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We introduce this special issue of LACES by first offering a critical overview of recent work that engages questions of race and ethnicity in Peru. Against the backdrop of contemporary developments...

This work considers the paradoxes of perceived differences whereby Peruvians frequently assert that those who are more indigenous or authentically Andean live ‘mas arriba,’ or higher up. Historical...

Based on long-term and local-level ethnographic research, this chapter examines post-conflict tourism in Peru and Nicaragua. It analyses the ways in which both countries attempted to shield visitors from the recent past of conflict, violence and even revolution, and turned instead to cultivating cultural and heritage tourism, as well as other forms of tourism considered safe for tourist consumption. The chapter documents how both countries rebranded themselves as safe and healthy places for travel and advanced plans to bring back tourism after political conflict. It is then argued that when nations are undergoing periods of conflict and instability, tourists might best seek alternative ways to stand in solidarity, as has been true for the countries studied and for others in Latin America.

This chapter discusses two decades of scholarly work on women marketers. When the author began her research on the subject, there were just a few pioneering studies to guide her. Ester Boserup’s well-known Woman’s Role in Economic Development had noted that “in no other field do ideas about the proper role of women contrast more vividly than in the case of market trade,” and studies began to appear by Judith-Maria Buechler, Beverly Chiñas, Niara Sudarkasa, and Sidney Mintz. The approaches of the 1970s ranged from functionalist to structuralist, but in general they were critical of the historical impact of Western development on women’s marketing. Studies of market women in the 1980s and 1990s built upon the early works, but they also benefited from the growth of feminist analysis, and they reflected changing currents in anthropology and related fields. The author considers the emphasis on history and political economy through the eighties and the turn toward cultural analysis in the 1990s and traces several currents in research of that time. She concludes by offering remarks concerning her own changing perspective over twenty years of conducting research among market women in the Peruvian Andes.

Economic anthropologists have been slow to take advantage of the scholarship on gender relations in society. Although there have been some positive developments in the direction of incorporating gender analysis in research in economic anthropology, the mainstream of the subdiscipline has rarely appreciated the significance of gender as a primary category of analysis. Following a general discussion, this chapter draws on research on the informal economic sector in the Peruvian Andes to argue that studies are incomplete and often distorted when they disregard gender and that they are enriched to the degree that they examine the differential experiences of women and men in the society and the economy.

Since the florescence of research on women in society, the gender division of labor has been viewed as a key to understanding women’s socioeconomic position. By the mid-1970s, the view held sway that women’s cross-cultural subordination could be explained by their universal or near-universal attachment to the domestic sphere of activity, while men enjoyed the higher prestige of the public sphere. A flurry of studies appeared, documenting the unequal and undervalued role of women in the family and household. By calling attention to the previously “invisible” activities carried out daily by women, analysts undertook to transform the androcentric social sciences. This chapter suggests that while the production/reproduction framework moved us forward to important new lines of inquiry, taking these conceptual categories as unproblematic may result in some confusion. The author considers the case of market women in Andean Peru to illustrate what she views as the strengths of the concepts discussed here, as well as some shortcomings, for an examination of these Latin American women workers.

The Peru-Cornell Project inthe community of Vicos (1952–1962) was the cooperative effort of Cornell University and the Peruvian Indian Institute. The late professor Allan R. Holmberg took the opportunity to lease the Hacienda Vicos in 1952 in order to direct and study social change, and many social scientists and technical personnel worked with the project over the next ten years. This chapter draws heavily on unpublished field data of members of the Peru-Cornell Project, as well as the published literature on Vicos, to document the changing conditions in women’s and men’s lives. Vicos is not unique in Peru, for much of the country underwent similar land reform a few years later, but it is unique in the conscious way that many changes were introduced and reported by researchers. This makes Vicos particularly appropriate for a study that traces the effect of capitalist development on the fabric of human relations.

