Abstract

BERLANGA ADELL, MARÍA JESÚS  and  OCHOA OCHO, MARITZA ELIZABETH. Community-based tourism as a development tool for indigenous peoples: questions in the case of the Shuar of Alto Nangaritza (Ecuador). Hallazgos [online]. 2020, vol.17, n.34, pp.55-78.  Epub Sep 01, 2020. ISSN 1794-3841.  https://doi.org/10.15332/2422409x.5450.

In this article we analyze community-based tourism as a potential development instrument for lo- cal populations. Since the 1980s, some indigenous groups in Ecuador have launched various com- munity-based tourism initiatives. After making a lengthy anthropological fieldwork in the area Alto Nangaritza (Ecuador), our objective is to show the contradictions that community-based tourism represents for local populations, specifically for the Shuar communities in the region. Faced with a tourism that aims to empower communities, by developing in increasingly unstructured social environments, this activity ends up promoting an individualism that progressively deteriorates community values. This experience shows us how community-based tourism requires the prior strengthening of community structures and the implementation of an organizational system of co- llective control of the benefits derived from this activity.

Keywords : indigenous communities; Ecuador; impacts; community-based tourism.

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