-Pereiro Pérez, X.; De León Smith, C. y Martínez Mauri, M. (2009): Culture and tourism in Kuna Yala (Panamá). Relatório para a National Geographic Society (não publicado).
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2015-10-26
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The Kunas of Panama are an ethnic group consisting of approximately 60,000 people who live in the comarca (an autonomous territory) of Kuna Yala (the Caribbean coast) and who enjoy political and territorial autonomy within the Republic of Panama. Traditionally, they made a living by fishing, farming and hunting, but over the last decades, tourism has appeared to be the opportunity of development. The Kunas are currently experiencing substantial changes and become turistores (travel agents).
This research was led by the academics of CETRAD (The Centre of Transdisciplinary Studies for Development), a research center of UTAD (The University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro), a public university in the interior north of Portugal. For the research’s sake, we analyzed the role of tourism in the development of the indigenous Kuna communities, studying its impact on the society, culture, economy and environment.
We adopted primarily an anthropological approach to tourism in our work, which served to view sustainable tourism as an alternative of tourism development. We carried out some work in the area of anthropology, in addition to a strenuous visual and documentary investigation. Our main contribution to the subject consists in a thorough study of diverse kinds of tourism and tourists present in Kuna Yala, including ethno-ecotourism, ethnic tourism, cruise tourism, yacht tourism, backpacker tourism, Kuna hotel tourism, community tourism, solidarity tourism and scientific tourism. One of the conclusions we reached concerns the importance of Kunas’ self-management in tourism development and political control of their resources.
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turismo indígena, turismo étnico, antropologia do turismo