Conceptualizing women workers in the informal urban sector of developing economies poses certain problems. Researchers disagree as to the class position, productive activity, and political consciousness characteristic of these workers. Focusing on women in small-scale commerce—a growing population in cities of many underdeveloped areas—this chapter questions some commonly held views and suggests a need to refine our analysis of women in the distributive trades and the services. As one effort in this direction, the results of research on marketers in a provincial city in Peru are presented to show that while there is some ambiguity in the class status of market women, owing to the various forms of their participation in the capitalist economy, these women may be termed productive workers with evident potential for mobilization.

Theorizations of gender and race in Latin America have led to wide-ranging views concerning women and men in subaltern groups, whether indigenous or Afro-descendant, rural or urban. Views are similarly wide ranging when theorizing turns to the implications of tourism development for subaltern peoples in the region. Just as it is customary to emphasize the historically subordinate status of women and racial minorities in Latin America, so too it is customary to show that tourism in the neoliberal era has particularly harsh consequences for these marginalized social sectors. At a time of indigenous mobilization, increasing migration, and urbanization, we must recognize the complex and often surprising ways in which gender, race, and tourism intertwine. Ethnographic cases from Andean Peru and Chiapas, Mexico, suggest that indigenous women play more or less prominent roles in tourism depending on several factors, with women who are active in the wider society holding more substantial positions in community-based cultural tourism.

Susan Frohlick, Sexuality, Women, and Tourism: Cross-Border Desires through Contemporary Travel. New York: Routledge, 2013. 222 pp.Since the advent of mass tourism in the 1960s, a number of niches have manifested as more and more people participate in travel, from historical tourism to cultural tourism, eco-tourism to adventure tourism, luxury tourism to "voluntourism." Less often identified in the tourism mar- ket, but nonetheless present, is sex tourism, a form of travel that has as its objective (or, sometimes, unforeseen opportunity) the formation of intimate exchanges between tourist and local, for cash or other mate- rial or immaterial advantages. Most often, the sex tourists are men who are seeking local women for brief sexual encounters or longer "girlfriend experiences" during the course of their travel (Brennan 2004, Cabezas 2009, Gregory 2007, Babb 2011). Other times, gay male travelers seek local men with whom they initiate shorter or longer-term commitments (Padilla 2007, Allen 2011).Less frequently do we read about the young to middle-age women trav- elers who seek the intimate company of local men, but this too is a growing phenomenon in various parts of the world-see articles on the so-called "rent-a-Rasta" and "beach boys" (Phillips 1999, Pruitt and LaFont 1995) and the well-known films (based on fiction) Heading South (Cantet 2007) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Sullivan 1998). All these works fo- cus on the Caribbean, the quintessential destination for "sun, sand, and sex" tourism, though areas of Asia and Africa have also become well- known for attracting both male and female sex tourists.In Susan Frohlick's ground-breaking ethnography Sexuality, Women, and Tourism: Cross-Border Desires through Contemporary Travel, the term "sex tourism" is used to consider the mainly young adult women who find their way to Costa Rica's Caribbean coast and the small seaside town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. These women, generally heterosexual and white, have often come to the Central American nation for a brief vaca- tion or for a longer period of volunteer work or language study, and find that they are captivated by the town's "vibe" and its abundant well-toned young men, many of whom are Afro-Costa Rican. The women may have imagined a holiday romance, but most are truly surprised by the sexual freedom and opportunity they discover in the town. Puerto Viejo has grad- ually garnered a reputation in the country for its lovely environment and welcoming local population, as well as its resident ex-pats from the North, who have opened alternative small businesses that offer yoga classes, massage therapy, and other products and services.For a number of women, a brief sexual encounter after a night out at a reggae bar may lead to a temporary arrangement wherein the man stays with them for a few weeks, or they stay with the man's family, and in some cases, longer-term relationships and children may follow. While this is not the sort of sexual commerce that we envision in most cases of sex tour- ism, and indeed Frohlick reports no instances of women providing cash in direct exchange for sex, there are nonetheless material benefits that accrue to the men in these relationships. It is understood that the women, regardless of their socioeconomic status back home, are in a better posi- tion to cover all expenses, and the gifts they offer to the men sometimes include financial support. After the initial sexual attraction and romance, differences over money, as well as infidelity, can often produce friction and the dissolution of relationships. But many of the women who are new to the town speak rapturously of the local men's sexual passion and af- fection. Frohlick's rich interview material and her innovative presentation of field notes in highlighted boxes convey the very different hopes and expectations that come together in these cross-border relationships.For the most part, Frohlick focuses on the tourists' perspectives, which she has greater access to as a consequence of her gender, her reliance on the use of English, and her nationality (she is Canadian and most tourists come from the US and Canada, a smaller number from Europe); although she was learning Spanish, she found that some local men and women used English, and the women travelers were nearly always English-speaking. …

