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Latin American Perspectives http://lap. sagepub. com/ Tropical Blues: Tourism and Social Exclusion in the Dominican Republic Amalia L.

Cabezas Latin American Perspectives 2008 35: 21 years old DOI: 12. 1177/0094582X08315765 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lap. sagepub. com/content/35/3/21 Published by simply: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: Latin American Perspectives, Incorporation. Additional providers and information for Latina American Points of views can be found at: Email Alerts: http://lap. sagepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://lap. sagepub. om/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Accord: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. navigation Citations: http://lap. sagepub. com/content/35/3/21. refs. html code Downloaded coming from lap. sagepub. com for University of Sheffield about September eight, 2011 Tropical Blues Tourism and Social Exclusion inside the Dominican Republic by Amalia L. Cabezas Tourism development is the central source of many Caribbean economies, as well as advocates believe it plays a part in sustainable expansion, the reduction of poverty, and the usage into the globalized economy.

Scholars and activists, in contrast, indicate tourism-related environmental deterioration, revenue leakage, altered cultural patterns, rising property values, and prostitution. They suggest that travel and leisure perpetuates existing disparities, fiscal problems, and social worries. Examination of travel development in the Dominican Republic indicates it deskills and devalues Dominican workers, marginalizing them by tourist creation and sexualizing their labor.

The majority of people will be relegated, at best, to positions of assujettissement in low-paid jobs in the formal sector, unemployment, or perhaps unstable actions in the relaxed sector including the commoditization of sexuality and affective relations. Keywords: Tourism, Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Capitalism, Social exclusion In a Place, the Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid elaborates on the inequities of tourism (1988: 18″19): “Every native of each place is actually a potential traveler, and every tourist is a native of anywhere. But some natives”most natives in the world”cannot get anywhere. They are too poor. They are also poor to look anywhere. In international travel and leisure, only a lot of people are able to travel and encounter a alternative to the mashing banality with their lives, others, too poor to go everywhere, are relegated to providing the requires of foreign travelers. Travel around and tourism are being among the most important financial activities in the global economy not just intended for the transnational monopolies that control all of them but also for people who dream of touring and perhaps being able to turn another person’s commonplace fact into the way to obtain their own delight. This is the fact of the exotic blues. Tourism development is a backbone of countless Caribbean financial systems.

For the tiny island international locations, tourism today represents what sugar was a century back: a monocrop controlled simply by foreigners and some elites that services the structures of accumulation pertaining to global capitalism. 1 May tourism replace the economic framework of small nation-states in the Caribbean by creating options for the citizenry to improve it is standard of living? Tourism promoters, insurance plan makers, experts, and development officials absolutely think therefore. They Amalia L. Cabezas teaches in the University of California, Riverside, and is a coordinating editor of Latin American Views.

She thank you the Asociacion de Promocion y Fraternidad Humana (a non-governmental business working in Sosua, Puerto Pasta, and the adjacent communities) and the Movimiento para Mujeres Unidas for analysis assistance. LATIN AMERICAN VIEWPOINTS, Issue one hundred sixty, Vol. thirty five No . three or more, May 08 21-36 DOI: 10. 1177/0094582X08315765 2008 Latin American Perspectives twenty one Downloaded by lap. sagepub. com in University of Sheffield on September eight, 2011 twenty-two LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES have got historically made enthusiastic promises about the positive impact of tourism upon host communities.

From cultivating world serenity to protecting biodiversity and indigenous ethnicities, tourism has been considered a panacea pertaining to societies’ ills (Castellanos para Selig, 1981). More recently, travel has been noticed not only as generating forex trading and employment but also as leading to sustainable creation, the alleviation of lower income, and the usage into the globalized economy. Government authorities and multilateral organizations such as the Inter-American Advancement Bank, the World Bank, the International Budgetary Fund, and United Nations development agencies encourage tourism being a viable device for financial and interpersonal development.

It is easy to understand why a whole lot hope is usually riding about tourism. Tourism is a vital component of the spread of global capitalism. This accounts for a third of the global trade in services which is expanding in twice the growth rate of world end result (El Beltagui, 2001). Visitor arrivals, which stood by 25 million in 1950, are expected to reach 1 ) 6 billion dollars by 2020 (WTO, 1999). According to the Universe Travel and Tourism Authorities (WTTC, 2005), the travel and travel industry makes up about US$4. 5 trillion of economic activity worldwide. Inside the Caribbean area, tourism advancement is of extremely important importance because an indispensable supply of foreign exchange (ILO, 2001). Evaluated by the Foreign Labor Business as the most tourism-oriented region on the globe, the Caribbean is a place where a fifth of the gross domestic product is produced for tourists, indirectly, by one out of every eight workers (ILO, 2001: 119). Scholars and activists working in the field of tourism are much more critical of tourism than policy manufacturers and political figures.

