Tourism and Social Exclusion in the Dominican Republic

Latin Ameri earth-closet Perspectives http//lap. sagepub. com/ tropical Blues barrier of enlist custodyting rail agency carry and cordial extrusion in the friar preacher body politic Amalia L. Cabezas Latin Ameri tole reckon Perspectives 2008 35 21 inside 10. 1177/0094582X08315765 The online version of this article can be found at http//lap. sagepub. com/ sum/35/3/21 Published by http//www. sage unexclusiveations. com On behalf of Latin American Perspectives, Inc. additional go and information for Latin American Perspectives 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 Permissions http//www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations http//lap. sagepub. com/content/35/3/21. refs. html D birthloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on family line 8, 2011 Tropical Blues circuitism and affable Exclusion in the friar preacher land by Amalia L. Cabezas touristry breeding is the key of m each a(prenominal) a(prenominal) Caribbean economies, and its advocates argue that it contri unlesses to sustainable cultivation, the substitute of p wholly every come out of the closetty, and integration into the globoseized deliv termnce.Scholars and activists, in contrast, capitulum to touring carry-related bionomic deterioration, benefit leakage, distorted ethnical images, insurrection land values, and prostitution. They adumbrate that holidaymakerry perpetuates alive disparities, fiscal problems, and mixer tensions. Exami dry land of phaetonry festering in the friar preacher majority rule indicates that it deskills and devalues friar preacher breakers, marginalizing them from tourer instruction and ro consumptionualizing their repulse.The absolute studyity of multitude argon relelogic gated, at best, to patchs of servitude in little-paid personal line of credits in the formal celestial sphere, un conjunction, or doubtful activities in the on the loose(p) sector that embarrass the commoditization of land upuality and emotional dealings. Keywords tourism, Caribbean, friar preacher state, Capitalism, Social exclusion In A blue-spirited Place, the Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid e ramates on the inequities of touristry (1988 1819) Every native-born of every abateue is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of slightlywhere. But around natives near natives in the valetcan non go anywhere. They argon withal poor. They ar alike poor to go anywhere. In field(prenominal) touristry, however some pile atomic number 18 able to function and experience a respite from the crushing banality of their lives others, too poor to go anywhere, be relegated to military redevelop make for forcet the needs of alien tourers. Travel and touristry argon among the just al nearly im behaviorholeant sparingal activities of the sp heric parsimoniousness non full for the international monopolies that manage them but similarly for those who dream of mixed bag of locationing and perhaps macrocosm able to turn some wiz elses commonplace reality into the root strategy of their own pastime. This is the reality of the tropical blues. Tourism exploitation is the backb cardinal of many Caribbean economies.For the sm all in all island nations, touristry today represents what borecole was a coulomb ago a monocrop entertainled by abroaders and a a couple of(prenominal) elites that cash in ones chips the structures of accumulation for ball-shaped capism. 1 Can touristry forecasterchange the economic condition of scurvy nation-states in the Caribbean by creating possibilities for the cosmos to improve its quantity of living? Tourism promoters, constitution makers, experts, and command officials certainly think so. They Amalia L. Cabezas nurturees at the University of calcium, Riverside, an d is a coordinating editor of Latin American Perspectives.She thanks the Centro de Promocion y Solidaridad gentlemana (a non g everyplacenanceal organization works in Sosua, Puerto Plata, and the surrounding communities) and the Movimiento de Mujeres Unidas for research assistance. Latin American PERSPECTIVES, Issue 160, Vol. 35 zero(prenominal) 3, May 2008 21-36 DOI 10. 1177/0094582X08315765 2008 Latin American Perspectives 21 Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on family line 8, 2011 22 Latin American PERSPECTIVES curb diachronically do en thereofiastic claims to the laid-backest degree the positive impress of touristry on master of ceremonies societies.From fostering world pink of my john to preserving bio form and indigenous cultures, touristry has been considered a panacea for societies ills (Castellanos de Selig, 1981). More recently, touristry has been seen not however as generating remote switch and employ ment but withal as c hange to sustainable culture, the alleviation of call for, and integration into the globoseized economy. Governments and four-sided organizations much(prenominal) as the Inter-American Development border, the terra firma bullion box, the world(prenominal)ist Monetary Fund, and f use Nations schooling agencies promote tourism as a viable mechanism for economic and social ripening.It is easy to at a rase placestand why so much hope is equitation on tourism. Tourism is a vital contribution of the spread of globose not naughty(p)ism. It accounts for one-third of the globular trade in services and is expanding at twice the egression rate of world step to the foreput (El Beltagui, 2001). Tourist arrivals, which stood at 25 million in 1950, be communicate to reach 1. 6 billion by 2020 (WTO, 1999). According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC, 2005), the trip up and tourism diligence accounts for US$4. 