Participant-Led Photographs and Repositioningel Mujeriegoor “the Hustler” in Costa Rica’s Caribbean Littoral

In this paper I address how the ideology of Costa Rican exceptionalism and whiteness has maintained racial inequality with the growth of global tourism. Whereas scholars of whiteness in Latin America typically ignore how the ideology has supported racial inequality in structural forms, I explore how discursive racial discourses influence how structural inequality practices in the tourism industry take form. I examine the narratives and symbols from public and private Costa Rican tourism actors who use Costa Rica’s racial ideology of exceptionalism and whiteness to position the nation’s cultural wealth. Two narratives to define Costa Rica are promoted: (1) environmental uniqueness; and (2) rural democracy traditions. These narratives support white inclu- sionary and black exclusionary practices in tourism economic activity. Because Costa Rica is perceived as ‘white’ and represents a ‘white habitus’, it distinguishes itself as a ‘democratic’ and ‘safe’ place to visit, while negatively racialized Afro-Costa Rican locations in the southern Atlantic coast are framed as ‘dangerous’ or ‘different’ and non-representative of the exceptional characteristics.

ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 2019

In Here Comes the Sun (2016), Nicole Dennis-Benn explores the impact of structural inequalities within the space of a fictional vacation resort. Drawing on recent scholarship on the relationship between landscape and power, the function of racial-sexual economies in the Caribbean, and the construction of the Caribbean picturesque, this article argues that sexual exploitation and environmental devastation operate as parallel forces in the text. The article examines how the author depicts tourism and sex tourism as industries that reinforce local and global racial and economic power relations. The essay contends that Dennis-Benn positions the protagonist and her supervisor as perpetrators as well as beneficiaries of extractive and exclusionary practices; homophobia, hotel development, and labor, sexual, and environmental exploitation render the town of River Bank a place of paradise for tourists and a space of trauma for the majority of residents.

Tourist Studies, 2008

Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 2023

By analyzing “Flores Nocturnas,” “La Bruja,” and La Partida, I will discuss how different perspectives on the interplay of sex and tourism in Havana endorse or challenge the dominant narratives that either victimize or demonize their participants. I will also debate how some places in the Cuban capital turn out to be particularly significant in the erotic encounter between local and foreign individuals. Havana is what Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly define as a site of desire in international tourism, a geography that is imagined as the background of sexual lawlessness and release (1997, 17). Although sex, euros, and dollars mediate the transnational liaisons in these works, their use and meaning simultaneously uphold and contest masculine domination at local, national, and international levels.

Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2008

José rAúl PerAles introductory chapter, though interesting in its own right, also leaves this central proposition of the book unattended. Altogether, the book carries the debate on the non-independent Caribbean to a new level, and opens a new field of engagement and discussion about the political dilemmas and choices confronting these territories. In an important sense, it is a well received contribution not just to understanding the politics of the non-independent Caribbean in the 21st century, but also highlights the continued complexity and challenge of Caribbean governance.

Photography and Culture, 2017

This article aims to examine the ways in which contemporary art from the Caribbean, and specifically from the Dominican Republic, is analyzing mobility and human trafficking within a transnational context. In this case I will critique the work of the photographer Fausto Ortiz (Santiago de los Caballeros, 1970), who has reflected recently on the consequences of migration and displacement for Dominican cultural politics. Rather than addressing the representation of marginalized sectors and marginal forms of economy in the particular case of the Dominican Republic, I argue that Ortiz's photographic practice deepens and broadens the debates about race, citizenship and social inequality, forcing his audience to consider those issues as a central part of the everyday. While addressing those issues, this article tries to insert Ortiz's photographic practice within international debates on mobility, border practices and displacement.

2009

Costa Rica has been a popular tourist destination for decades, and is currently the second largest industry in the country. With so many tourists coming into the country, Costa Rica provides a rich environment within which to examine sex tourism. Costa Rica is a known destination for male sex tourists hoping to experience legal prostitution or child prostitution. Although it is lesser known, female sex tourism also occurs in Costa Rica. Female sex tourism occurs in the form of pseudo-romantic relationships between female tourists and Costa Rican men working in the tourist industry. These people spend a great deal of time together on tour, and relationships occur frequently. Men are seeking interesting sexual exploration, while women tend to be looking for the "Latin Lover." These relationships are not characteristic of prostitution, as no goods or services are exchanged for sex. These relationships may best be characterized as romantic. vi 'Returnee' Voluntary Exploitative 'Neophyte' Striptease/exotic dancing 'Veteran'/ 'Macho' client Sex slavery/trafficking Commercial Recently, non-commercial sex tourism has been studied in greater detail (Ryan and Hall 2001, Ragsdale, et al. 2006, Van Broeck 2002). Holiday romances are of particular interest, as they are so different from prostitution. These relationships are

Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, the Caribbean, and the Black International, 2014

“Rude Girl, Big Woman” provides a historicized account of the complicated ways in which Afro-Caribbean women’s bodies are represented in mass media through close readings of pop star Rihanna’s music videos for “Rude Boy” and “Man Down.” I read these videos through a history of Caribbean visuality in order to pinpoint how, by dismissing or redefining the respectable, women assert power through mass distributed images. Images of these women circulate in a global capitalist web that often includes violence in both the images and the meanings attached to them. I argue that from postcards to music videos, while at work or at play, Afro-Caribbean women’s bodies become a site of cultural contestation. They are capricious and dignified, carnal and ethereal, a palimpsest of the stereotypes, realities, and aspirations of a diverse region and all those who hold interest in its fate.

care for the residentse.g., they produce ethnographies explaining how the people's 'degenerate' lifeways are a functional response to the city context; they deliver healthcare education; and in the past IPAC employed local residents and lobbied for them. But they also displace themthe data scientists collect provide evidence of 'degeneracy'; the data inform governance mechanisms that include relocations and evictions; the police harass and even kill residents. Residents, for their part, participated in these processes in order to further their own ends. This was partly a matter of engaging with and manipulating the 'data' that they perceived were so important to IPAC, whose workers carried out endless surveys. It also meant recognising themselves as objects of special scientific and patrimonial interestquasi-sanctified (hence the 'saints' of the title) or what Collins calls 'properly historical subjects'and using this status to make calls on the state, and to claim status not just as patrimony but also as patrimonialists and researchers.

Mobilities, 2009