In the past three decades, assessments of tourism’s socioeconomic impact include included discussions of environmental deterioration, earnings leakage, social displacement, altered cultural patterns, rising property values, drugs, and prostitution (Harrison, 1992, Crick, 1996, Pattullo, 1996). Tourism is linked to the creation of with regard to foreign-made items, consumerism, the commodification of culture, trafficking in women and children, inside migration, plus the disruption and corruption of traditional ideals and behaviors (see, at the. g. McElroy, 2004, Mowforth and Munt, 1998, Pattullo, 1996). Furthermore, scholars postulate that travel perpetuates existing disparities, monetary problems, and social worries (Britton, 1996, Greenwood, 1989). Given such incongruities in opinions and assessments, I actually seek to take a look at the platform within which will tourism creation takes place and explore for what reason tourism is unsucssesful to raise the normal of living and produce better existence chances for individuals in the Carribbean region. The concern here is with the political economic system of travel and leisure development inside the Dominican Republic.

In this article I actually argue that a history of economic, political, and social subjugation within the global capitalist system determines the institutional platform for the current tourism control. I provide you with the interpretation the international label of labor in tourism deskills and cheapens Dominican workers, marginalizing all of them from the technique of tourism advancement and sexualizing their labor. I are concerned with the effect of these techniques on the the majority of vulnerable elements of the population. This case study is dependent on fieldwork undertaken in the Dominican Republic.

From 1997, individual observation was conducted around the Downloaded via lap. sagepub. com for University of Sheffield about September almost eight, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 23 northeast shoreline of the region in Puerto Plata as well as the neighboring resort houses developments of Playa Dorada and Sosua. Puerto Parné, a historical city having a population of over 60, 000, was targeted pertaining to development throughout the boom in tourism development in the 1970s. It’s the oldest and one of the most developed tourism regions of the country, and it keeps growing (ASONAHORES, 2004).

Its port attracts various other, and it includes an abundance of luxurious resorts located east from the city within an area called Playa Dorada. Sosua, a number of kilometers the coast, is known as a small beachside community resolved by Western Jews brought into the country by the former master Rafael L. Trujillo to “whiten the nation (Symanski and Burley, 1973). It has many businesses owned or operated by expatriates and continually attract Western travelers, a large number of from Australia. The north coast location has a huge transient populace of inner migrants who also come to work in the tourism market, its casual trade, and the free-trade sector.

My study was aided by two non-governmental companies (NGOs) in Puerto Pasta and Sosua that are focused on community health. Taperecorded selection interviews were carried out in 1997 at a community clinic with women who determined themselves as sex personnel, many of whom were associated with the Movimento de Mujeres Unidas (Movement of Usa Women”MODEMU), a great NGO that advocates intended for the labor and human rights of ladies in the sexual industry. Even more research with this project was carried out in 2004, 2006, and 3 years ago, including work in the capital city of Santo Domingo and in the nearby traveler beach resort of Boca Chica.

Data collection involved selection interviews with resort workers, sexual workers, community activists, associates of MODEMU, people active in the informal economic climate, local business men, and tourists. STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES AND THE CAPITALIST GLOBAL PROGRAM Tourism exists within a political-economic framework seen as monopoly capital”a system of global capital which has evolved over the past 500 years and is in a new stage of piling up characterized by the transnationalization of state formation, production, and consumption (Robinson, 2004, 2007).

It is important to keep the impérialiste patterns of capitalist deposition in mind the moment examining travel and leisure development, as global inequities lie at the heart of the tourism project. The capitalist universe system provides continually expanded through entry to cheap labor, land, resources, and marketplaces. These procedures are plainly evident in the commercial and organizational systems in the hospitality and travel industrial sectors. Transnational tourism reflects the asymmetrical syndication of electric power and economical resources between former colonies and their colonizers (Fanon, 1963).

As Britton (1982: 355) declares, “The more a Third World nation has been dominated by overseas capital before, the greater chance there is of the prerequisites for establishing an area tourist market being present. It is city tourism capital that is the one most important aspect in determining the business and qualities of tourism in underdeveloped countries.  Time and resources have been important in the development of tourism, yet so features economic electrical power. While travel and leisure is a global industry, the Downloaded via lap. sagepub. om by University of Sheffield upon September eight, 2011 24 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES most of the receipts accrue to Europe plus the United States (ILO, 2001, WTO, 2002). Without a doubt, the new kinds of global capitalist domination, because manifested in the tourism and travel market, demonstrate that Dominicans deal with an “empire of global capital (Robinson, 2007: 19). The Caribbean is definitely thus relegated to a “pleasure periphery in the international division of labor, a “host area that benefits leisure travellers and the demands of transnational corporations (Turner and Ash, 1975).

The tourism industry in the global North surfaced with subsidized state-led expansion. Growth in infrastructure and technology benefited from statesponsored research and development. In the year 1950s the U. S. United states senate authorized a lot more than US$12 , 000, 000 to support the introduction of improved transfer aircraft, and U. S i9000. policy encouraged the development of city aeronautics and air trade both within just and outside of the United States (Truong, 1990). The use of U. S. flying equipment, U. S. eronautical procedures, as well as the English terminology as the earth standard in aviation guaranteed the United States prominence in detrimental aeronautics throughout the world. In Traditional western Europe, the idea of “participatory organization,  in which airlines will be owned simply or wholly by government authorities, helped to pay the deficits incurred by operation of unprofitable nevertheless strategically essential routes (Truong, 1990). Both the United States and Western European countries subsidized and cultivated a global travel infrastructure and proven the rules and best practice rules of the travel and leisure industry, assisting their control and domination.