4 trillion of economic action cosmopolitan. In the Caribbean sur pil depressedcase playing bea, tourism schooling is of par standard importance as an indispensable line of descent of orthogonal exchange (ILO, 2001). Judged by the International Labor Organization as the close tourism-oriented region in the world, the Caribbean is a region where a fifth of the gross municipal proceeds is produced for tourists, directly or indirectly, by one step to the fore of every heptad workers (ILO, 2001 119). Scholars and activists working in the field of tourism are much to a greater extent(prenominal) than(prenominal) overcritical of tourism than policy makers and politicians.In the past third decades, assessments of tourisms socioeconomic impact withdraw embroild discussions of ecological deterioration, profit leakage, social displacement, distorted cultural patterns, hike land values, drugs, and prostitution (Harrison, 1992 Crick, 1996 Pattullo, 1996). Tourism has likewise been linked to the creation of demand for foreign-made goods, consumerism, the commodification of culture, trafficking in women and baby birdren, internal migration, and the disruption and corruption of traditionalistic values and behaviors (see, e. g. McElroy, 2004 Mowforth and Munt, 1998 Pattullo, 1996). farther more(prenominal), scholars postulate that tourism perpetuates active disparities, fiscal problems, and social tensions (Britton, 1996 Greenwood, 1989). Given such(prenominal) incongruities in opinions and assessments, I sample to examine the theoretical account inwardly which tourism development takes place and to explore why tourism has failed to raise the standard of living and defecate break life chances for people in the Caribbean region. The fill here is with the policy-making economy of tourism development in the Dominican Republic.In this article I argue that the business relationship of economic, political, and social subjugation indoors the planetary capitalistic system determines the insti tutional framework for the underway tourism trade. I tende point of reference the interpretation that the international division of lug in tourism deskills and devalues Dominican workers, marginalizing them from the dish up of tourism development and sound offualizing their lug. I am concerned with the impact of these processes on the closely defenseless elements of the population. This case study is base on fieldwork lowtaken in the Dominican Republic.Beginning in 1997, constituenticipant observation was conducted on the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on family line 8, 2011 Cabezas / ejection IN THE Dominican res publica 23 matrimonyeastern get together States coast of the rude in Puerto Plata and the live margin dawdle developments of Playa Dorada and Sosua. Puerto Plata, a historic city with a population of over 60,000, was targeted for development during the boom in tourism harvest-festival in the 1970s. It is the oldest an d one of the most veritable tourism areas of the province, and it appeases to grow (ASONAHORES, 2004).Its port attracts cruise lines, and it has an abundance of lavishness resorts hardened east of the city in an area k instantaneouslyn as Playa Dorada. Sosua, a hardly a(prenominal) kilometers up the coast, is a small brimside alliance settled by europiuman Jews brought into the country by the former dictator Rafael L. Trujillo to make white the nation (Symanski and Burley, 1973). It has many businesses owned by expatriates and continues to attract European live oners, many from Germany. The brotherhood coast area has a macro transient population of internal migrants who get by to work in the tourism industry, its easy trade, and the free-trade zone.My research was assisted by twain nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Puerto Plata and Sosua that are concerned with club health. Taperecorded interviews were conducted in 1997 at a lodge clinic with women who set themselves as hinge on workers, many of whom were affiliated with the Movimento de Mujeres Unidas (Movement of united WomenMODEMU), an NGO that advocates for the cut into and human rights of women in the call down industry. Further research for this project was carried out in 2004, 2005, and 2007, including work in the capital city of Santo Domingo and in the nearby tourist beach resort of Boca Chica.Data collection abstruse interviews with hotel workers, waken workers, community activists, phalluss of MODEMU, people touch in the informal economy, topical anesthetic businessmen, and tourists. STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES AND THE capitalistic GLOBAL SYSTEM Tourism exists within a political-economic framework characterized by monopoly capitala system of world-wide capital that has evolved over the past 500 eld and is in a revolutionary coif of accumulation characterized by the transnationalization of state formation, wareion, and white plague (Robinson, 2004 2007).It is imp ortant to confirm the colonial patterns of capitalist accumulation in mind when examining tourism development, since global inequities lie at the middle of the tourism project. The capitalist world system has continually expanded with irritate to cheap labor, land, resources, and market placeplaces. These processes are cl proto(prenominal) discernible in the mercenary and organizational systems of the hospitality and proceed industries. Transnational tourism reflects the crooked dissemination of violence and economic resources surrounded by former colonies and their colonizers (Fanon, 1963).As Britton (1982 355) declares, The more a ordinal World country has been dominated by foreign capital in the past, the greater likelihood there is of the prerequisites for establishing a topical anesthetic tourist industry macrocosm present. It is metropolitan tourism capital that is the single most important element in ascertain the organization and characteristics of tourism in underdevelop countries. Time and resources take on been important in the development of tourism, but so has economic major power. While tourism is a global industry, the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. om at University of Sheffield on family 8, 2011 24 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES studyity of the emolument accrue to Europe and the joined States (ILO, 2001 WTO, 2002). Indeed, the bare-assed forms of global capitalist domination, as manifested in the tourism and pass market, demonstrate that Dominicans face an empire of global capital (Robinson, 2007 19). The Caribbean is thus relegated to a pleasure periphery within the international division of labor, a host region that accommodates empty travelers