Tourism and Social Exclusion in the Dominican Republic

Latin Ameri crapper Perspectives http//lap. sagepub. com/ Tropical Blues touring enthr all told and kind Exclusion in the friar preacher body politic Amalia L. Cabezas Latin Ameri dirty dog Perspectives 2008 35 21 DOI 10. 1177/0094582X08315765 The online fluctuation of this article keister be found at http//lap. sagepub. com/ study/35/3/21 promul admittanced by http//www. sagepublications. com On be unrivaled-half(a) of Latin Ameri fag Perspectives, Inc. special advantages and teaching for Latin the Statesn 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/ depicted object/35/3/21. refs. html Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on phratry 8, 2011 Tropical Blues touristry and estimateable Exclusion in the friar preacher commonwealth by Amalia L. Cabezas touristry out harvest-time is the backbone of m some(prenominal) an(prenominal) Caribbean economies, and its advocates ask that it contri unlesses to sustainable growth, the tot retainereviation of p anywherety, and integration into the sphericized thrift.Scholars and activists, in contrast, diaphragm to phaetonry-related ecological deterioration, profit leakage, distorted ethnical patterns, salary increase land values, and harlotry. They apprize that holidaymakerry bear ons existing disparities, pecuniary problems, and societal tensions. Examination of tourerry maturation in the friar preacher Republic indicates that it deskills and devalues friar preacher passers, marginalizing them from holidaymaker develop manpowert and tripualizing their comprehend.The bulk of raft atomic account 18 relegated, at best, to positions of servitude in low-paid jobs in the formal sector, un conflict, or unstable activities in the any day sector that take on the commoditization of sexuality and affective singings. Keywords Tourism, Caribbean, friar preacher Republic, Capitalism, Social exclusion In A Sm solely Place, the Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid e bear onates on the inequities of touring carry (1988 1819) Every infixed of every guide is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of roundw present. But some natives near natives in the cosmoscan non go anywhere. They atomic number 18 to a fault poor. They be too poor to go anywhere. In inter field touristry, exactly some people argon able to go and experience a respite from the crushing bromide of their lives some others, too poor to go anywhere, atomic number 18 relegated to religious service the needs of distant starters. Travel and touristry atomic number 18 among the most definitive scotch activities of the world(prenominal) thriftiness not just for the trans issue monopolies that state manpowert them but to a fault for those who conceive of of extending and perhaps macrocosm able to turn someone elses platitude reality into the credit of their own pleasure. This is the reality of the equatorial blues. Tourism develop ment is the backbone of umteen Caribbean economies.For the clarified island nations, tourism today represents what scar was a one C ago a monocrop controlled by externalers and a fewer elites that services the buildings of accretion for world(a) capitalist economy. 1 john tourism change the scotch condition of clear nation-states in the Caribbean by creating possibilities for the people to improve its type of living? Tourism winrs, constitution makers, experts, and growth officials sure enough think so. They Amalia L. Cabezas teaches at the University of California, Riverside, and is a coordinating editor of Latin American Perspectives.She thanks the Centro de Promocion y Solidaridad sympathetica (a non regimeal g all overning running(a) in Sosua, Puerto Plata, and the surrounding communities) and the Movimiento de Mujeres Unidas for inquiry assistance. Latin American PERSPECTIVES, Issue 160, Vol. 35 No. 3, whitethorn 2008 21-36 DOI 10. 1177/0094582X08315765 2008 Latin American Perspectives 21 Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on family 8, 2011 22 Latin AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES require historically make enthusiastic claims active the positive stir of tourism on phalanx societies.From fostering world peace to preserving biodiversity and indigenous cultures, tourism has been considered a panacea for societies ills (Castellanos de Selig, 1981). More recently, tourism has been seen not totally as gen timeting impertinent telephone exchange and workout but similarly as contributing to sustainable victimization, the alleviation of poverty, and integration into the globularized economy. Governments and multilateral organizations much(prenominal) as the Inter-American Development Bank, the vale t Bank, the Inter interior(a) Monetary Fund, and joined Nations development agencies promote tourism as a viable mechanism for economic and social development.It is segmentary to understand why so oft try for is riding on tourism. Tourism is a minute component of the spread of worldwide capitalism. It accounts for one-third of the global trade in services and is expanding at doubly the growth rate of world output (El Beltagui, 2001). tourist arrivals, which stood at 25 one million million in 1950, argon projected to reach 1. 6 billion by 2020 (WTO, 1999). concord to the homo Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC, 2005), the give way and tourism persistence accounts for US$4. 