Tourism in Fishing Communities in Peru: Dominant discourses and social exclusion

By combining critical discourse analysis and multi-sited ethnography, this article looks at the discursive spheres where ideologies of race and development intersect in tourism contexts outside the Andean highlands. It illustrates how dominant discourses construct and situate social subjects within the structure of Peruvian society, while ideologically justifying the expansion of the tourism industry. Based on the case of Máncora, Piura, it explores the tensions and negotiations that emerge from implementing tourism within fishing communities in Northern Peru. The author argues that the tourism industry has advanced into a contemporary platform where old discourses and racialized practices are reproduced, creating the conditions for the processes of social exclusion to occur.


Introduction
At the Electoral Forum organized by the Peruvian National Chamber of Commerce for Tourism (CANATUR) in 2011, Carlos Canales, former president of CANATUR (2002-2012, concluded that tourism is an industry which will connect remote, poor, forgotten and underdeveloped rural communities with larger, modern cities (Canales, 2011). Five years later, at the same event, before becoming Peru's vice-president in 2016 and Prime Minister in 2017, Mercedes Araoz stated: ' […] we believe that we could bring development through tourism to everywhere, to every region of the country' (Araoz, 2016). At both events, former presidents, congresspersons, national political leaders, and presidential candidates agreed that tourism represents a contemporary industry which could improve local inhabitants' well-being and quality of life, transforming them into entrepreneurs while also making Peru a developed and modern nation. However, dominant discourses about tourism often ignore the transformations this industry instigates in the local inhabitants' way of life, and the struggles local communities undergo when tourism converts their territories and cultures into popular commodities. In Latin America, while tourism development has had positive effects, there have also been socio-cultural changes and negative consequences for local communities throughout the region (Asensio & Pérez Galán, 2012;Babb, 2011;Baud & Ypeij, 2009b;Berger & Wood, 2010;Gascón & Milano, 2017;Mowforth, Charlton, & Munt, 2008;Ypeij & Zoomers, 2006). Dominant discourses representing tourism as a tool for development ideologically justify the expansion of the tourism industry and the incorporation of local populations and environmentally fragile landscapes into the tourist market. As a result of the interaction between tourism and local communities, indigenous bodies and their traditional lifestyles become commodities for the global market (Canessa, 2005), altering perceptions of identity and culture (Stronza, 2008). This has allowed local Peruvian communities to feel proud of their ethnic identities, made indigenous cultures prominent on national and international levels of society (Ypeij, 2012;Zorn, 2005), and transformed gender roles. In fact, the growing perception of Indianness as cultural capital permits women to become successful entrepreneurs, linking their communities with the outside world. Meanwhile, the cash they gain from textiles sales translates into a new source of power and legitimacy within their communities (Babb, 2011;Henrici, 2002;Fuller, 2010;Pérez Galán & Fuller, 2015;Ypeij, 2012;Zorn, 2005). Nonetheless, tourism development also increases internal socio-economic differentiation and conflicts within local communities, and tensions between local inhabitants and outsiders (Fuller, 2010;Gascón, 2005;Mitchell & Reid, 2000;Ypeij & Zorn, 2007). In addition, national policies defined by essentialist approaches to the idea of culture exclude non-recognized indigenous communities and rural communities from the processes of development (Ypeij, 2006). This has, for example, allowed local governments to consider street vendors to be a problem for the tourism industry, and subsequently to banish them from the city of Cusco (Steel, 2009). It has also enabled officials to exclude peasant communities from the Machu Picchu Historical Sanctuary and restrict them from developing their agricultural activities further (Maxwell & Ypeij, 2009).