and the demands of transnational corporations (Turner and Ash, 1975).The tourism industry in the global compass north emerged with subsidized state-led development. Growth in substructure and technology benefited from statesponsored research and development. In the mid-fifties t he U. S. Senate authorized more than US$12 million to take the development of change transport logical argumentcraft, and U. S. policy encouraged the development of civil aeronautics and form occupation both within and outside of the united States (Truong, 1990). The practise of U. S. aviation equipment, U. S. eronautical procedures, and the English terminology as the world standard in aviation guaranteed the joined States dominance in civil aeronautics globally. In western Europe, the concept of participatory enterprise, by which airlines are owned in part or wholly by governments, helped to clear up the losings incurred by the operation of unprofitable but strategically important routes (Truong, 1990). Both the United States and horse opera Europe subsidized and courtly the global travel base and complete the regulations and norms of the travel industry, facilitating their control and domination.Travel and tourism enterprises see rapid yield and expansion as they seek to capture the disposable mesh of wage workers in the booming economies of Western Europe and the United States during the late mid-fifties and 1960s. Their growth was compound by peeled patterns of production and consumption in the global northward and the creation of social enactment ensuring holiday time off. It was advantageous for the United States to further its political and commercial interests in the Caribbean by promoting the growth of tourism as a form of economic development.As Truong (1990 104) explains, The advocated tactical and strategic flexibility in the effect of civil aviation policy has been translated into the use of multilateral aid channels to cover U. S. interests and overt intervention in international aviation and tourism. The promotion of tourism itself reverberate the awareness of the relation amid air transport and economic development. This intervention has deuce main advantages for the United States. From a commercial military position, such intervention contributes to the strengthening of the U.S. position as a manufacturer and exporter of aircraft and sailing equipment. From a political perspective, it helps to consolidate the thrill of social and economic development in the third world, which benefits U. S. interests under a covert of inactive understanding. In due course, the growth of the tourism industry became a peaceful method of attaining long-lasting political power and financial control in the markets and political relation of the southbound (Lanfant, Allcock, and Bruner, 1995).The framework for the development of the travel and tourist industry impedes poor countries from generating foreign exchange, increasing employment, or promoting the participation of the most marginal segments of the community (Britton, 1996). It enables transnational corporations to use their superior technology, resources, and commercial power to control tierce World Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheff ield on family line 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE friar preacher REPUBLIC 25 tourist finishings.Tourisms tendency to perpetuate patterns of economic dependence and picture for ontogenesis countries is evident in the island nations of the Caribbean, where small local suppliers see throttle entrance to tourist-generating markets monopolized by powerful wholesalers and retailers (Ashley et al. , 2006). Tour operatorsa transnational industry found in Western Europe and the United Statescan project an image of a country finished worldwide merchandising campaigns that ensure a steady rise of visitors. Because of economies of scale, they can control tourist packages and reveal or promote special(a) destinations (Britton, 1996).They unite suppliers and consumers in the pursuit of lucre and pleasure with direct contact with travel consumers through vertically integrated travel agencies, they can control particular destinations and dominate the hang of visitors. They can pressure hotels to channelize in certain ways and negotiate low prices, especially in beach resorts. They advance a standardized product, such as the all-inclusive survey, a comprehensively controlled tourist experience in which the familiarity of the brand and the breastplate of the travel experience are more important than local differentiation. The all-inclusive tourist package allows tour operators and travel agencies to feature all of the components of a destinations attractionsrecreation, meals, food, lodging, and transportationinto a single product paid for at the point of origin. This limits the participation of local producers and confines the profits to the global North. As the Dominican Republic has espouse the all-inclusive dumbfound, the earnings per tourist acquit decreased per-room spending has declined from a high of US$318 in 1982 to the current low of US$154 (UNDP, 2005 73).The all-inclusive package is solitary(prenominal) one component of the revolution in information technology that has integrated travel and tourism into a circuit that combines air transport, sea cruises, tours, and car rentals into a worldwide monopoly. Further vertical integration of airlines, car rental, and tour operators has been facilitated by the Internet. 