Mbyá Ethnicity in Puerto Iguazú. The exploitation of indigenous communities by tourism on the Triple Border (Misiones, Argentina)

Abstract

The international border that divides Argentina from Paraguay and Brazil, has the particularity of being a border where tourism is prevalent —the site of Iguazú Falls, one of the seven world’s wonders— and a hydrological border —constituted by the Guaraní Aquifer—. These characteristics imply a significant flow of people where distinct actors come into contact: tourists, hotel entrepreneurs and their workers, local society and the Mbyá Guarani communities that live there. In this context the indigenous communities in the area have found in tourism a new source of subsistence; and although the indigenous communites enter into capitalist forms as unequal actors, they find diverse strategies to carry out this activity, all of them imbued with the offer of their ethnicity.

Keywords

• Explotación Turística
• Triple Frontera
• Mbyá Guaraní
• Etnicidad
• Relaciones interétnicas