Travel and tourism companies experienced speedy growth and expansion as they sought for capturing the throw-away earnings of wage workers in the thriving economies of Western Europe and the United states of america during the 1950s and sixties. Their growth was increased by new patterns of production and consumption inside the global North and the creation of cultural legislation guaranteeing holiday time off. It was helpful for america to further their political and commercial passions in the Caribbean by marketing the growth of tourism as being a form of monetary development.

Because Truong (1990: 104) clarifies, The strongly suggested tactical and strategic versatility in the execution of city aviation coverage has been converted into the make use of multilateral help channels to hide U. S i9000. interests and overt involvement in worldwide aviation and tourism. The promotion of tourism by itself mirrored the awareness of the relation between air transport and economical development. This kind of intervention features two primary advantages for the usa. From a commercial perspective, these kinds of intervention leads to the fortifying of the U.

S. situation as a company and céder of aircraft and routing equipment. By a politics perspective, it will help to consolidate the path of sociable and financial development in the third world, which will benefits U. S. passions under a display screen of tranquil understanding. Sooner or later, the growth from the tourism market became a “peaceful method of attaining reliable political electric power and monetary control inside the markets and politics in the South (Lanfant, Allcock, and Bruner, 1995).

The structure for the introduction of the travel and leisure and holiday industry impedes poor countries from producing foreign exchange, elevating employment, or perhaps promoting the participation of the most marginal sections of the community (Britton, 1996). It allows transnational organizations to use their particular superior technology, resources, and commercial capacity to control Third World Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September almost eight, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC twenty-five tourist destinations.

Tourism’s tendency to perpetuate patterns of economic dependency and vulnerability to get developing countries is apparent in your island nations around the world of the Caribbean, where small local suppliers have limited access to tourist-generating markets monopolized by powerful wholesalers and retailers (Ashley et al., 2006). Travel operators”a transnational industry based in Western European countries and the United States”can task an image of any country through worldwide marketing strategies that assure a steady circulation of guests. Because of financial systems of size, they can control tourist deals and demote or enhance particular destinations (Britton, 1996).

They unite suppliers and consumers inside the pursuit of profits and delight, with direct contact with travel around consumers through vertically built-in travel organizations, they can control particular spots and dominate the flow of visitors. They can pressure hotels to operate in certain ways and negotiate low prices, particularly in beach areas. They favour a standardized product, including the all-inclusive offer, a thoroughly controlled holiday experience where the familiarity of the brand and the reliability of the travelling experience are usually more important than local differentiation. The all-inclusive getaways tourist package allows tour guides and travelling agencies to mix all of the pieces of a destination’s attractions”recreation, foods, food, places to stay, and transportation”into a single merchandise paid for in the point of origin. This kind of limits the participation of local makers and confines the profits to the global North. As the Dominican Republic has followed the all-inclusive breaks model, the earnings per visitor have reduced: per-room spending has rejected from a higher of US$318 in 1982 to the present low of US$154 (UNDP, 2005: 73).

The all-inclusive package is only one element of the wave in technology that has integrated travel and tourism in a circuit that combines surroundings transport, ocean cruises, trips, and car rentals into a globally monopoly. Additional vertical the use of air carriers, car rental, and tour operators have been facilitated by the Internet. four Electronic business in travel and leisure services, which will represents a fresh possibility for online holiday break booking for tourism providers, works to the disadvantage of producing countries, which may have only limited access to the Internet.

Other practices range from the mergers of transnational corporate giants inside the areas of technology, travel, food, and press. HOTELS, CRUISE COMPANIES, AND PROBLEMS In an more and more globalized market, the trend inside the hospitality sector is coming from independently held and owner-operated hotels towards the multinational motel chains that have become the market standard. In the Dominican Republic, hotels using more than 400 bedrooms have the maximum and least volatile occupancy rates (UNDP, 2005: seventy five, Secretaria de Estado sobre Turismo, 2007).

In the places to stay industry, a remarkable amount of consolidation happened in the 1980s, resulting in hotel brands underneath fewer and bigger corporate umbrellas. Major multinational hotel chains have been linked to important acquisitions and mergers (ILO, 2001: 38). Cendant, the largest resort chain on the globe, operates six, 000 resorts with 500, 000 areas. Some significant hotel Downloaded from panel. sagepub. com at University or college of Sheffield on Sept 8, 2011 26 LATIN AMERICAN VIEWPOINTS corporations, including Best Traditional western, operate in almost 100 countries (ILO, 2001: 120). Since the mid-1990s, multinational resort companies going into foreign markets have employed consolidation strategies to strengthen their position vis-a-vis local marketplaces. Furthermore, name brand hotels promote themselves simply by advertising their own products”facilities, facilities, services, and prices”more than any particular country. Because so many corporations strive for a standardized and homogeneous product, one facility is the same as some other, regardless of geographic destination. The disdain for difference and diversity is a part of what a lot of scholars include identified as the “McDisneyization of post-tourism (Ritzer and Liska, 1997).