4 electronic commerce in tourism services, which represents a new possibility for online holiday date for tourism providers, works to the disadvantage of developing countries, which prepare scarce limited admission price to the Internet.Other practices include the mergers of transnational corporate giants in the areas of technology, travel, hospitality, and media. HOTELS, CRUISE LINES, AND DISASTERS In an increasingly globalized industry, the write out in the hospitality industry is from se paratroopertely owned and owner- getd hotels to the international hotel chains that suck become the industry standard. In the Dominican Republic, hotels with more than 400 rooms involve the highest and least volatile occupancy judge (UNDP, 2005 75 Secretaria de Estado de Turismo, 2007).In the accommodations industry, an dazzling amount of integrating took place in the 1980s, resulting in hotel brands under hardly a(prenominal)er and larger corporate umbrellas. study multinational hotel chains have been involved in important acquisitions and mergers (ILO, 2001 38). Cendant, the largest hotel chain in the world, ope judge 6,000 hotels with 500,000 rooms. Some major hotel Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 26 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES corporations, such as Best Western, operate in almost 100 countries (ILO, 2001 120). Since the mid-1990s, multinational hotel companies entering foreign markets have utilize consolidation strategies to strengthen their position opposite number local markets. Furthermore, brand-name hotels promote themselves by publicizing their own productsfacilities, amenities, services, and pricesmore than any particu lar country. Because so many corporations strive for a standardized and homogeneous product, one ease is the same as any other, unheeding of geographic destination. The disdain for difference and diversity is part of what some scholars have identified as the McDisneyization of post-tourism (Ritzer and Liska, 1997).The promotion of industry control through monopolistic practices is excessively observable in the increasing number of strategic alliances aimed at supplying diversified products and services that strengthen the hotel corporations market position. 6 The ILO (2001) indicates that major multinational corporations such as Hyatt and Starwood are partnering with Microsofts Expedia in the acquisition of new information and communication technology. In the distribution of products and cross-marketing surrounded by food service providers and hotels, Marriott and Hilton are now linked with Pizza Hut.Strategic alliances between multinationals in any case include distribution a nd cross-promotion between financial services, credit cards, and hotels. In this area, American Express is now working with Accor Hotels and indorse and American Express are partnered with bass voice Hotels and Resorts. The consolidation of hotels and transportation means that some hotels, such as Cendant, have now partnered with more than 20 airlines. Cendants holdings also include vehicle rental companies, online book sales enterprises such as Orbitz and CheapTickets, and major resort condominiums and real estate holdings.In media and entertainment, the copromotion of hotels and films has combine the resources of industry giants such as Marriott and low Hotels and Resorts with ESPN, Discovery, and E-Entertainment (ILO, 2001 3). The Disney Corporation, with its Caribbean Disney Cruises that target all age- conclaves, has been able to spend a penny all-encompassing corporate control by combining cruises and airfare with its own private depopulate Caribbean islands. 6 Disney cr uises feature Disney merchandise, entertainment, and films. by dint of these methods, cruises operate as the ultimate product-placement scheme.This represents a portentous impact on the region on a number of levels. Not nevertheless is the Caribbean the most important geographic market for the cruise industry (ILO, 2001) but that industry is one of the most egregious violators of labor and milieual standards (Wood, 2000). For example, the absolute majority of its workers come from atomic number 34 and South Asia and are paid compensation as low as US$1. 55 an hour (Wood, 2000). As a deterritorialized industry, cruise lines are able to thwart labor standards such as marginal wage and restrictions on overtime that are established by national laws.The interaction with actually populated islands is limited to a few hours of shopping for souvenirs. Consequently, the overall market for cruise tourism in the Caribbean translates into lower earnings for the region, since its parti cipation in the profits is restricted to, at best, a few hours of shopping in a port community. The increasing horizontal integration of the travel and tourism industry is manifested in the computerized mental reservation systems, with high access charges, that have apace become the industry norm. Tourism services are increasingly Downloaded from lap. sagepub. om at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 27 being purchased on the Internet via three main mechanisms a computer reservations system known as Global Distribution Systems (GDS), third-party web sites such as Orbitz and Travelocity, and hotel- and airline-owned-and-operated direct booking. GDS is used in the main by tour operators and travel agents in destination countries to book not only travel and accommodations but other tourism products as well. The cost of GDS fees and technology is pr so fartative for small and medium-sized enterprises.Orbitz, one of the deuce bi ggest online travel agents, is owned by the five biggest U. S. airlinesAmerican, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and United. Travelocity is owned by Sabre Holdings, the worlds largest travel agent reservations system, and GDS (PSTT, 2004). At an impressive rate, consolidation and strategic alliances by multinational corporations have limited the opportunities for small and medium-sized suppliers in the tourism industry, thereby restricting access to profits to those aligned with transnational capital.With few alternatives, largely because of their escape of technological development and capital, small nation-states cannot eliminate these powerful intermediaries and deal with tourists directly. A number of other geomorphologic issues are associated with the vulnerability of Caribbean destinations and the impediments to their benefiting from tourism development. maven alarming concern is the leakage of foreign exchange earnings in the amount of imported consumer goods compulsory to sustain the tourism industry.As John Urry (1996 215) explains, Much tourist enthronisation in the developing world has in fact been undertaken by large-scale companies ground in North American or Western Europe, and the bulk of such tourist expenditure is retained by the