In postcolonial Peru, dominant discourses that represent tourism as tool for development, but neglect its negative impacts on local and indigenous cultures, are strongly influenced by a socio-cultural context governed by racial ideologies and racialized practices. In colonial times, racial categories were used to classify, separate and organize the population within a hierarchy, in which races considered superior (white) controlled and oppressed inferior races (indigenous and black) (Wade, 2010). Since the emergence of the nation states, ideologies of race and racial identities have been socially constructed to rework social classifications, which, in turn, condition the relationship between the members of the social groups within the nation (De la Cadena, 2000;Wade, 2007;. Throughout this process, indigenous populations have been racially represented as an obstacle to the development of the nation, and as degenerate, backward, and inferior groups in need of improvement and manipulation (De la Cadena, 2005;Drinot, 2011a;Gotkowitz, 2011b;Graham, 1990). Thus, race is a powerful concept used to locate indigenous peoples and black populations within the margins of the nation (Canessa, 2005) and to legitimize the existence of different forms of racism (Gotkowitz, 2011a). This way, indigenous groups are situated in inferior positions within the social hierarchy, whereas white, mestizos, and urban middle classes occupy privileged places (Colloredo-Mansfeld, 1998;Wade, 2010;Weismantel, 2001). In the Peruvian context in particular, the concept of race is more dependent on cultural than biological differences (De la Cadena, 2000), and its existence allows for the reproduction of social inequalities and racist practices against local and indigenous communities. This explains why women from rural communities engaged in tourism can also feel ashamed of their identity when dealing with other Peruvians or visiting non-tourism contexts, where they prefer to engage with a mestizo identity to avoid being an object of discrimination (Simon, 2009).
In this study I apply the concepts and methodological approach elaborated in critical discourse analysis studies (CDA) (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999;Fairclough, 1995;Howard, 2010Howard, , 2009Howard, , 2007Van Dijk, 1993) to look at the spheres where ideologies of race and development intersect in tourism contexts outside the Andean highlands. Although CDA alone is insufficient to account for the complexities involved in the production of social life, because it focuses on its discursive dimension, I consider it a useful tool for analyzing the power relations and ideologies behind social structures controlling social life. To complement the discourse analysis, I have combined it with field notes and archival data collected via multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1998; undertaken in Lima, Piura, and Máncora 1 in 2007 and 2011, with my own experience as a Peruvian living in a socially fragmented and racist society. By analyzing transcripts of interviews conducted in 2011 with top-level officials directly involved in the coastal tourism development of fishing villages in northern Peru, notably Máncora, I explore how authorities relate to the local population, and Peru's natural and cultural diversity in tourism contexts. By combining these interviews with ethnographic data on Máncora's fishing community, this paper shows how the tourism industry in Peru is a contemporary platform where old discourses and racialized practices are reproduced, thus creating a context that excludes local communities from the processes of development.

Playas del Norte
The 'dirty' local villager The last three decades have seen Latin American nations implement policies to attract large numbers of tourists to strengthen their participation in the global economy (Mowforth et al., 2008;Mowforth & Munt, 2009). In this regard, Peruvian national elites have reshaped the country into a cultural tourism destination (Baud & Ypeij, 2009a), portraying it as an exceptional country full of indigenous peoples, breath-taking archaeological sites, magical and hectic cities, vast natural landscapes and unique culinary traditions. In its attempt at expanding this industry beyond the southern Peruvian highlands, the state has undertaken seven projects aimed at developing other destinations and types of tourism, arguing that this will generate economic growth and raise employment opportunities (MINCETUR, 2009(MINCETUR, , 2016. Among these is the tourism project 'Playas del Norte' (Beaches of the North), encompassing the coastal area of the Piura and the Tumbes regions in Northern Peru. The former fishing village of Máncora, already known for its popular beach resort attracting a sustained number of yearly tourists, was chosen as the starting point for this project. 2 I interviewed Claudia Cornejo in 2011, when she was Peru's National Executive Director of Tourism Development (2010-2011) and Peru's Vice-Minister of Tourism (2011Tourism ( -2016 at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (MINCETUR). As such, she was the main official responsible for this tourism project, consisting of building a promenade by the beach and a boardwalk within the district's marshland. When our interview took place, the boardwalk had already been abandoned due to land invasions and the promenade partly destroyed due to rough seas. I asked her if she believed that tourism actually increased employment opportunities, and specifically whether hotel owners hired local villagers to work in their hotels, as these are two commonly used arguments for justifying the intervention of tourism. The extract below describes part of her answer: Imagine that you were a fisherman or a person that used to do 'x' and suddenly all these gringos and Limeños start coming. Hey, come on, great, I set up my pharmacy, I set up my [souvenir] stand, my hotel, anyway and anyhow. But no one has given me training for the fact that I have to pay taxes or that I need to have a working license, or that the toilet has to be clean.