4 zillion of economic activity worldwide. In the Caribbean region, tourism development is of paramount im mannerance as an indispensable cite of hostile exchange (ILO, 2001). Judged by the Inter discipline grok Organization as the most tourism-oriented region in the world, the Caribbean is a region where a fifth of the swinish domestic product is produced for tourists, influencely or indirectly, by one out of every s still dallyers (ILO, 2001 119). Scholars and activists oeuvreing in the field of tourism argon much much critical of tourism than polity makers and politicians.In the by onetime(prenominal) troika decades, assessments of tourisms socioeconomic strike have included discussions of ecological deterioration, profit leakage, social displacement, distorted cultural patterns, rising land values, drugs, and prostitution (Harrison, 1992 Crick, 1996 Pattullo, 1996). Tourism has also been linked to the instauration of white plague up for foreign-made goods, consumerism, the commodification of culture, trafficking in women and churlren, internal migration, and the disruption and corruption of traditionalistic values and behaviors (see, e. g. McElroy, 2004 Mowforth and Munt, 1998 Pattullo, 1996). elevate more(prenominal)(prenominal), scholars postulate that to urism perpetuates existing disparities, monetary problems, and social tensions (Britton, 1996 Greenwood, 1989). Given such incongruities in opinions and assessments, I seek to examine the modelling inwardly which tourism development takes place and to explore why tourism has failed to raise the standard of living and create offend life chances for people in the Caribbean region. The adjoin here is with the policy- reservation economy of tourism development in the friar preacher Republic.In this article I argue that the invoice of economic, semi governmental, and social subjugation within the global capitalist system de end pointines the institutional frame ply for the on-going tourism trade. I offer the interpretation that the international theatrical role of lying-in in tourism deskills and devalues Dominican workers, marginalizing them from the handle of tourism development and sexualizing their labor. I am refer with the impact of these processes on the most vulne rable elements of the population. This eccentric study is based on fieldwork undertaken in the Dominican Republic.Beginning in 1997, participant observation was conducted on the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / censure IN THE Dominican body politic 23 northeast rim of the state of matter in Puerto Plata and the neighboring beach utilize developments of Playa Dorada and Sosua. Puerto Plata, a historic city with a population of over 60,000, was luffed for development during the boom in tourism growth in the 1970s. It is the oldest and one of the most substantial tourism scopes of the nation, and it continues to grow (ASONAHORES, 2004).Its port attracts journey lines, and it has an abundance of high life lags located east of the city in an argona k todayn as Playa Dorada. Sosua, a few kilometers up the coast, is a small beachside association settled by atomic number 63an Jews brought into the boorish by the fo untain authoritarian Rafael L. Trujillo to whiten the nation (Symanski and Burley, 1973). It has many businesses own by expatriates and continues to attract atomic number 63an travelers, many from Germany. The north coast area has a large transient population of internal migrants who come to work in the tourism sedulousness, its informal trade, and the free-trade zone.My enquiry was assisted by ii nongovernmental organizations (nongovernmental organizations) in Puerto Plata and Sosua that are concerned with community health. Taperecorded interviews were conducted in 1997 at a community clinic with women who identify themselves as sex workers, many of whom were affiliated with the Movimento de Mujeres Unidas (Movement of United WomenMODEMU), an NGO that advocates for the labor and human rights of women in the sex application. Further research for this project was automobileried out in 2004, 2005, and 2007, including work in the capital city of Santo Domingo and in the close tour ist beach hangout of Boca Chica.Data collection knobbed interviews with hotel workers, sex workers, community activists, members of MODEMU, people tortuous in the informal economy, topical anesthetic anesthetic anaesthetic businessmen, and tourists. STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES AND THE CAPITALIST global SYSTEM Tourism exists within a semipolitical-economic framework characterized by monopoly capitala system of global capital that has evolved over the past 500 age and is in a smart stage of accumulation characterized by the internationalization of state formation, yield, and consumption (Robinson, 2004 2007).It is important to preserve the colonial patterns of capitalist accumulation in legal opinion when examining tourism development, since global inequities lie at the middle of the tourism project. The capitalist world system has continually expanded by dint of rag to cheap labor, land, resources, and securities industrys. These processes are cl primaeval unadorned in the technical and organizational systems of the hospitality and travel industries. Transnational tourism reflects the round-backed distribution of indicant and economic resources betwixt former colonies and their colonizers (Fanon, 1963).As Britton (1982 355) declares, The more a Third World dry land has been dominated by foreign capital in the past, the greater akinlihood there is of the prerequisites for establishing a local anaesthetic anesthetic tourist industry being present. It is metropolitan tourism capital that is the single most important element in determining the organization and characteristics of tourism in underdeveloped countries. Time and resources have been important in the development of tourism, but so has economic power. piece tourism is a global industry, the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. om at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 24 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES major(ip)(ip)ity of the receipts accrue to Europe and the United States (ILO, 2001 WTO, 2002). Indeed, the new forms of global capitalist domination, as manifested in the tourism and travel commercialise, demonstrate that Dominicans face an empire of global capital (Robinson, 2007 19). The Caribbean is thus relegated to a pleasure outskirt within the international division of labor, a military region that accommodates void travelers and the demands of transnational corporations (Turner and Ash, 1975).The tourism industry in the global newton emerged with subsidised state-led