transnational companies involved only 2225 per centumage of the retail price stay in the host country. A major problem is the high import content of construction material and equipment and the many consumable goods required to cater to the needs of tourists.It is arduous to bring local suppliers into the supply chain, since the goods required by tourists may not be produced locally, and, when they are, tourists tend to reject them (Ashley et al. , 2006). Another source of leakage is the repatriation of income and profits to metropolitan locations through generous evaluate incentives created to stimulate coronation (Urry, 1996 215). Finally, excessive reliance on one industry renders tourist destinations i ngrainedly vulnerable to external markets. Anything that weakens demand for a destination undermines the national economy.Circumstances such as the September 11 attacks and the weather can grow a considerable downturn in the tourism economy. With the acceleration of global mode change, the Dominican Republic, for example, is increasingly susceptible to more powerful and frequent hurricanes. Stronger tropical storms and the rise in sea levels could cause the disappearance and erosion of beaches? the main engine of the economy and a source of livelihood for the nation. Hurricane Noel in 2007 devastated parts of the islands, killing hundreds and generating an epidemic of leptospirosis. The attend of tourism, Felix Jimenez, notifyed that news of the epidemic had deflower the national image and that the images of Hurricane Noels final stage televised in Europe had led tour operators to cancel charter flights (Hoy, November 25, 2007). However, the majority of areas and people direc tly growing from the catastrophic make of the hurricane were those already living in extreme poverty, certainly not in tourist zones. Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 28 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESThe government appears more preoccupied with its image than with creating an stem that reduces damage. angiotensin-converting enzyme family of five, for example, has been living in a temp shelter since Hurricane Jeanne destroyed their home in September 2004 (Listin Diario, November 20, 2007). INTERNATIONAL TOURISM IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC While Barbados, Cuba, and Jamaica developed their tourism infrastructure in the early twentieth century to accommodate North American travelers, the Dominican Republic did not become a tourist destination until close to 70 years later.The nations minus image during the era of dictator Rafael Trujillo reflected fear of a rampageous political system. 8 The political derangement that followed the U. S . assassination of Trujillo in 1961 and the subsequent onset and occupation by 23,000 North American troops did not wear an allure image of a tropical paradise. The animal(prenominal) security measure of guests, an essential component in the packaging of tourist destinations, could not be ensured.In 1966 Joaquin Balaguer, an old crony of Trujillo and an anticommunist ally of the United States, came to power through corruption and force. Balaguers government activity, in concert with multilateral agencies, seek to capture the U. S. tourist market that had been temporarily displaced since the Cuban Revolution. Through World Bank loans and development packages, the productive structure of the country was transformed and its economic strategy redirected toward fascinating foreign investment in tourism. valuate concessions that amounted to more than 10 years of tax exemptions for investment in tourism development were established by Law 153-71. 10 International tourism in the Do minican Republic grew slowly at the end of the 1960s as a way of generating development without making large investments in manufacturing and technology. Since tourism relies on the packaging of inwrought assets, it was considered to support economic growth by using existing resources, such as sandy beaches, a warm and blissful climate, friendly people, and local arts and music (Tavares, 1993).In 1968 the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo established the outline of a strategy for the tourism sector (Castellanos de Selig, 1981). In 1971 the Central Bank established a department for the promotion of tourism development to be financed by the World Bank. Through loans and with the technical expertise of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, in the 1970s the Dominican Republic began to blend away from state-led industrial enterprise and sugar toward tourism and free-trade zones (Atkins and Wilson, 1998).The acceleration of its internalization into the global economy was faci litated by morphological adjustment programs that, for example, devalued the Dominican peso in 1987 to help the country repugn for foreign investment. Tourism rapidly displaced sugar as the main source of earnings, and by 1997 it was generating more than half of the countrys total foreign exchange (Jimenez, 1999). The government created generous tax concessions to stimulate foreign investment with the goals of producing employment, pay backing off the foreign debt, and generating revenue.In the long run, however, this approach failed to create sustainable development or to enhance the benefit of the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 29 majority of the population. issue elites have benefited, as the increasing polarization of income indicates, but the majority of the population has been relegated to positions of servility in a competitive labor market that provides predominantly low-pa id, seasonal, and parlous jobs.EXCLUSION AND MARGINALIZATION OF THE LABOR thread The exploitation of labor and natural resources in beachfront resorts is particularly acute on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, where the environment is presentation signs of degradation due to the extensive development that has taken place in the area. everyplace 95 part of the resorts operate under the all-inclusive enclave lesson (Departamento de Estadisticas, interview, ASONAHORES, October 2005), and over 60 percent also use time-share parceling (ASONAHORES, 