[…] that is why I go back to the topic of education.
[…] Why should I improve my service? The tourists are already here and they'll keep coming anyway. […] No, but if the toilet is dirty then clean it! No, but why should I clean it if they come anyway. The issue is also to do with laziness, ah. I am very harsh that way. But it's not only in Máncora, it's the same in other towns. Hey, but sweep a little here; it doesn't cost you anything! Throw the rubbish out! But, what for? Because they have never been taught to live differently, they've got used to living like that. Hey, Mr. don't you know that you have to throw the rubbish away and that there's a proper way to do it? […] In other words, those issues, that are second nature to us, because we always live in relative cleanliness and tidiness, we are born into it. These people aren't. Hence the difficulties.
[…] the thing is that many people, as you said, the private sector arrives and they very often have to face this reality that they don't understand. Because, you say, hey mate, clean, why don't you? Why wouldn't you clean? What? I don't understand. Clean! It's a basic thing, isn't it? And you bang your head against a brick wall; he/she's an idiot, he/she's ignorant, and there's no mutual understanding. Because many things that we take for granted and say 'this is the way people should live and these are the basic rules for living together', for them it's not like that (Claudia Cornejo, former Vice-Minister of Tourism, MINCETUR, Lima, 25 March, 2011).
Cornejo's use of direct speech, that is, the clear boundaries dividing the authorial voice from the voice of the person or group who is reported (reportee) (Volosinov, 1986), reflects her assumed authority and power over local populations, making her point more powerful and impactful. In her statements, she represents the local inhabitants (reportee) as a group with slovenly habits, careless of the consequences that dirtiness can bring to the tourism industry. In addition, she constructs her discourse about the local inhabitants using adjectives such as idiot and ignorant, which refer to the understanding or intellectual capacity of an individual or group. As such, Cornejo invokes notions of cleanliness, education, culture, morality, and intelligence to mark sharp differences between a 'white' elite and rural populations. In other words, she relies on local coherence in discourse to create cultural boundaries, that is, 'ideologically based beliefs' (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 277) used by a speaker as an ideological basis to sustain and construct an argument (Howard, 2007).
This construction of cultural boundaries between local inhabitants and the 'white' elite is clear in Cornejo's use of the personal pronouns 'us/we', to align herself with the interviewer and create a distinction between herself and the local inhabitants, who are contemptuously referred to through the use of the grammatical feature 'these people'. In doing this, she made a clear distinction between 'us' and 'them'. Howard (2009, p. 28) argues that 'by the use of personal pronouns, speakers position themselves socially and culturally in regard to the addressee or other referred to in the interaction'. Cornejo's use of the subject pronoun 'we' reflects how she fixed her identity and mine as being members of the same social class.
This leads me to describe briefly how other Peruvians tend to associate me with the 'white' urban middle class elite. Because of my physical features and skin colour, which are the result of being the son of a Peruvian mother with Italian roots and a Spanish father, people consider me 'white'. Moreover, the district in Lima where I grew up and the educative institutions I attended are social markers that have resulted in my association with the 'white' urban middle class elite. While living in Máncora, these social and physical features worked as markers of social difference, suggesting to the Mancoreños that I am a Colorado, or a member of the group of upper and middle class Limeños living in Máncora. 3 Thus, Claudia's use of the personal pronoun 'we' is used to construct herself and me as socially 'white' and fix us as members of the same elite. She also uses this personal pronoun to implicate me in her discourse to validate her position and make her argument more powerful, assuming that I agree with her statements. In doing this, she creates a social boundary that differentiates her social class from that of the local populations.