development. crop in infra grammatical construction and technology benefited from statesponsored research and development. In the mid-fifties the U. S. Senate authorized more than US$12 million to offer the development of improved ecstasy aircraft, and U. S. policy encouraged the development of civil aeronautics and air handicraft both within and impertinent of the United States (Truong, 1990). The use of U. S. gentle wind equipment, U. S. eronautical procedures, and the English vocabulary as the world standard in airwave guaranteed the United States dominance in civil aeronautics globally. In westerly Europe, the concept of participatory enterprise, by which airlines are owned in part or wholly by governments, helped to make up the losses incurred by the operation of unprofitable but strategically important routes (Truong, 1990). Both the United States and Western Europe subsidized and cultivated the global travel infrastructure and schematic the regulations and norms of the travel industry, facilitating their control and domination.Travel and tourism enterprises experienced fast growth and expansion as they sought-after(a) to incur the disposable earnings of wage workers in the comfortable economies of Western Europe and the United States during the late 1950s and mid-sixties. Their growth was enhanced by new patterns of production and consumption in the global North and the creation of social law ensuring holiday time off. It was beneficial 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 execution of civil aviation policy has been translated into the use of multilateral aid channels to cover U. S. interests and overt interpellation in international aviation and tourism. The promotion of tourism itself mirrored the awareness of the relation between air transport and economic development. This intervention has two master(prenominal) advantages for the United States. From a commercial perspective, such intervention contributes to the toneing of the U.S. position as a manufacturer and exporter of aircraft and navigation equipment. From a political perspective, it helps to consolidate the direction of social and economic development in the third world, which benefits U. S. interests under a blind of peaceful understanding. In due course, the growth of the tourism industry became a peaceful method of attaining retentive-lived political power and financial control in the markets and politics of the South (Lanfant, Allcock, and Bruner, 1995).The framework for the development of the travel and tourist industry impedes poor countries from generating foreign exchange, change magnitude employment, or promoting the companionship 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 Third World Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE friar preacher res publica 25 tourist cultures.Tourisms tendency to perpetuate patterns of economic dependency and exposure for developing countries is evident in the island nations of the Caribbean, where small local suppliers have control ingress to tourist-generating markets monopoli zed by powerful wholesalers and retailers (Ashley et al. , 2006). Tour operatorsa transnational industry based in Western Europe and the United Statescan project an enter of a country by worldwide merchandise campaigns that ensure a steady flow of visitors. Because of economies of scale, they can control tourist piles and demote or promote crabby destinations (Britton, 1996).They unite suppliers and consumers in the pursuit of lettuce and pleasure with direct contact with travel consumers through vertically integrated travel agencies, they can control particular destinations and dominate the flow of visitors. They can pinch hotels to crop in certain ways and talk terms low prices, especially in beach resorts. They favor a exchangeable product, such as the comprehensive compensate, a comprehensively controlled tourist experience in which the familiarity of the brand and the aegis of the travel experience are more important than local differentiation. The wide tourist pack age allows tour operators and travel agencies to combine all of the components of a destinations attractionsrecreation, meals, food, lodging, and transportationinto a single product paid for at the head up of origin. This limits the participation of local producers and confines the profits to the global North. As the Dominican Republic has adopted the extensive model, the earnings per tourist have decreased per-room disbursal 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 scarce 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 profit. 4 Electronic commerce in tourism services, which represents a new speculation for online holiday checking for tourism contr ibuters, works to the loss of developing countries, which have only limited gateway to the Internet.Other practices include the mergers of transnational embodied giants in the areas of technology, travel, hospitality, and media. HOTELS, journey LINES, AND DISASTERS In an change magnitudely globalized industry, the line in the hospitality industry is from independently owned and owner- puzzle outd hotels to the transnational hotel bonds that have become the industry standard. In the Dominican Republic, hotels with more than 400 rooms have the highest and least volatile occupancy rates (UNDP, 2005 75 Secretaria de Estado de Turismo, 2007).In the accommodations industry, an telling amount of consolidation took place in the 1980s, resulting in hotel brands under fewer and larger corporate umbrellas. major multinational hotel chains have been involved in important acquisitions and mergers (ILO, 2001 38). Cendant, the largest hotel chain in the world, operates 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 walk out into foreign markets have utilize consolidation strategies to strengthen their position vis-a-vis local markets. Furthermore, brand-name hotels promote themselves by advertising their own productsfacilities, amenities, services, and pricesmore than any particular country. Because so many corporations strive for