Inca Indians" on tour companies' websites -- but for native peoples living in the highlands of Peru, the term Indian (Indio) is loaded with derogatory stereotypes held by the dominant Peruvian culture: backward, uneducated, dirty, stupid -- in short, Indians were viewed as impediments to modernization and progress. In the past the Peruvian state demanded modernization and assimilation. In fact, a common insult, "indio bruto," stupid Indian, persists. Highland community members prefer the term "comunero" (member of a communal entity, usually a community) or "campesino" (peasant). A campesino is a member of a peasant community recognized by Peruvian law, with rights to hold communal lands. "Indio" for comuneros has been a racist term implying domination, marginalization and poverty. However, Elayne Zorn, following Bolivian anthropologist, Xavier Albó states that we are witnessing a return of "the Indian" and "indianness." Albó argues that native peoples in Andean nations are seeking a third way that will allow them to preserve their way of life and become citizens of the modern world at the same time. The election of Evo Morales in 2006 as Bolivia's first indigenous president with an overwhelming majority is evidence of the return of "the Indian," participating in a global, modern world and charting a new path of modernization and development.