Although the former Vice-Minister of Tourism highlights the poor quality of the tourist service in many destinations, she creates a representation of her social class as a group whose way of life and codes of conduct are taken as right and appropriate for tourism, stressing the fact that members of this group were born within cleaner, tidier and more civilized environments. In contrast, she constructs a discourse of 'hygienic racism' to describe local populations, and ascribes to local inhabitants several degrading features that she considers to be part of their habits and culture. In many Latin American societies, racialized practices manifest in discourses of hygienic racism; by linking race to issues of class, cleanliness and national character, 'white' elites characterize races by portraying a stereotypical picture that presents indigenous populations as backward and dirty. For instance, in Ecuador, this racial ideology produces the image of the 'dirty Indian' and validates a social hierarchy, 'positing a clean, healthy, "normal" white population and a dirty, weaker, native population' (Colloredo- Mansfeld, 1998, p. 188). In Peru, discourses of hygienic racism are commonly attached to indigenous groups from the Peruvian Highlands. This is in part because, during the process of independence, by assigning the racial category 'indigenous' to populations living in the Highlands, Peruvian geographers 'de-indianized' coastal indigenous groups (Oliart, 2007;Orlove, 1993). Thus, even though fishing communities in Northern Peru have reproduced themselves from pre-colonial times to the present (Rostworowski, 2005;Sabella, 1974), this removed them from the social landscape as indigenous groups. Nonetheless, Cornejo's statements clearly show that coastal communities also suffer from discriminatory and racialized practices emanating from discourses of hygienic racism.
The interview illustrates how tourism is embedded in a complex set of power relations which allows some members of 'white' national elites to reproduce racialized practices over indigenous groups and local populations. Discourses of hygienic racism naturalize discriminatory practices that place local populations, especially indigenous communities, within an absolute inferior position in contrast to a clean, 'white', civilized and privileged powerful elite. This enables national elites to impose their social power over other socially or geographically distant populations living within territories incorporated in their political and economic projects. This not only strengthens socio-cultural inequalities but, above all, permits Peru's dominant racism to persist; that is, 'discriminatory practices that derive from a belief in the unquestionable intellectual and moral superiority of one group of Peruvians over the rest' (De la Cadena, 2000, p. 4). In addition, as Smith (2015) illustrates in the Ecuadorian context, racialized discourses make nonrecognized indigenous coastal communities invisible and vulnerable, leaving their territories unrecognized.

El Perro del Hortelano
In 2008, the international hotel chain Decameron and the Peruvian investment group New World jointly undertook a tourism project in Máncora's nearby district of Canoas de Punta Sal, Tumbes. They built a $30 million (US) allinclusive hotel within 26 hectares of coastal land ("Cadena Decameron", 2008), sold to them by the regional government of Tumbes. In 2010, the regional press reported that local inhabitants and fishermen were opposed to this project because the land included a road which they had used for more than twenty-five years to access the beach and perform their daily activities. In addition, concerned by the lack of water in this region, local authorities concluded that, because of its capacity, the hotel would endanger the population's supply of drinking water ("Coludido con", 2011; "Decameron deja", 2011; "Venta a Decameron", 2011).
In March 2011, I approached Eduardo Sevilla, a MINCETUR agent long involved with tourism development at a national level. He began our interview by talking about Decameron's investment project in Northern Peru, to show me how tourism works as a tool for development and how it benefits local populations. When I mentioned to him that some local inhabitants had opposed this project because of the road issue, he put forward the following discourse, in which he constructed a widely shared representation of the local population: […] Tourism is a strategic ally of the natural environment, it is a strategic ally of sustainable development. Well-planned tourism development doesn't cause any harm, it doesn't jeopardize natural landscapes. It doesn't minimize opportunities, it actually generates employment opportunities. If I'm a fisherman, I can assure you that the restaurants and hotels will ask me for more cabrillas, more congrio, more ojo de uva, mero, and more lobster. I won't need to go far away to sell my products as people will buy them from me right there in the hotel. Therefore, through the presence of the hotel, I have a strategic ally for my economic wellbeing. If I'm a fisherman, I have to see it that way and I have to see it as an opportunity that will increase my sales and my daily income. Sevilla evokes an ideology that presents tourism as a tool for development. By persuading fishermen that the presence of the hotel in their locality would benefit them by saving them transport costs, while also providing them with more and better paying clients, he represents tourism as a strategic economic ally of local populations. Nonetheless, his ethnocentric point of view overlooks the current characteristics and socio-cultural dynamics of artisanal fishing communities in Northern Peru, where tourism has replaced fishing as the overriding activity.
