Criticizing criticism of tourism

The heat is exploding, and with it, one of the most pathetic phenomena of contemporary summer: criticizing those who criticize tourism during the year when their vacation time arrives and they are, in fact, actually doing tourism. It's such a blatant spectacle that it's hard to watch it without blushing: profiles circulating on social media photos of other individuals peacefully relaxing on the beach, supposedly grown-ups turned into spies. Naturally, this spectacle only betrays the concern of certain systemic forces regarding the possibility that a genuine awareness is taking place. After decades of enjoying unquestioned cultural prestige, a correct analysis has begun to spread of the ravages that a tourism model based on the importation of cheap labor has brought to our lives, from low productivity that becomes a covert subsidy for entrepreneurs to the plundering of scarce resources and the political potential of the city, breaking ties between neighbors. The criticism of tourism is so fair and accurate that it's spreading like an oil slick.

That said, there's something in us that turns against a certain form of criticism of tourism that stems from correct instincts. First, the resounding failure of the left over the last decade and a half has caused its institutional representatives to ruin every just cause they touch with their lack of credibility. In the years following the 2008 crisis, we have seen the rise and fall of a left of the left that had the opportunity to seize power to transform the system and ended up contributing to its degradation. The solution is to avoid false dichotomies: when a leader or political space without credibility denounces a real injustice, we should not choose between remaining silent or supporting them, but rather we should denounce the problem and at the same time criticize the actor and their responsibility.

Now, tourism is so closely tied to the contradictions of the modern condition that it receives misguided criticisms regardless of the circumstances. I always think of that phrase "you don't hate Mondays, you hate capitalism," substituting "Mondays" for "foreigners." The left often falls into a rhetorical trap applied to the rowdy tourist, too similar to the one the right uses with the troubled immigrant: seeking a cultural explanation to replace an economic one. Because, in reality, the problem isn't with tourists for being tourists, but with a system that favors mass tourism and drives us out of neighborhoods, or with an incivility that is better explained by the socioeconomic background of foreigners and the messages they encounter when they arrive. It goes without saying that responsibility exists, that we shouldn't end up at the other extreme by saying "poor things." hooligans drunks," and that natives heckling tourists is a legitimate expression of desperation over a system that privatizes profits and socializes costs. But we must be vigilant with the synecdoche of the guiri, point to those systemically responsible, and be capable of experiencing anti-tourist anger with only legitimacy and distance. tourism with a more democratic scale and regulations than the wild liberalism we have normalized. not go too far. Well done, the critique tells two truths: on the one hand, hyper-commodified tourism reduces the people and places it visits to an object of banal consumption; the world is not intrinsically bad, only these absurd discourses with which it is identified are. Against these forms of reduction, we must maintain the revolutionary in the yearning to leave oneself and the safe places of tradition in order to find answers outside, the modern wisdom that knows that every form of freedom requires a certain degree of .

We must resist parallel cynicisms of defending a fraudulent model with the rhetoric of "there is no alternative" and the need for a comprehensive amendment. But when you look at those who are being targeted by the accusations of alleged hypocrisy we've seen these days, such as CUP of Girona regionsYou find some excellent videos criticizing tourism that make you realize that the most frightening criticism of the system is precisely this one, which demands nothing less than to stop promoting tourism without restraint and start governing it as a social good.