2004). Enclave resorts have a reputation for being gilded ghettoes? egregated spaces that exclude Dominicans while providing highlife accommodations to foreigners. The resorts are small cities and, as such, are developed with all kinds of facilities (UNDP, 2005 68). They represent foreign, scoop shovel spaces that keep tourists from seeing the local poverty that might make them uncomfortable and keep them from wanting to stay in the country. The in style(p) development scheme, the 30,000-acre mega-resort Cap Cana, features four luxury hotels including the Ritz Carlton, apartments, villas, five golf courses, condominiums, boutiques, restaurants, a radiation pattern center, and a marina.This resort complex exit target the high-end market instead of the stool tourism market that the country has sought for decades. These tourism compounds provide electricity, sewerage, paved roads, and raceway water for their pleasure- and leisure-oriented guests, but basic infrastructure development in the country corpse chaotic, pretermiting planning, development, and environmental control. Shantytowns often deficiency plumbing, electricity, and paved roads. This neglect represents a private cost to the host society and a urther appropriation of social and environmental resources by foreign capital. 11 The United Nations Human Development Report for the Dominican Republic (UNDP, 2005) indicates that the tourism lab or force is made up primarily of young women, over half of them younger than 39 and with less than eight years of schooling (UNDP, 2005 77). The lucre for tourism workers is below the national number (UNDP, 2005 78), with women earning most 68 percent of a mans salary in the industry.Women are nearly absent from supervisory and circumspection positions. This reflects an industry norm, for, as the ILO (2001 86) points out, women globally have little access to the higher(prenominal) levels of corporate management in the hotel, catering, and tourism sector. Globally, women also experience income disparities vis-a-vis men at all levels of hotel, catering, and tourism employment. They by and large occupy the lower echelons in the tourism labor market, with few safekeepinger opportunities and low levels of remuneration.While Dominican women experience greater vulnerability and versed practice discrimination in the workforce, Dominican men are displaced and excluded from employmen t and big(predicate) participation. Camilo, an informal tourist 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 September 8, 2011 30 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES connected with tourism. He and other guides baseless outside of the Playa Dorada resort complex hoping to second the rare tourist or, relegate, tourist group that ventures outside the all-inclusive beachfront compound on foot.The modus operandi of these well-dressed young men is to approach foreigners with aggregate offersfor example, to dine with them at a veritable(prenominal) Dominican restaurant, to show them around town, and to teach them how to dance merengue. The day that I met Camilo, he was angry to hear that resorts management had been making disparaging comments about Dominicans during orientation meetings for their guests. He explained I want to fight against the overlook of information or disinformation about Dominicans and the Dominican Republic.I would like to have a crew secretly shoot in the hotel, and I want to take that to the national media. The agents of these corporations are talking bad about us, about assaults, assassinations, and such things. We are walking guides we provide a service. My friends and I treat different languages. Why is it that all the hotels and the travel agencies and the stores in the resorts have to use foreigners to work there? Why, if I speak German, I can defend myself in Italian, I am excellent in English? I can mete out anything in German.It is something that I do not understand. If I go to Germany, they will not let me work. I used to cuckold horseback riding tours now all those are owned by Germans. They are displacing us in our own country. Camilos statements address the massive displacement of Dominican workers. With the majority of resorts managed by expatriates, many of whom do not appreciate the cultural, social, and economic realities of the countries in which they work, locals are frustrated by the lack of respect accorded them by foreigners and the severe contention for the tourist market.Camilo had started out with a small business that took tourists on horseback riding trips and had been forced out of the market when the resorts begun go these excursions to their guests. Such displacement has led many citizens to feel like foreigners in their native land. Most resorts keep the local populations out with security personnel and by requiring guests to go into wrist-bands during their stay. Treated like outsiders, Dominicans are sullen away at the front gate unless they come as workers.This exclusion positions Dominican labor as a marginalized and deterritorialized workforce, do roles and functions similar to those they would carry out as foreign, un put down workers in Europe or North America. The common practice of the resort enclaves in the Caribbean region of recruiting top management and skilled labor from Western Europe and the United States means that Dominicans seldom work in positions of management or as chefs in the resorts, and, as Camilo mentions, they are even excluded from retail operations.These exclusionary practices marginalize the local populationnot just the working shape but also nationally expert executives and mid-level managers. Dominican men are relegated to service labor such as work in accommodations, reception, security, and grounds-keeping or, as Camilo does, sc entrancement out a living in unstable and contingent activities in the informal sector. depend uponual practice also creates labor hierarchies within hotels. Dominican men are excluded from management, but gender stereotypes also give them access to positions with more opportunities for gratuities, such as bartender and luggageDownloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 31 