Considered the most traditional sector, Máncora's artisanal fishing community is a heterogeneous social group composed, in 2011, of approximately six hundred fishermen and their families. Organized in the Asociación de Gremio de Pescadores de Máncora (AGREPESAR), fishermen are grouped consistent with the type of boat and equipment they use.
According to the former president of AGREPESAR, Martín Maceda, in 2011 there were thirty traditional rafts, around fifteen to twenty espineleras, four bolicheras and seventy cortineras. Fishermen using traditional rafts, a craft that ties current fishermen with their pre-colonial ancestors (Sabella, 1978), or balseros, stay close to the shore and fish for short periods. Although the fish caught by the balseros is mainly sold on Máncora's market or to restaurants and hotels, most hotel and restaurant owners prefer to buy cheaper fish from nearby fishing villages. Most of Máncora's fishermen work on boats with capacities ranging from three to seven tons, and usually spend three or four days fishing within five miles of Máncora's shore. In general, before going out to fish, the fishermen who own the boats first make verbal contracts with wholesalers, who advance them money for petrol, ice and groceries. Although fishermen keep a very small amount of the catch or sell it to relatives and friends, when the fishing boats arrive at the dock, the catch belongs to the wholesaler. In fact, if a tourist goes to the fishing pier willing to buy fish from the fishermen, they will usually direct him/her to the market to buy it. The wholesalers also own the lorries used to transport the catch to other markets, leading to a situation in which a handful of wholesalers monopolize the fishing activity, deciding the price of the fish and where it will be sold. Depending on the market price of fish, the catch may be sold in other regional markets, such as Lima, Piura, and Chiclayo, or sent to canneries in Ecuador. Because of this, the roads connecting fishing communities to regional markets are an essential part of the fishing activity.
As in many Andean highlands communities (Gascón, 2005;Zoomers, 2006), in Máncora tourism has generated economic benefits only for certain privileged sectors of the population; mainly those with economic means, access to the natural resources required, and sufficient knowledge of the tourism industry. In the fishing community, a small number of fishermen and their families have learnt to make handicrafts and souvenirs that they sell to tourists to obtain a complementary source of income. However, during high season (December to March, and July), they have to compete with other foreign artisans, and during low season (which is most of the year) they face a lack of income, forcing them to alternate with fishing or other activities. In other cases, family members have switched livelihoods from fishing to working at restaurants or souvenir shops, while their children, brothers or cousins may still be involved in fishing. Theoretically, therefore, tourism has given them the opportunity to work in hotels and restaurants, with women predominantly occupying positions such as maids, cooks and cleaners, and men working as security guards or gardeners. However, low-waged immigrants and backpackers staying in Máncora for short periods commonly take these jobs. Hotel owners prefer to hire foreign workers because they live permanently in the hotels or rental houses, and so they are available twenty-four hours a day for less money than the Mancoreño, who has a family in town and wants higher pay. Hotel owners also believe that foreign workers are more qualified to work, or willing to learn more about the catering sector, than the Mancoreños. Furthermore, because most of these jobs are informal, most workers are only hired during high season and thus do not receive security or social benefits.
