What's next?! St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

This semester, Rebecca and I are enrolled in Leadership and Sustainable Development, a class that is mostly online, but also meets a few Saturdays out of the semester, that travels to St. Croix, an island in the Caribbean to interact with members Cruzan society who will speak to the class about economic and sustainable development and environmental protection. As I did in Jordan (see below), we'll have the opportunity to interact with laypeople, taxi drivers, bartenders, etc. to talk to them about life on the island and in the region.

So, I figured I'd update this blog during the trip - maybe drum up some page views before another summer of travel and adventure. The region is exemplary of neocolonialism, historical inequality, and the externalities of free global trade, something often free only to corporations and not to labor.

To start it off, I'm throwing in the below essay I just finished for the class. Its meant to point out the negative effects of tourism. Yes, its a tad sensationalist but that's the point. I'm flying out this Saturday, so expect a few posts the week of March 17 through the 24.

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So You Think You’re Helping?

“Tourists came around and looked into our tipis. That those were the homes we choose to live in didn’t bother them at all. They untied the door, opened the flap, barged right in, touching our things, poking through our bedrolls, inspecting everything. It boggles my mind that tourists feel they have the god-given right to intrude ever.”

- Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means

Overview

Though he is not from the Caribbean, Mean’s words are no less meaningful. There is an assumption made on behalf of economically stagnant but environmentally exotic locations that tourism can and should be their economic savior. Ignoring the complexities of global trade and economic policy, economists point out that tourism is the only solution for locations that cannot grow their own food, have no real manufacturing base, or have other poverty inducing conditions.

Tourism is not a panacea. The industry is not separate from the place it profits from. In fact, it very distinctly shapes cultural evolution over time. The definition of tourist: noun, a person who is traveling or visiting a place for pleasure. Pleasure is what tourists seek to find when arrive in what has been marketed to them as an island-paradise. What happens when tourists do not find pleasure? Local economies reliant on tourism manufacture it.

Culture adapts. Food and drink needs to be just exotic enough to fascinate the wide-eyed, sunburnt, drunken tourist but not enough to scare them off. The tourist expects some sort of cultural immersion, despite their cruise ship’s arrival and departure being only a few short hours apart, and the happy-go-lucky local will put on a show, even though that particular ritual only happens on high holy days or with the death of a relative. Adaptation leads to commodification.

Nothing is genuine and heartfelt anymore. Everything is a good to be traded or sold in order to encourage the now hung-over, bloated tourist to tell his or her friends to come to (insert destination here) where they even serve Coronas and there is a Burger King down the street. This continues over time, subjugating local residents and native-born inhabitants to the staging a dog and pony that their ancestors would be ashamed to see, with low-wages, perpetuated income inequality, and cultural degradation being the socio-economic order of the day.

While the aforementioned tourist passes out in his air-conditioned cabin on a cruise ship to his next scheduled “cultural” immersion, only one-fifth of the money he or she has spent over the course of their vacation makes it into the economies of the places they visited.

How many thousands of dollars did they pay to their airline company, cruise line, or all-inclusive resort owned by a company based in their home country? What percentage of the cost of last night’s ten Coronas goes into the pocket of the local bartender and how much went to paying for the import of said Coronas to an island that brews its own beer, but a beer that tourists have not taken a liking to? What percentage of the sum total of dollars spent go into the pockets of the local residents who need more disposable income? And how much go into the pockets of already-wealthy resort owners, both local and international?

The environment is a topic of its own. Pollution, undue stress on local waste management systems, on top of overuse of already low-levels of potable water are all factors that the tourist uploading photos to Facebook has never even thought of, let alone concerned him or herself with.

Opinion Statement

This essay, filled with hypothetical questions, generalizations about tourists, and worst-case scenarios is meant to prove a point. Nothing should be taken at face value and everything has layers upon layers of complexity worth questioning. If we accept that tourism is the only viable economic engine for places like St. Croix, USVI, then we have two choices: ignore the externalities or understand and acknowledge them and do our best to rectify and prevent them. I believe tourism is the easiest way to generate revenue for islands in the Caribbean but not at the expense of local culture and life for tourists’ amusement.