Theorizations of gender and race in Latin America have led to wide-ranging views concerning women and men in subaltern groups, whether indigenous or Afro-descendant, rural or urban. Views are similarly wide-ranging when theorizing turns to the implications of tourism development for subaltern peoples in the region. Just as it is customary to emphasize the historically subordinate status of women and racial minorities in Latin America, so too it is customary to show that tourism in the neoliberal era has particularly harsh consequences for these marginalized social sectors. At a time of indigenous mobilization, increasing migration, and urbanization, we must recognize the complex and often surprising ways in which gender, race, and tourism intertwine. Ethnographic cases from Andean Peru and Chiapas, Mexico, suggest that indigenous women play more or less prominent roles in tourism depending on several factors, with women who are active in the wider society holding more substantial positions in community-based cultural tourism.Las teorizaciones de género y raza en América Latina han conducido a una gran gama de perspectivas en lo que concierne a las mujeres y los hombres en grupos subalternos, sean estos indígenas o afro-descendientes, rurales or urbanos. Tal como es costumbre enfatizar el papel subordinado de la mujer y el indígena en América Latina, también es costumbre demostrar que el turismo en la era del neoliberalismo tiene consecuencias duras para estos sectores marginados. En un tiempo de movilización indígena, aumento en la migración, y urbanización, tenemos que reconocer las maneras complejas y a menudo sorprendentes en que el género, la raza, y el turismo se entrelacen. Casos etnográficos del Perú Andino y Chiapas, México, sugieren que las mujeres indígenas toman un papel mas o menos prominente en el turismo dependiendo de varios factores, con las mujeres mas activas en la sociedad en general consiguiendo posiciones mas substanciales en el turismo cultural basado en la comunidad.

In Cuba over the past two decades, diverse and apparently contradictory aspects of tourism have emerged along with state-led development and market-driven initiatives. This ethnographic account examines the complex ways in which Cubans and international visitors experience tourism as an economic and cultural force. Despite the unintended consequences of tourism, which has produced growing social inequality and illicit trade, tourism has met surprising success in appealing to desires for both prerevolutionary pleasures and enduring revolutionary culture and politics.

Helen Safa has been a leading program builder and pioneer in research that examines the complex intersections of gender, race, class, and nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her comparative research culminated in her influential book, The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization in the Caribbean (1995), which examined gender, family, and employment across three Caribbean societies. Over several decades Safa has inspired scholarship throughout the Caribbean and the Americas and her work is exemplary of engaged anthropology in the region. Here I present work I conducted in Cuba that was guided, like my work in Peru, Nicaragua, and southern Mexico by the writings of Safa and others who saw the critical need to bring gender into meaningful discussion in the field of Latin American and Caribbean studies. In what follows, drawn from my broader research on tourism in four nations, I explore and reflect on the contemporary dynamics of sex and romance tourism in Cuba. I suggest that the allure of this domain of tourism may be enhanced by Cuba's global political identity, and that Cuban women participating in commodified and intimate exchanges reveal an ability to get along in a market economy that generally excludes them.