Máncora's fishermen say that their community has increased over time and that they want to maintain their fishing identity, as Ocampo-Raeder (2011) has also noted. However, for some national policymakers, if some sectors of the fishing community oppose large investment projects expected to boost the tourism industry, they are labelled as the 'Perro del Hortelano' (the dog in the manger). This is clear when Eduardo Sevilla refers to a series of articles written by former President Alan García during his second administration (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011), which sought to undermine the arguments of environmentalists who criticized his neoliberal development policies. In these articles, García (2007aGarcía ( , 2007b uses the dog in the manger image to represent a person who has access to countless highly valuable natural resources. However, this person does not use these resources to full capacity (according to a capitalist model of resource exploitation) because of a lack of economic resources, technological knowledge and, above all, outdated anti-capitalist and environmentalist ideologies. According to García, these ideologies cause a person who suffers from the 'dog in the manger' syndrome to say: 'if I do not use them, then no one else should either', leaving those natural resources unexploited while preventing Peru from becoming a developed country. Drinot (2011b) has concluded that García's 'dog in the manger' rhetoric is strongly influenced by a racist discourse that represents indigenous populations as backward and as a threat to national progress, because they do not exploit their available natural resources, nor allow the state to tap into Peru's countless natural resources.
Sevilla's discourse follows García's 'dog in the manger' rhetoric, in which local populations opposed to tourism projects are represented as a threat to the nation's progress, as they reject important flows of private investment that are expected to bring development to the country. As such, the point of view of official tourism agents is that, even though their way of life would be negatively affected, fishermen should not become 'dogs in the manger' and should accept the intervention of tourism and global capitalism in their localities. By positing as an unquestionable fact that the presence of private investment in rural communities will bring positive results, statements like those made by Sevilla neglect members of local communities who have decided not to engage with tourism and instead maintain their traditional activities.

Local discourses and Máncora's fishing community
As Mayor of Máncora for three terms (1996-1998, 2003-2006, 2015-to the present), Florencio Olibos has played a key role in shaping Máncora's recent history. His discourse about tourism sheds light on the ideologies that encourage local authorities to prompt tourism development within local spaces. In 2010, I asked him about the main motivations leading him to undertake tourism projects aimed at developing Máncora into a beach resort: The main aim was to fight against the problem that characterizes Peru and the entire world: unemployment. It has already been demonstrated that tourism generates employment, hasn't it? As an example, I always used to tell people about a small town, a European island, where people used to live in extreme poverty, right? And this was a beautiful island with beaches, sun, and the people dedicated themselves to fishing and nothing else. And suddenly, this crazy man like the one everyone called 'Crazy Elias' or 'Crazy Harry' turns up, right? Having that vision, he said to them [the fishermen] 'but you live in poverty, why is that so?' Because they want to, don't they? Having a paradise here, as Antonio Raimondi said: 'You are sitting on a bench of gold', right? So he started marketing the place, making people understand that tourism is an important source of employment but they have to do this and that in order to generate their own incomes, and they achieved it, and now these people live exclusively off tourism.

Q: Is Máncora like that?
That's what we are aiming for. […] That's what we're seeking and that's what the people that understand tourism as a source of wealth, employment and development will keep aiming for. Nobody doubts it (Florencio Olibos, Former Mayor of Máncora, Máncora, 6 November, 2010).
In our interview, Olibos alluded to Máncora's recent history to narrate a fictional story about a place where tourism was a key driver of change. He compared Máncora's two main economic activities, tourism and artisanal fishing, and depicted fishing as an economic activity which has kept local inhabitants living in extreme poverty. In opposition, his construct of tourism is one of an unquestionable source of economic wealth and development. Olibos argues that tourism has brought about economic benefits and increased employment opportunities, meaning that he considers tourism the solution to the social problems affecting Peru and the rest of the world.
In his fictional story, Olibos attaches to the place a popular phrase attributed to nineteenth century Italian geographer Antonio Raimondi: 'Peru is a beggar sitting on a bench of gold'. He uses this phrase to highlight that Máncora is a valuable place that could transform the Mancoreños into a developed society through the means of tourism. In so doing, he discloses his own perception of the Mancoreños' condition, depicting them as an 'underdeveloped', and impeded from tapping into Máncora's natural resources due to cultural factors. At the same time, he represents the outsiders as visionaries who reveal to the locals that they live in extreme poverty simply because they want to do so. In fact, when Olibos talks about 'Crazy Elias' or 'Crazy Harry', he refers to the group of upper and middle-class Limeños who introduced tourism into Máncora. As such, he attributes to external actors and outsiders the power to change the Mancoreños' condition.
