Honduras is open for business: extractivist tourism as sustainable development in the wake of disaster?

Following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the Honduran government introduced legislative reforms designed to generate investment opportunities in energy, mining and tourism and to expedite the post-disaster recovery. This experiment in “disaster capitalism” provided a blueprint for the recovery strategy implemented by the government of Porfirio Lobo after the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya. The similarities between these two historical conjunctures necessitate a deeper engagement with the meaning of extractivism in post-disaster contexts, particularly in relation to so-called sustainable tourism development. While multilateral aid institutions have claimed tourism as a sustainable alternative to more exploitative forms of economic development, this paper draws on ethnographic research in a coastal Garifuna community to argue that tourism is analogous with extractivism. By analyzing the collective action and resistance of black and Indigenous organizations for territorial autonomy, this paper elucidates the connections between traditional extractive industries and tourism, both of which rely on state-orchestrated natural resource expropriation, enclosure and dispossession, resulting in widespread environmental degradation and ecological insecurity for coastal Indigenous communities. The paper highlights how neoliberal tourism policies are advanced under the guise of ecotourism and sustainable development, while creating the conditions for extractivism to take hold within black and Indigenous territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]