a standardized and homogeneous product, one facility is the same as any other, regardless of geographic destination. The disdain for discrepancy 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 also noticeable in the change magnitude number of strat egic alliances aimed at supplying change 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 communion technology. In the distribution of products and cross-marketing between food service entrustrs and hotels, Marriott and Hilton are presently linked with Pizza Hut.Strategic alliances between multinationals also include distribution and cross-promotion between financial services, credit cards, and hotels. In this area, American Express is now working with Accor Hotels and Visa and American Express are partnered with Bass Hotels and Resorts. The consolidation of hotels and transportation government agency that some hotels, such as Cendant, have now partnered with more than 20 airlines. Cendants holdings also include fomite rental companies, online ticket sales enterprises such as Orb itz 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 Bass Hotels and Resorts with ESPN, Discovery, and E-Entertainment (ILO, 2001 3). The Disney Corporation, with its Caribbean Disney Cruises that tar go through all age-groups, has been able to create all-encompassing corporate control by combining cruises and airfare with its own secret depopulated Caribbean islands. 6 Disney cruises feature Disney merchandise, entertainment, and films. with these methods, cruises operate as the ultimate product-placement scheme.This represents a significant impact on the region on a number of levels. Not only 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 environmental standards (Wood, 2000). For example, the mass of its workers co me from Southeast and South Asia and are paid wages as low as US$1. 55 an hour (Wood, 2000). As a deterritorialized industry, cruise lines are able to evade labor standards such as minimum 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 take down earnings for the region, since its participation 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 reservation systems, with high retrieve charges, that have rapidly 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 th ree main mechanisms a computer reservations system cognize 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 primarily 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 preventative for small and medium-sized enterprises.Orbitz, one of the two biggest online travel agents, is owned by the quintet biggest U. S. airlinesAmerican, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and United. Travelocity is owned by cut 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 align with transnational capital.Wi th few alternatives, largely because of their lose of proficient development and capital, small nation-states cannot eliminate these powerful intermediaries and deal with tourists directly. A number of other structural issues are associated with the vulnerability of Caribbean destinations and the impediments to their benefiting from tourism development. hotshot alarming concern is the leakage of foreign exchange earnings in the amount of imported consumer goods necessitate to sustain the tourism industry.As washbowl Urry (1996 215) explains, Much tourist coronation in the developing world has in fact been undertaken by large-scale companies based in North American or Western Europe, and the bulk of such tourist expenditure is retained by the transnational companies involved only 2225 partage of the retail price remains 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 difficult 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 unstinted tax incentives created to stimulate investment (Urry, 1996 215). Finally, excessive credence on one industry renders tourist destinations super vulnerable to external markets. whatsoeverthing that weakens demand for a destination undermines the national economy.Circumstances such as the September 11 attacks and the weather can generate a ample downturn in the tourism economy. With the acceleration of global climate 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 funding for the nation. Hurricane Noel in 2007 devastated parts of the islands, killing hundreds and generating an epidemic of leptospirosis. The diplomatic minister of tourism, Felix Jimenez, encompassed that news of the epidemic had tainted the national image and that the images of Hurricane Noels destruction televised in Europe had led tour operators to cancel charter flights (Hoy, November 25, 2007). However, the bulk of areas and people directly suffering from the catastrophic set up of the hurricane were those already living in extreme poverty, surely 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 infrastructure that reduces damage. One family of five, for example, has been living in a temporary comfort since Hurricane Jeanne destroyed their home in September 2004 (Listin Diario, N ovember 20, 2007). supranational TOURISM IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC musical composition 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 age later.The nations blackball image during the era of dictator Rafael Trujillo reflected fear of a violent political system. 8 The political instability that followed the U. S. assassination of Trujillo in 1961 and the subsequent invasion and occupation by 23,000 North American troops did not sustainment an tantalizing image of a tropical paradise. The physical security of guests, an essential component in the publicity 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 regime, in concert with multilateral agencies, sought to arre st the U. S. tourist market that had been temporarily dis laid 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 absorbing foreign investment in tourism. Tax concessions that amounted to more than 10 geezerhood of tax exemptions for investment in tourism development were established by lawfulness 153-71. 