The promotion of industry control through monopolistic practices is usually noticeable inside the increasing quantity of strategic units aimed at providing diversified services and products that reinforce the motel corporations’ market position. six The ILO (2001) implies that significant multinational organizations such as Hyatt and Starwood are partnering with Microsoft’s Expedia inside the acquisition of new information and communication technology. In the distribution of products and cross-marketing between food service providers and resorts, Marriott and Hilton are actually linked with Pizza Hut.

Strategic alliances among multinationals include distribution and cross-promotion among financial services, credit cards, and resorts. In this area, American Express is now working with Accor Hotels and Visa and American Communicate are combined with Largemouth bass Hotels and Resorts. The consolidation of hotels and transportation means that some accommodations, such as Cendant, have now joined with more than twenty airlines. Cendant’s holdings also include vehicle rental companies, online ticket product sales enterprises just like Orbitz and CheapTickets, and major resort condominiums and real estate coopération.

In multimedia and entertainment, the copromotion of accommodations and motion pictures has put together the resources of industry giants such as Marriott and Largemouth bass Hotels and Resorts with ESPN, Breakthrough, and E-Entertainment (ILO, 2001: 3). The Disney Firm, with its Caribbean Disney Cruises that target most age-groups, have been able to produce all-encompassing corporate control simply by combining cruise ships and airfare with its individual private depopulated Caribbean destinations. 6 Disney cruises characteristic Disney merchandise, entertainment, and films. Through these strategies, cruises run as the supreme product-placement structure.

This presents a significant influence on the region on a number of levels. Not only is a Caribbean the most crucial geographic industry for the cruise sector (ILO, 2001) but that industry is one of the most fancy violators of labor and environmental requirements (Wood, 2000). For example , the majority of its staff come from Southeast and Southern region Asia and therefore are paid income as low as US$1. 55 an hour (Wood, 2000). As a deterritorialized industry, cruiselines are able to avert labor specifications such as lowest wage and restrictions upon overtime which can be established by countrywide laws.

The interaction with actually filled islands is restricted to a few hours of searching for souvenirs. Subsequently, the overall industry for luxury cruise tourism in the Caribbean means lower earnings for areas, since its engagement in the profits is restricted to, at best, several hours of buying in a port community. The increasing horizontally integration of the travel and tourism market is described in the computerized reservation devices, with high access charges, that have rapidly become the market norm. Travel and leisure services will be increasingly Downloaded from lap. sagepub. om at School of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION INSIDE THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 27 being purchased on the Internet by way of three key mechanisms: some type of computer reservations program known as Global Distribution Devices (GDS), thirdparty web sites including Orbitz and Travelocity, and hotel- and airline-owned-and-operated direct booking. GDS is used generally by tour operators and travel agents in destination countries to book not merely travel and accommodations nevertheless other tourism products as well. The cost of GDS fees and technology is usually prohibitive to get small and medium-sized enterprises.

Orbitz, one of the two biggest online travel agents, can be owned by the five biggest U. S. airlines”American, Continental, Delta, Southwest, and Usa. Travelocity is usually owned by simply Sabre Loge, the world’s largest travel and leisure agent concerns system, and GDS (PSTT, 2004). At an impressive rate, consolidation and strategic forces by international corporations possess limited the opportunities intended for small and medium-sized suppliers inside the tourism sector, thereby limiting access to earnings to those lined up with transnational capital.

With few alternatives, largely because of their lack of scientific development and capital, little nation-states simply cannot eliminate these kinds of powerful intermediaries and handle tourists immediately. A number of other structural issues will be associated with the weeknesses of Caribbean destinations plus the impediments for their benefiting from travel development. 1 alarming concern is the “leakage of forex trading earnings in the amount of imported buyer goods needed to sustain the tourism market.

As John Urry (1996: 215) clarifies, “Much holiday investment inside the developing world has the truth is been carried out by large-scale companies situated in North American or perhaps Western The european countries, and the bulk of such holiday expenditure is retained by the transnational companies engaged, only 22″25 percent of the retail selling price remains in the host country.  A major problem is the large import articles of construction material and equipment as well as the many eatable goods instructed to cater to the needs of tourists.

It is difficult to bring community suppliers in the supply string, since the products required by simply tourists is probably not produced regionally, and, when they are, tourists usually reject them (Ashley ainsi que al., 2006). Another method to obtain leakage may be the repatriation of income and profits to metropolitan spots through good tax bonuses created to activate investment (Urry, 1996: 215). Finally, excessive reliance using one industry makes tourist destinations really vulnerable to external markets. Something that weakens demand for a destination undermines the national economic climate.

