The other faces of Paradise: twenty years in the historiography of tourism in the Caribbean, 1993-2013

Abstract

This historiographical paper seeks to analyze the studies about the historical evolution of tourism in the Caribbean, their debates, topics, methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks in the last twenty years. The paper suggests that the historiography of tourism focused in five different approaches: those who studied it from the economic, social and political implications of tourism (and the comparison with the plantation system), from the gender and sexuality's perspective (specifically, from the domination of the Caribbean black woman's body), from the social and racial relationships within the context of tourism, from its imaginary and symbolic dimensions, and from the historical relationship between tourism and the imperial powers that existed over the region. Despite the richness of the literature, its goals have not reached to the continental side of the Caribbean.