Olibos' conceptualization of tourism shows that his discourse merges with national and dominant discourses ascribing to tourism the power to eradicate the problem of poverty and unemployment. In fact, his fictional story about Máncora echoes ideas that nurture Sevilla's representation of artisanal fishermen. This suggests the existence of an underlying common and complex ideology that lies behind current interpretations of Raimondi's metaphor, the 'dog in the manger' rhetoric, and the dominant conception of tourism as a tool for development. This ideology allows an outsider to represent local populations as social groups who ignore their valuable natural resources due to cultural factors. Using these natural resources in the expected way implies a cultural construction of the natural environment, where nature is considered separate from society, and to be conquered, domesticated, exploited and managed to satisfy the human need for production, industrial exploitation, and consumption (Pálsson, 1996).
This complex ideology also depicts the outsider as a social subject who embodies the right cultural values and knowledge needed to exploit the natural environment via tourism, in turn transforming the condition of local populations. Strongly influenced by racialized discourses, this ideology situates local populations, who do not have the same cultural relation with the natural environment and have deliberately decided to reproduce their own models of development, in a condition of underdevelopment, backwardness, and extreme poverty. The hegemony of this underlying ideology potentially results in the local inhabitants of rural communities ranking themselves, and their culture and traditions, as inferior to the economic elite from Lima. Thus, the latter social group is situated in a superior position in the social hierarchy and tourism is viewed as an unquestionable source of development and positive change.
This could explain why Olibos attributes to the Limeños the power to change, through tourism, the Mancoreños' condition as underdeveloped subjects. It is assumed that they will provide the knowledge, vision and money that local inhabitants lack to exploit their area as a tourist destination. In fact, in the 1970s, a group of Limeños conceptualized Máncora as a place whose natural characteristics were ideal for developing coastal tourism. At this point in Máncora's development, the Mancoreños attached to this group of outsiders adjectives such as crazy, pioneers and visionaries because, in contrast to them, they saw in Máncora's natural environment a potential tourist attraction (González, Forthcoming). Subsequently, some Limeños used their knowledge of the law, prompted by the Peruvian State, to secure as many plots of coastal land as possible to foster land markets or build hotels and beach houses. Other Limeños undertook projects to transform what they initially -and raciallyperceived as a disgusting and dirty fishing village into an international tourism destination, as former mayor of Máncora (1978Máncora ( -1980, Javier Paroud, describes below: I remember that I liked the place and back in Lima I decided to move to Máncora. I had previously lived in Costa del Sol, in Málaga [Spain], and there I saw how tourism investors transformed small and insignificant towns into beach resorts for tourism, right? I saw that. By then Máncora was a disgusting pig farm, with lots of pigs everywhere wandering around the city, disgusting, disgusting, and very, very dirty. […] after finishing my administration as mayor I said 'so now all the conditions for the town to emerge have been done' (Javier Paroud, former Mayor of Máncora, Lima, 20 May, 2011).

Land access struggles
Since tourism development started in Máncora in the 1970s, the physical space fishermen use to develop their daily activities has dramatically reduced. Before tourism, fishermen made unrestricted use of the beaches for boat maintenance and to park the lorries used for transporting their products to regional markets. In the 1980s and 1990s, former hacienda workers and pioneer Limeños strategically constructed a peasant identity to apply the Agrarian Reform Law of 1969. In this process, they represented themselves as the deepest-rooted social group, wiping out Máncora's artisanal fishing community from the coastal landscape as a traditional sector with rights over the territory. In 1996, the Comunidad Campesina became the official owner of the whole territory of Máncora, including the urban centre, fishing neighbourhoods, and artisan fishing dock. Subsequently, their members fostered a prosperous land market that brought about uncontrolled urban expansion. As part of their strategy, they also requested that local villages generally formalized their property titles by buying the land from the Comunidad Campesina (González, Forthcoming). This strategy excluded fishing families and other sectors of Máncora's society from the possibility of securing their lands, leaving them legally vulnerable.
