Last year, 23 million tourists went on vacation to the Caribbean. The image of tropical paradise - with its white-sand beaches and palm trees, smiling locals, and fruity drinks – has become a symbol of luxury and relaxation. Tourism also generates billions of dollars in profit every year. It seems to be a template for Caribbean development. But at what cost?
The transmedia documentary project, soy turismo, is an unconventional travelogue through the Caribbean. It tells the story of service workers who live and labor on the other side of paradise. There is much more wrapped up in tourism than the simple pursuit of leisure. Using multiple media formats, including web videos, podcasts, essays, maps, and photographs, the soy turismo project is designed to offer viewers a rich multimedia experience to explore and discuss the complexity of Caribbean tourism.
In its initial phase, soy turismo focuses on a series of short videos. Each video follows people engaged in the tourism industry, including entertainers, maids, taxi drivers, tour guides, and sex workers. These are the faces of tourism; the people who produce vacation fantasies. Through verité filmmaking and interviews, the project encourages viewers to engage in critical discussion about what it means to vacation. Collectively the videos ask: what are travelers looking to find in the Caribbean? For the local workers, does tourism bring joy and prosperity, depression and poverty, or something more complex? Participants tell their own stories to address these issues. Tourism, it turns out, is full of revealing contradictions.
To learn more about the project, join the team, or contribute your own alternative tourism film, please contact us by email .
our team
Andres Lombana Bermudez is a transmedia designer and editor. He was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, and currently lives in Austin. Andres is a PhD candidate in Media Studies at UT-Austin and previously completed a MSc in Comparative Media Studies at MIT.
Wendy James is a writer/director and activist who makes films that aim to provoke a deeper understanding of the relationship between race, gender, and class in the U.S. and Latin America. She is a PhD student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
Blake Scott is a student and teacher of history. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where he writes and teaches about the history of travel and tourism in the Caribbean.
Maria Jose Afanador-Llach is a historian and researcher studying the relationship between economic cultures, territoriality, and knowledge production in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries' New Granada (contemporary Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama). She is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also completed an MA degree in history.