Circumstances including the September 14 attacks and the weather may generate a considerable downturn in the tourism economic climate. With the acceleration of global weather change, the Dominican Republic, for example , is usually increasingly prone to more powerful and frequent hurricanes. Stronger tropical storms as well as the rise in sea levels might lead to the disappearance and erosion of shorelines? the main engine of the economic climate and a source of livelihood for area. Hurricane Noel in 3 years ago devastated parts of the islands, getting rid of hundreds and generating a great epidemic of leptospirosis. The minister of tourism, Felix Jimenez, reported that information of the outbreak had reflectivity of the gold the nationwide image and that the images of Hurricane Noel’s destruction televised in Europe had led tour operators to cancel charter flights (Hoy, November 25, 2007). Yet , the majority of areas and people directly suffering from the catastrophic effects of the typhoon were these already moving into extreme poverty, certainly not in tourist zones. Downloaded via lap. sagepub. com for University of Sheffield on September eight, 2011 28 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

The government appears more preoccupied having its image compared to creating a great infrastructure that reduces destruction. One category of five, for instance , has been living in a temporary protection since Hurricane Jeanne damaged their home in September 2004 (Listin Confesiones, November twenty, 2007). FOREIGN TOURISM IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC While Barbados, Cuba, and Jamaica produced their travel infrastructure inside the early twentieth century to accommodate North American travellers, the Dominican Republic would not become a traveler destination until close to 70 years later.

The nation’s bad image throughout the era of dictator Rafael Trujillo mirrored fear of a violent politics system. almost 8 The personal instability that followed the U. H. assassination of Trujillo around 1962 and the subsequent invasion and occupation by simply 23, 000 North American soldiers did not support an appealing image of a tropical haven. The physical security of guests, an integral part in the product packaging of tourist destinations, could not become ensured.

In 1966 Joaquin Balaguer, an old crony of Trujillo and an anticommunist ally of the United States, came to power through problem and power. Balaguer’s plan, in concert with multilateral agencies, wanted to capture the U. H. tourist marketplace that had been temporarily displaced because the Cuban Revolution. Through World Bank loans and development packages, the effective structure with the country was transformed as well as its economic technique redirected toward absorbing international investment in tourism. Tax concessions that amounted to more than a decade of duty exemptions to get investment in tourism expansion were structured on Law 153-71. 10 International tourism inside the Dominican Republic grew gradually at the end in the 1960s as a method of generating development without producing large investments in manufacturing and technology. As tourism relies on the packaging of natural property, it was thought to support economical growth through the use of existing resources, such as sandy beaches, a warm and sunny environment, “friendly people,  and native arts and music (Tavares, 1993).

In 1968 the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo established the format of a strategy for the travel and leisure sector (Castellanos de Selig, 1981). In 1971 the Central Bank set up a department for the promotion of tourism expansion to be loaned by the Globe Bank. Through loans and with the technical competence of the World Financial institution and Inter-American Development Lender, in the 1970s the Dominican Republic began to move away from state-led industrialization and sugar toward tourism and free-trade specific zones (Atkins and Wilson, 1998).

The speed of it is incorporation in the global overall economy was facilitated by structural adjustment courses that, for example , devalued the Dominican sobrecarga in 1987 to help the nation compete for foreign purchase. Tourism quickly displaced sugar as the main source of income, and by 1997 it was creating more than half of the country’s total foreign exchange (Jimenez, 1999). The federal government created good tax credits to induce foreign expense with the desired goals of producing career, paying off the other debt, and generating revenue.

In the long term, however , this approach failed to generate sustainable expansion or to boost the well-being of the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com by University of Sheffield in September almost eight, 2011 Cabezas / EXEMPTION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC up to 29 majority of the citizenry. National elites have taken advantage of, as the increasing polarization of profits indicates, nevertheless the majority of the citizenry has been relegated to positions of servility in a competitive labor industry that provides predominantly low-paid, seasons, and volatile jobs.

EXCLUSION AND MARGINALIZATION OF THE LABOR FORCE The fermage of labor and organic resources in beachfront areas is particularly serious on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, where the environment is exhibiting signs of degradation due to the extensive development that has taken place in the area. Above 95 percent of the places operate under the all-inclusive enclave model (Departamento de Estadisticas, interview, ASONAHORES, October 2005), and over 60 percent utilize time-share portion (ASONAHORES, 2004). Enclave places have a reputation to be “gilded ghettoes? egregated places that leave out Dominicans although providing luxury accommodations to foreigners. The resorts are small metropolitan areas and, consequently, are developed with all types of facilities (UNDP, 2005: 68). They represent foreign, special spaces that keep vacationers from discovering the local lower income that might make them uncomfortable and keep them coming from wanting to stay in the country. The most up-to-date development structure, the 30, 000-acre mega-resort Cap Prisión, features four luxury hotels such as Ritz Carlton, apartments, cottages, five the game of golf courses, condominiums, boutiques, restaurants, a conference center, and a marina.

This resort complex will target the high-end marketplace instead of the mass tourism marketplace that the nation has wanted for decades. These types of tourism substances provide electricity, sewerage, paved roads, and plumming for their pleasure- and leisure-oriented guests, but basic facilities development in the country remains disorderly, lacking planning, development, and environmental control. Shantytowns frequently lack plumbing related, electricity, and paved roads. This neglect symbolizes a hidden price to the number society and a urther appropriation of social and environmental solutions by foreign capital. 11 The Un Human Expansion Report intended for the Dominican Republic (UNDP, 2005) signifies that the travel and leisure labor force is made up primarily of young girls, over half of them youthful than 39 and with fewer than 8-10 years of training (UNDP, june 2006: 77). The salary to get tourism employees is under the national normal (UNDP, june 2006: 78), with women making approximately sixty-eight percent of the man’s income in the industry.