At present, the coastal area has been developed into hotels and private properties, restricting fishing activity to the fishing neighbourhoods and Máncora's artisan dock, situated at the entrance to Las Pocitas. In this exclusive tourist zone, some wealthy hotel owners next to the dock do not allow fishermen to run aground their boats on the beach and also demand them not to anchor their boats in front of their hotels because they spoil the view for their guests. In addition, land invaders constantly fence off plots of land for resale to foreigners, whilst private investors try to expand their properties through the same means. 4 This adverse context has provoked several violent clashes between fishermen, land invaders, and hotel owners. Nonetheless, it has also made the fishing community take a more active role in dealing with the consequences of tourism and the capitalist market, pushing them to make their land rights official. In 2011, fisherman Chicato, president of AGREPESAR during the 2000s, recounted an encounter with members of the Comunidad Campesina, where he requested land rights over Máncora's fishing dock. In this encounter, Chicato stressed that if the Comunidad Campesina continued to sell Máncora's coastal territory, current and future generations of fishermen would see their livelihoods threatened. He stated that he found the need to make the request humiliating, considering the time the fishing community had been living in the territory. After his speech, the Comunidad Campesina provided AGREPESAR with land rights over Máncora's fishing dock.
Although fishermen obviously spend long periods at sea, in Northern Peru, as elsewhere (Kottak, 1992), most of the fishing activity develops along the coast. Ocampo-Raeder has made this point clear by revealing the role played by the social relationships of the fishing families of Northern Peru in achieving the sustainable use of common resources. Despite this, the sudden expansion of tourist infrastructure within fishing neighbourhoods in Máncora is seriously threatening this key social structure. Ocampo-Raeder also noted that the lack of property titles undermines fishermen's access to bank loans, limiting their opportunities for improving their fishing equipment and boats (Ocampo-Raeder, 2011). As such, for artisanal fishing communities, territory, and place are key elements in the reproduction of their own cultural, economic, and social values. Without their territories, artisanal fishing communities would be unable to reproduce their identities and local models of development, jeopardizing their reproduction over time as a result.

Conclusions
Some authors argue tourism has raised the status of indigenous cultures (Zorn, 2005) and that it could be part of a 'decolonizing project that challenges imbalances of power by race, class, gender, and nationality' (Babb, 2011, p. 189). Although in some cases this could be true, here I have shown how tourism is embedded in a complex set of power relations, where old discourses of race, hygienic racism, progress, and development merge to produce a more complex racist ideology. This racist ideology perpetuates a dominant representation of Peruvian society where members of the 'white' national elite are situated in a superior position to the indigenous and local populations. By depicting local and indigenous populations as backwards and poor, this ideology not only justifies the exploitation of rural territories by the tourism industry, it legitimates social hierarchies based on racialized cultural differences. As in other studies (Zoomers, 2006;Simon, 2009), the case analyzed here shows how, despite bringing extra economic benefits, tourism is not an economic activity that can replace artisanal fishing. In fact, some fishermen in Northern Peru see tourism as positive for the development of their locality and some actively engage with and benefit from this industry. Nonetheless, other sectors of this heterogeneous group see it as a constant threat to their territory, their right to exist, their identity, and their own model of development. In this sense, dominant discourses of tourism nurtured by racist ideologies create a context that silences traditional groups and (nonrecognized) indigenous communities, who have deliberately decided not to engage in the tourism industry. Thus, for tourism to become a tool for sustainable development and part of a decolonizing project, new democratic discourses should emerge. These new discourses should challenge the racialized practices and discourses, long engrained in Peruvian society, which have pushed indigenous and local communities to the 'conceptual fringes of the nation' (Canessa, 2005, p. 5), while also creating the conditions for processes of social exclusion. *** Fernando González Velarde C/ Perez del Toro, 56 -3I Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Gran Canaria Spain Notes 1. Located on the 1,165km Pan American Highway, Máncora has 10,547 inhabitants (Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática [INEI], 2007), whose livelihood mainly depends on tourism (according to local authorities 90 per cent of local inhabitants are directly or indirectly involved in the tourism industry) and fishing.