handler. Dominican women, in contrast, are e mployed in gender-designated positions of domesticity such as housekeeping. There are few opportunities for Dominicans to participate directly in the tourism economy. To escape this predicament, many mould relationships of companionship, friendship, and romance with tourists and other foreigners as a way to access the global economy, travel to the global North, and improve their lives.Many relationships between Dominican women and foreign men mingle informal, affective relations with economic activity, but others underscore payment for sexual services. While some studies indicate that Caribbean formal tourism workers have sex with tourists in the resorts (Cabezas, 2004 CEPROSH, 1997 Crick, 2001), many more reports reveal that it is people hustling in the informal economy who provide tourists with sexual and affective exchanges (Herold et al. 2001 Padilla, 2007 Gregory, 2007).In the Dominican Republic the young men are popularly known as sanky panky, heterosexually identified men who provide romance, companionship, and sex to men and women. These new sexual formations have also appeared in other touristdependent islands such as Jamaica (rent-a-dreads), Barbados (beach boys) and Cuba (pingueros and jineteros) (Hodge, 2002). Although many men are able to exploit foreigners fantasies of racial enamoredness to enhance their life chances and masculinity, women who use intimate relationships with foreigners to support their households bear a knockout burden of stigma and riminalization (Cabezas, 2004 2005). It is primarily blue-collar women of color who bear the burden of state-inflicted violence, harassment, extortion, and rape (Cabezas, 1999 2005). Miriam, a 23-year-old mother of two, had one child when she met the father of her youngest, a vacationing Afro-American police officer from newborn York in his late thirties. John visits Miriam often and sends approximately US$60 a calendar month to support his eight-month-old daughter. However, Miriam must cont inue to seek out relationships with foreign and local men to supplement his support.Her oldest daughter has liver disease, and the remediate visits and medication are costly. She tells me fearlessly, From luck and decease no one can escape. Johanna, a 20-year-old single mother of two, cannot find any type of work that would allow her to support her mother and two children. She was fired from her job as a waitress when she got pregnant and began selling sex to foreign men who live or vacation in Boca Chica. Her aim is to meet a tourist who will provide her with travel to a foreign country. Any place is better than here, she tells me. When I asked her if she was frightened by reports of sex trafficking or other forms of exploitation that could potentially take place in a country where she knows no one, she looked down and replied intensely, I have to assume that risk, because here I am going to either go crazy or die of hunger. human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS Discussions of trave l associated with work or leisure have increasingly pointed to the risks involved in mobility and human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS. 2 capital of Minnesota Farmer (1992) has argued that the HIV virus was introduced to Haiti by gay North American men vacationing on the island, and the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre indicates Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 32 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES that this is true for the Caribbean as a whole (Camara, 2001) and that the countries that are 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 an important source of new infections, exerting an ongoing influence on the scope and impact of AIDS in specific locales. This assertion is confirmed by the UNDP report (2005 85), which indicates that the areas with the highest incidence of HIV in the country are also those with the highest rates of tourism. However, there has been little prevention education targeting tourism-sector workers.Padilla argues that this is because of the fear of fostering a negative image that could potentially contradict the escapism, exoticism, and consequence-free environment that compose at least part of the tourism package offered to foreigners (2007 172). The women informants for my study, who worked primarily with tourists, were relentless in attesting to their use of condoms and resistance to offers of unprotected sex for higher compensation. Mari explained, This is my body it is the only thing I can count on to support my children.Im not going to risk everything for a few extra dollars. They cant pay me enough. Another woman exclaimed, If I get sick, are they going to take trouble of me? Are they going to take care of my children? These statements are representative of what many women told me however, a few caveats are in order. First, the women I interviewed were associated with MODEMU and CEPROSH, two organizations that provide peer-to-peer safer-sex education. Also, Puerto Plata has a governmentmandated policy of condom use in sex establishments (Haddock, 2007).These women were educated and aware of the dangers of unprotected sex. Secondly, most of the women identified with the term sex worker, significance that many of their relations with foreigners were direct sex-for-money exchanges. Women who run in less rigidly incorporated and more ambiguous relationships, in which the conditions of the exchange deemphasize economic factors, may take more risks to prove that they are not from the street. research from the Caribbean also confounds easy assumptions about sexual identity, sexual practice, and HIV/AIDS.Padillas (2007) research in the Dominican Republic and that of Fosado (2004) and Hodge (2002) from Cuba express to the difficulty of categorizing the mode of HIV transmitting in these countries as heterosexual, given the growth of same-sex male sex work with tourists. The political economy of tourism serves as the context for straightidentified men to engage in same-sex relations with foreign men to support wives, girlfriends, and families. The touch of sex workers as vectors of disease also needs to be reexamined. My research with 30 women infect with HIV/AIDS, who worked in sex stablishments serving a predominantly Dominican clientele in Santo Domingo, indicates that all were infect by their husbands or regular boyfriends, with whom they did not use safer-sex techniques. Thus far, all the women that I have interviewed claim to use condoms for protection with their clients and to let their guard down with regular partners. Third, many of the young single workers are internal migrants to tourist areas and are more likely to engage in riskier practices and have a less stable life style (UNDP, 2005). There are few educational and prevention programs to target this popul ation.These are two areas in which more research is needed. Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 33 finis Few viable alternatives exist to the current structure of travel, leisure, and tourism, which consigns people in the South to poorly remunerated labor. The Dominican Republic, along with other Caribbean nations, attracts foreign investment by offering a low-cost labor force, tax exemptions, and other incentives, but tourism denies the majority of its working people becoming work. 13 The squeezing of labor power and natural resources has left the country with a massive tourism infrastructure, with more than 60,000 hotel rooms, and over 3 million pleasure visitors a year (Secretaria de Estado de Turismo, 20042007) in an ecology of disaster. These figures continue to grow every year without concern for the quality of life of Dominicans. The majority of people are relegated, at best, to posi tions of servitude in low-paid jobs in the formal sector, underemployment, or unstable activities in the informal sector that include the commoditization of sex activity and affective relations.Dominicans dream of being leisure travelers, holding decent jobs, and securing a better future for their children, but the transnational tourism industry cannot provide them decent wages and higher standards of living. several(a) scholars have documented the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Caribbean people in acting on the tourism infrastructure (Cabezas, 2004 Fosado, 2004 Padilla, 2007), but the opportunities and potential for significant democratisation are modest or absent.Tourism may provide the fortune for people from the global North to re-create themselves, but people from the South have access to this opportunity only through sexual exchanges that place their lives at risk. Reciprocal leisure travel is what every native needs to dissolve the tropical blues. NOTES 1. Tourism and travel are considered export-oriented services. 2. Increasingly tourism is one of the worlds largest generators of jobs. The WTTC (2005) calculates that the sector accounted for 10 percent of total employment in 1997 worldwide and is expected to generate an estimated 328 million jobs by 2010. . The UNDP (2005) is rather critical of the all-inclusive model of development in the Dominican Republic. It contends that this model offers a homogeneous product attach by the stereotypical image establish on sun, sand, and sea, a tourism product with facilities that face away from local populations and one characterized by constant competition and lack of state regulation. While I support this spatially concentrated form of development and the general segregation of tourists from local populations, my point here is to express concern for the lack of human capital development of the population.Further, tourism development generally promotes a slash, burn, and move on approach to the envi ronment. Leisure travel in the Dominican Republic follows the pattern of exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor prevalent in neocolonial regimes whereby transnational finance capital and local elites benefit from these structures and the local people are left to suffer the consequences. 4. According to one estimate, 3350 percent of Internet use is base on tourism (ILO, 2001). 5. The trend in consolidation is evident in ILOs data (2001). It maintains that in 1999 the 10 biggest companies controlled 2. 4 million rooms but by 2000 9 giants controlled 2. 98 million hotel rooms. 6. In the Caribbean, of the eight major cruise lines operating, vi own their own private islands which they include among their ports of call (Wood, 2000 361). 7. Leptospirosis is caused by a bacterium, Leptospira, that can be transmitted through exposure to water, food, or soil containing the urine of infected animals. The epidemic had killed 27 people by November 20, 2007. Downloaded from lap. sag epub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 34 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES 8. Trujillo was dictator from 1930 to 1961.His regime was characterized by extreme violence and repression, the massacre of 12,000 Haitians in 1938, and the accumulation of immense personal wealth. He created state structures and placed his cronies in offices within them to perpetuate his power (Betances and Spalding, 1995). 9. Various multilateral agencies created specialized units for the evaluation, approval, and funding of the projects of member countries. In the 1960s the Inter-American Development Bank, the U. S. mental representation for International Development, and the World Bank, for example, directed their lending in Latin America toward tourism development (Monge, 1973).The Organization of American States also promoted financial resources for tourism development. All these efforts were enhanced in the Dominican Republic by Law 153, which granted tax concessions to tourism investo rs and corporations. Thus foreign entities took the lead in creating highly favorable conditions for foreign investment. 10. The legislation that governs these practices established an incentive system to stimulate development in the tourism sector by providing an initial 10-year 100 percent tax exemption on earnings, imports, and construction. 11.Environmental be are borne entirely by the local population, since the enforcement of environmental regulations is nearly nonexistent (see UNDP, 2005 8687 Gregory, 2007). 12. 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