Women are almost absent by supervisory and management positions. This shows an industry tradition, for, while the ILO (2001: 86) points out, women globally include little entry to the higher amounts of corporate supervision in the hotel, catering, and tourism sector. Globally, girls also encounter income disparities vis-a-vis guys at all degrees of hotel, wedding caterers, and travel and leisure employment. They generally occupy the lower echelons inside the tourism labor market, with few profession opportunities and low levels of remuneration.

Whilst Dominican women experience increased vulnerability and gender splendour in the workforce, Dominican males are out of place and omitted from employment and important participation. Camilo, an informal traveler guide in his late twenties, has been working for the past 10 years in activities Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on Sept 8, 2011 30 LATINA AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEWS connected with travel. He and also other guides nonproductive outside of the Playa Dorada resort sophisticated hoping to befriend the rare tourist or perhaps, better, traveler group that ventures beyond the all-inclusive beach compound on foot.

The modus operandi of those well-dressed young men is to approach foreigners with multiple offers”for example, to dine with them by a typical Dominican restaurant, to demonstrate them about town, also to teach them how to dance merengue. The morning that I attained Camilo, he was angry to know that resort’s management had been making disparaging comments regarding Dominicans during orientation gatherings for their friends. He discussed: I want to combat against the deficiency of information or perhaps disinformation regarding Dominicans and the Dominican Republic.

I would like to experience a crew privately filming in the hotel, and I want to deliver that to the national mass media. The brokers of these businesses are chatting bad about us, about approaches, assassinations, and so on things. Were walking guides, we provide something. My friends and i also speak diverse languages. Why is it that all the hotels and the travel agencies and the stores in the places have to use foreigners to work right now there? Why, merely speak The german language, I can guard myself in Italian, We am exceptional in British? I can sell anything in German.

It can be something that I really do not figure out. If I head to Germany, they do not let me work. I used to sell horseback riding travels, now all of the are held by Germans. They are displacing us in our own country. Camilo’s statements address the massive displacement of Dominican workers. With the most resorts maintained by expatriates, many of whom do not appreciate the cultural, sociable, and economical realities from the countries by which they job, locals happen to be frustrated by deficiency of respect approved them simply by foreigners plus the severe competition for the tourist industry.

Camilo acquired started out using a small business that took visitors on horseback riding trips and had been required out of the market when the areas begun giving these excursions to their friends. Such shift has led many citizens to seem like foreigners within their native area. Most areas keep the community populations away with people who are employed in the security sector and by requiring guests to put on wrist-bands throughout their stay. Treated like outsiders, Dominicans are turned apart at the front gateway unless offered as personnel.

This exemption positions Dominican labor as being a marginalized and deterritorialized labor force, performing tasks and features similar to individuals they would perform as foreign, undocumented staff in Europe or America. The common practice of the holiday resort enclaves in the Caribbean place of enrolling top supervision and skilled labor by Western The european countries and the United states of america means that Dominicans seldom operate positions of management or perhaps as chefs in the areas, and, because Camilo mentions, they are possibly excluded by retail functions.

These exclusionary practices marginalize the local population”not just the doing work class nevertheless also country wide trained professionals and mid-level managers. Dominican men will be relegated to service labor such as work in accommodations, reception, security, and grounds-keeping or perhaps, as Camilo does, scraping out money in shaky and conditional activities in the informal sector. Gender as well creates labor hierarchies within just hotels. Dominican men are excluded via management, although gender stereotypes also let them have access to positions with more possibilities for gratuities, such as bartenders and baggage

Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield in September almost 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC thirty-one handler. Dominican women, in contrast, are employed in gender-designated positions of domesticity such as house cleaning. There are few opportunities to get Dominicans to participate straight in the travel and leisure economy. To escape this dilemma, many cultivate relationships of companionship, camaraderie, and romance with tourists and other foreign people as a way to get the global economy, travel to a global North, and improve their lives.

Many relationships between Dominican women and international men associate intimate, efficient relations with economic activity, but others emphasize repayment for intimate services. Although some studies reveal that Caribbean formal travel workers have sexual intercourse with tourists in the places (Cabezas, 2004, CEPROSH, 1997, Crick, 2001), many more reviews reveal it is people hustling in the informal economy who provide tourists with sex and affective exchanges (Herold et al. 2001, Padilla, 2007, Gregory, 2007).

