Ra Ximhai (Jun 2018)
TOURISM AS A SHOWCASE FOR THE VIOLATION OF THE INDIGENOUS RIGHTS
Abstract
More than a few indigenous communities have recently ventured themselves into the tourist industry, either on self-initiative or encouraged by ONGs working in the Latin American region. The vast majority of these communities share the common need of using tourism as a means of alleviating their extreme poverty. Still communities such as that of the Wichís, an 80,000 population which together with the Chulupíes and the Chorotes form the Mataco-Paraguayan family, might have conducted this incursion as a cry for help with regard to their imminent disappearance. These facts take place in a country such as the Republic of Argentina, where not only was the Constitution reformed with a view to recognizing and respecting the ethnic and cultural preexistence of indigenous peoples in 1995, but where most international conventions and agreements in defense of their rights have been ratified as well. The objective of this research is to give answer to the following hypothesis: the wichi community is making an incursion in tourism, in order to reveal about the permanent violation of their rights; situation that is leading them to a dying extinction.