10 internationalist tourism in the Dominican 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 instinctive assets, it was considered to support economic growth by using existing resources, such as blonde beaches, a warm and sunny climate, friendly people, and local arts and music (Tavares, 1993).In 1968 the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo established the lineation of a strategy for the tourism sector (Castellanos de Sel ig, 1981). In 1971 the Central Bank established a part 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 move external from state-led industrialization and sugar toward tourism and free-trade zones (Atkins and Wilson, 1998).The acceleration of its incorporation into the global economy was facilitated by structural adjustment programs that, for example, devalued the Dominican peso in 1987 to help the country deal 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, paying off the foreign debt, and generating revenue.In the long run, however, this approach faile d to create sustainable development or to enhance the well-being of the Downloaded from lap. sagepub. com at University of Sheffield on September 8, 2011 Cabezas / EXCLUSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 29 volume of the population. National elites have benefited, as the increasing polarization of income indicates, but the majority of the population has been relegated to positions of subservientness in a competitive labor market that provides predominantly low-paid, seasonal, and unstable jobs.EXCLUSION AND MARGINALIZATION OF THE LABOR index The exploitation of labor and natural resources in beachfront resorts is curiously acute on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, where the environment is building signs of degradation due to the lengthy development that has taken place in the area. everywhere 95 percent of the resorts operate under the all-inclusive enclave model (Departamento de Estadisticas, interview, ASONAHORES, October 2005), and over 60 percent also use time-share allocation (ASONAHORES, 2004). Enclave resorts have a account for being gilded ghettoes? egregated spaces that exclude Dominicans while providing lavishness accommodations to foreigners. The resorts are small cities and, as such, are developed with all kinds of facilities (UNDP, 2005 68). They represent foreign, exclusive spaces that keep tourists from seeing the local poverty that might make them ill-fitting and keep them from wanting to stay in the country. The latest 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 convention center, and a marina.This resort complex leave behind target the high-end market rather of the mass tourism market that the country has sought for decades. These tourism compounds provide electricity, sewerage, paved roads, and running piddle for their pleasure- and leisure-oriented guests, but basic infrast ructure development in the country remains chaotic, overlooking planning, development, and environmental control. Shantytowns oftentimes lack plumbing, electricity, and paved roads. This neglect represents a clandestine cost to the host society and a urther annexation 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 labor force is made up primarily of puppylike women, over half of them younger than 39 and with fewer than eight courses of schooling (UNDP, 2005 77). The salary for tourism workers is below the national average (UNDP, 2005 78), with women earning approximately 68 percent of a mans salary in the industry.Women are nearly absent from supervisory and management positions. This reflects an industry norm, for, as the ILO (2001 86) points out, women globally have little access to the high levels of corporate management in the hotel, catering, and to urism sector. Globally, women also experience income disparities vis-a-vis men at all levels of hotel, catering, and tourism employment. They oecumenicly occupy the lower echelons in the tourism labor market, with few flight opportunities and low levels of remuneration. eyepatch Dominican women experience greater vulnerability and sexuality discrimination in the workforce, Dominican men are displaced and excluded from employment and meaningful 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 idle outside of the Playa Dorada resort complex hoping to befriend the rare tourist or, better, 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 mult iple offersfor example, to dine with them at a typical 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 approximately Dominicans during taste meetings for their guests. He explained I want to fight against the lack of information or disinformation nearly Dominicans and the Dominican Republic.I would like to have a crew secretly enter in the hotel, and I want to send 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 speak 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 fine in English? I can transfer 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 sell horseback riding tours now all those are owned by Germans. They are displacing us in our own country. Camilos statements hollo 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 disceptation 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 offering these excursions to their guests. Such displacement has led many citizens to feel like foreigners in their native land. most(prenominal) resorts keep the local populations out with security military unit and by requiring guests to wear wrist-bands during their stay. Treated like outsiders, Dominicans are turned away at the front gate unless they come as workers.This exclusion positions Dominican labor as a marginalized and deterritorialized workforce, performing roles and functions similar to those they would carry out as foreign, undocumented workers in Europe or North America. The common practice of the resort enclaves in the Caribbean region of recruiting top management and adept 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 class but also nationally trained 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, scrape out a living in unstable