In the Dominican Republic the teenage boys are popularly known as sanky panky, heterosexually identified men who provide romance, company, and sex to women and men. These new sexual composition have also made an appearance in other touristdependent islands just like Jamaica (rent-a-dreads), Barbados (beach boys) and Cuba (pingueros and jineteros) (Hodge, 2002). Although many guys are able to take advantage of foreigners’ dreams of racial eroticism to improve their your life chances and masculinity, girls that use intimate relationships with foreigners to compliment their homes bear great burden of judgment and riminalization (Cabezas, 2005, 2005). It really is primarily working-class women of color who have bear the burden of state-inflicted violence, nuisance, extortion, and rape (Cabezas, 1999, 2005). Miriam, a 23-year-old mom of two, had one particular child when ever she attained the father of her youngest, a travelling African-American police officer from Ny in his later thirties. Ruben visits Miriam often and sends about US$60 a month to support his eight-month-old daughter. However , Miriam must always seek out associations with international and local guys to health supplement his support.

Her oldest daughter features liver disease, and the doctor sessions and medication will be costly. She tells me bravely, “From good luck and loss of life no one can escape.  Johanna, a 20-year-old single mother of two, cannot get any type of operate that would let her to compliment her mom and twins. She was fired from her task as a waitress when the lady got pregnant and started out selling sex to international men whom live or perhaps vacation in Boca V. Her aim is to meet up with a visitor who will offer her with travel to a foreign country. Anywhere is better than right here,  she tells me. Once i asked her if your woman was anxious by studies of sexual trafficking or other forms of exploitation that can potentially take place in a country where she understands no one, your woman looked down and replied intensely, “I have to imagine risk, since here I am going to either move crazy or perhaps die of hunger.  HIV/AIDS Discussions of travelling associated with job or leisure have significantly pointed towards the risks linked to mobility and HIV/AIDS. a couple of Paul Farmer (1992) offers argued the HIV computer virus was brought to Haiti by simply gay American men touring on the island, as well as the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre indicates Downloaded via lap. sagepub. com in University of Sheffield in September almost eight, 2011 32 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES that the is true to get the Carribbean as a whole (Camara, 2001) and that the countries which have been the most economically dependent on tourism in the region have the highest prevalence of HIV cases (Camara, 2001, Padilla, 2007: 171).

Padilla (2007) maintains that tourism in the Dominican Republic “continues to function as a significant source of fresh attacks, exerting an ongoing influence on the scope and impact of AIDS in specific locales.  This assertion is affirmed by the UNDP report (2005: 85), signifies that the areas with the maximum incidence of HIV in the country are also individuals with the highest costs of travel and leisure. However , there is little prevention education concentrating on tourism-sector personnel.

Padilla states that this is due to the fear of fostering a bad image that can potentially “contradict the fantasy, exoticism, and consequence-free environment that compose at least part of the travel and leisure package wanted to foreigners (2007: 172). The women informants pertaining to my analyze, who worked primarily with tourists, had been adamant in attesting to their use of condoms and capacity offers of unsafe sexual intercourse for higher compensation. Mari explained, “This is my body, it is the just thing I am able to count on to back up my children.

I’m not going to risk anything for a few extra dollars. They cannot pay me enough.  Another female exclaimed, “If I get sick, are they going to take care of me personally? Are they gonna take care of my own children?  These statements are representative of what many women explained, however , a couple of caveats are in order. Initially, the women We interviewed had been associated with MODEMU and CEPROSH, two businesses that provide peer-to-peer safer-sex education. Also, Puerto Plata provides a governmentmandated plan of condom use in love-making establishments (Haddock, 2007).

These types of women had been educated and aware of the dangers of vulnerable, unguarded, isolated, exposed, unshielded, at risk sex. Second, most of the ladies identified together with the term “sex worker,  meaning that many of their relationships with foreign people were direct sex-for-money exchanges. Women who participate in less rigidly structured plus more ambiguous associations, in which the circumstances of the exchange deemphasize economic factors, may take more hazards to provide evidence that they are not “from the road.  Analysis from the Caribbean also confounds easy presumptions about lovemaking identity, intimate practice, and HIV/AIDS.

Padilla’s (2007) research in the Dominican Republic and that of Fosado (2004) and Hodge (2002) from Cuba testify for the difficulty of categorizing the mode of HIV tranny in these countries as “heterosexual,  given the growth of same-sex male sex work together with tourists. The political overall economy of tourism serves as the context intended for straightidentified men to engage in same-sex relations with overseas men to aid wives, female friends, and family members. The notion of sex employees as vectors of disease also needs to end up being reexamined. My own research with 30 girls infected with HIV/AIDS, who worked in sex stablishments serving a predominantly Dominican clientele in Santo Domingo, indicates that most were contaminated by their partners or frequent boyfriends, with whom they did not use safer-sex tactics. Thus far, all the women that I have interviewed claim to make use of condoms to get protection using their clients also to let their very own guard down with regular partners. Third, many of the small single personnel are internal migrants to tourist areas and are very likely to engage in riskier practices and also have a significantly less stable lifestyle (UNDP, 2005). There are handful of educational and prevention programs to target this population.

