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Beautiful Venezuela: Tourism with a Social Conscience

One could argue that there are two types of tourism, and unfortunately the first is much more common than the second. It involves tourists passing through a country or place for a short amount of time in a kind of quick violation of it, taking what they want from it and feeling little need to give much back beyond the money spent. Suchtourists stay in hotels beyond the means or dreams of locals, eat supposed local food that the actual locals could never afford, and hop in a taxi or go on a tour to visit the “main sites” – the famous bridge, the giant blue watermelon, the place where some ridiculous star had breakfast, the confusing abstract ball of twisted metal statue in front of some regal building with doors forty times thesize of actual human beings – pose in front of them for a tonne of repetitive photos they stick up on Facebook. Most will buy some tacky mass produced “souvenir”, possibly something flogged off as “indigenous art”; art they don’t understand, sold by people who don’t make it but do make money from it, while the indigenous people and artists flounder invisibly in the background in a poverty of power.Then the tourists go home without having learnt very much about the country beyond how cheap its coffee is, but having done a good job at snobbing their way around, condescendingly tipping the locals and expecting the country to bow down to their needs just because they come from a different country, most likely a “first world” one.
The second kind of tourism involves a lot more local dignity, butunfortunately it’s not very common. A few individuals practice it, but it’s rarely organised or planned on a larger scale. Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution is getting there though. We’re slowly constructing tourism for the development of humanity rather than the development of the bank accounts of a few tasteless business owners. Its contextualised tourism aimed at fomenting communityorganisation, encouraging environmental and ecological awareness and appreciation, rescuing local culture and collective history, and promoting solidarity and knowledge exchange between countries and regions.
“We’re socialising tourism, rather than an elite tourism, we’re promoting popular [accessible to the majority] tourism, social tourism... a humane, and very ecological and diverse tourism,” saidPresident Hugo Chavez, in 2008 at the inauguration of Venezuela’s annual International Tourism Fair (FITVEN).
Venezuela, with its Amazon forest, gold-white Caribbean beaches and islands, unique lightening phenomenon, sand dunes, tallest waterfall in the world, Andean snow capped mountains, rare frailejon plants, toucans, hummingbirds, and chiguires, its determined mass revolution, its salsa and hiphop, beautiful murals everywhere, and a population of mostly warm, cheerful, and outgoing people – has a large tourism potential.
It also has the longest and highest teleferico (mountain cable car system) in the world. So I talked to Jose Gregorio Martinez, president of Ventel – the state company that runs the teleferico here in Merida, as well as another one in Caracas  - about how those dizzyingcable cars almost touching the tip of the 4978m high Bolivar Peak- can be a factor in social change.
“This huge project is a lever of social development, that’s the main point of it: to transform reality and be an agent of inclusion and grassroots power. It’s not just a traditional public work where the important thing is the company, no, it’s about awareness raising and articulation between allthe different factors involved, the workers, and the communities. It’s also going to put Venezuela at the vanguard of mountain architecture,” he told me from his office at the base of Merida’s teleferico.








Hermosa Venezuela: Turismo con conciencia social

Se podría argumentar que hay dos tipos de turismo, y por desgracia, el primero es mucho más común que el segundo. Se trata...