and contingent activities in the informal sector. Gende r 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 employed in gender-designated positions of domesticity such as housekeeping. There are few opportunities for Dominicans to participate directly in the tourism economy. To escape valve this predicament, many cultivate 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 intimate, affective relations with economic activity, but others emphasize payment for sexual services. While some studies indicate that C aribbean formal tourism workers have sex with tourists in the resorts (Cabezas, 2004 CEPROSH, 1997 Crick, 2001), many more reports expose 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 amativeness to enhance their life chances and masculinity, women who use intimate relationships with foreigners to support their households bear a heavy saddle of disgrace and riminalization (Cabezas, 2004 2005). It is primarily working-class women of color who bear the burde n of state-inflicted violence, harassment, extortion, and rape (Cabezas, 1999 2005). Miriam, a 23-year-old beat of two, had one child when she met the father of her youngest, a vacationing African-American law of nature officer from unused York in his late thirties. magic visits Miriam often and sends approximately US$60 a month to support his eight-month-old daughter. However, Miriam must continue to seek out relationships with foreign and local men to accompaniment his support.Her oldest daughter has liver disease, and the doctor visits and medication are costly. She tells me fearlessly, From luck and death 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 expect that run a risk, because here I am going to all go crazy or die of hunger. human immunodeficiency computer virus/AIDS Discussions of travel associated with work or leisure have increasingly pointed to the risks involved in mobility and human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS. 2 Paul 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 legitimate for the Caribbean as a whole (Camara, 2001) and that the countries that are the most economically dependent on tourism in the region hav e 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 entice 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 taproom 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 hoard at least part of the tourism package offered to foreigners (2007 172). The women informants for my study, who worked primarily with tourists, were adamant in attesting to their use of condoms and guard to offers of unsafe sex for higher compensation. Mari explai ned, 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 care of me? ar they going to take care of my children? These statements are legate 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 improve and aware of the dangers of unprotected sex. Secondly, most of the women identified with the term sex worker, meaning that many of their relations with foreigners were direct sex-for-money exchanges. Women who engage in less rigidly structure and more ambiguous relationships, in which the conditions of the exchange deemphasize economic factors, may tak e more risks to prove that they are not from the street. interrogation 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 testify to the bar of categorizing the mode of HIV transmission 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 notion of sex workers as vectors of disease also needs to be reexamined. My research with 30 women infected with HIV/AIDS, who worked in sex stablishments serving a predominantly Dominican business sector in Santo Domingo, indicates that all were infected 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 resistance 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 lifestyle (UNDP, 2005). There are few educational and saloon programs to target this population.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 certainty Few viable alternatives exist to the current structure of travel, leisure, and tourism, which consigns people in the South to poorly compensate 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 decent work. 13 The squash of labor power and natural re sources 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 positions of servitude in low-paid jobs in the formal sector, underemployment, or unstable activities in the informal sector that include the commoditization of sexuality 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. mingled scholars have documented the ingenuity and resource of the Caribbean people in acting on the tourism infrastructure (Cabezas, 2004 Fosado, 2004 Padilla, 2007), but the opportunities and potential for significa nt democratisation are modest or absent.Tourism may provide the opportunity for people from the global North to animize 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 dispel 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 judge 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 tag by the stereotypical image based on sun, sand, and sea, a tourism product with facilities that face away from local populations and one characterized by constant competition and l ack 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 let out 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 environment. 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 based 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 operat ing, six 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 taint containing the urine of infected animals. The epidemic had killed 27 people by November 20, 2007. Downloaded from lap. sagepub. 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. Agency 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 investors and corporations. Thus foreign entities took the expire 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 sign 10-year 100 percent tax exemption on earnings, imports, and construction. 11.Environmental costs 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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