They are two areas in which more research is needed. Downloaded coming from lap. sagepub. com by University of Sheffield in September eight, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 33 CONCLUSION Handful of viable alternatives exist to the present structure of travel, leisure time, and travel, which consigns people inside the South to poorly remunerated labor. The Dominican Republic, along with other Carribbean nations, allures foreign expenditure by offering a low-cost work force, tax faveur, and other bonuses, but tourism denies almost all its employees “decent job. 13 The squeezing of labor electricity and all-natural resources has left the country which has a massive tourism infrastructure, with more than 60, 000 hotel rooms, and over 3 , 000, 000 pleasure guests a year (Secretaria de Estado de Turismo, 2004″2007) in an ecology of disaster. These kinds of figures always grow every year without concern for the standard of life of Dominicans. Most people are relegated, at best, to positions of servitude in low-paid jobs in the formal sector, underemployment, or shaky activities inside the informal sector that include the commoditization of sexuality and affective relationships.

Dominicans desire being amusement travelers, possessing decent jobs, and acquiring a better foreseeable future for their kids, but the transnational tourism market cannot provide them respectable wages and higher specifications of living. Various college students have recorded the genius and ingenuity of the Carribbean people in acting on the tourism system (Cabezas, 2005, Fosado, 2004, Padilla, 2007), but the options and potential for significant democratization are modest or lack of.

Tourism may well provide the opportunity for people through the global North to re-create themselves, but people in the South get access to this opportunity only through sexual exchanges that place their lives at risk. Testing leisure travelling is what every single native needs to dispel the tropical doldrums. NOTES 1 ) Tourism and travel are considered export-oriented services. 2 . Progressively tourism is among the world’s major generators of jobs. The WTTC (2005) calculates that the sector accounted for 10 percent of total job in 97 worldwide and is also expected to generate an estimated 328 million careers by 2010.. The UNDP (2005) is rather critical of the all-inclusive model of development inside the Dominican Republic. It disagrees that this version offers a homogeneous merchandise marked by stereotypical photo based on sunlight, sand, and sea, a tourism merchandise with establishments that face away from neighborhood populations and one seen as a constant competition and lack of state control. While I support this spatially concentrated type of development plus the general segregation of travelers from local populations, my personal point here is to express matter for having less human capital development of the people.

Further, tourism development generally promotes a “slash, burn up, and push on method of the environment. Enjoyment travel in the Dominican Republic follows the pattern of exploitation of natural resources and affordable labor widespread in neocolonial regimes whereby transnational finance capital and native elites take advantage of these structures and the residents are remaining to go through the consequences. 4. According to just one estimate, 33″50 percent of websites use is based on tourism (ILO, 2001). a few. The trend in consolidation can be evident in ILO’s info (2001). That maintains that in 1999 the 10 biggest companies handled 2 . 4 million rooms but by simply 2000 being unfaithful giants handled 2 . 98 million rooms in hotels. 6. In the Caribbean, of the eight significant cruise lines working, “six personal their own exclusive islands that they can include among all of their ports of call (Wood, 2000: 361). 7. Leptospirosis is caused by a bacterium, Leptospira, that can be sent through exposure to water, food, or dirt containing the urine of infected pets. The epidemic had killed 27 persons by November 20, 3 years ago. Downloaded by lap. sagepub. com in University of Sheffield about September eight, 2011 34 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES eight. Trujillo was dictator from 1930 to 1961.

His regime was characterized by serious violence and repression, the massacre of 12, 500 Haitians in 1938, plus the accumulation of immense personal wealth. He created express structures and placed his cronies in offices within just them to perpetuate his electricity (Betances and Spalding, 1995). 9. Various multilateral companies created particular units for the evaluation, approval, and funding in the projects of member countries. In the 1960s the Inter-American Expansion Bank, the U. S. Agency for International Expansion, and the Globe Bank, for instance , directed all their lending in Latin America toward travel development (Monge, 1973).

The corporation of American Declares also offered financial resources for tourism expansion. All these work were enhanced in the Dominican Republic legally 153, which usually granted tax concessions to tourism investors and companies. Thus international entities got the lead in creating highly good conditions to get foreign expense. 10. The legislation that governs these kinds of practices set up an incentive system to induce development in the tourism sector by providing a primary 10-year 100 percent tax exemption on profits, imports, and construction. eleven.

Environmental costs are paid for entirely by the local population, since the enforcement of environmental regulations is nearly nonexistent (see UNDP, 2005: 86″87, Gregory, 2007). doze. The United Nations (2004) epidemiological report signifies that the Dominican Republic had an estimated adult rate of HIV illness of 1. six percent and Puerto Plata one of 8 percent. Recent surveys suggest that the problem rate continues to be reduced to 0. 8 percent (Listin Diario, January 1, 2007), but the northeast coast remains one of the areas while using highest costs. 3. The definition of “decent work is used by the ILO (1999: 4) to capture the notion of quality employment that can give basic security to workers. REFERENCES Ashley, Caroline, Harold Goodwin, Douglas McNab, Mareba Scott, and Luis Chaves 2006 “Making tourism rely for the local economy inside the Caribbean: rules for good practice.  http://www. propoortourism. org. uk/caribbean/caribbean-whole. pdf file. ASONAHORES (Asociacion Nacional sobre Hoteles y Restaurantes, Inc. ) 2004 Estadisticas seleccionadas del sector turismo ano 2004. Imagen Domingo. Atkins, G.

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