Beyond the Pleasure Periphery – The Cocaine Tourist
April 14th, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Drug trafficking, Social Privilege
Via The Guardian, as if Colombia didn’t have enough problems, now core countries’ privileged brats backpack there to get a taste of cocaine:
“It’s hardly shocking that some travellers in Colombia can’t resist trying the country’s most famous product, but it seems the drug is becoming a tourist attraction in itself. Just as you try steak in Argentina and caipirinhas in Brazil; in Colombia, you sample the coke. Backpackers are doing lines in their dorms, signing up to visit cocaine factories, and word is going round that somewhere in San Augustin lies a place where you can make your own.”
Of course, as long as cocaine is entertaining for thrill-seekers who don’t have to actually live in the country, I guess, it’s all fun and games. Cocaine becomes treated as a local attraction rather than a major source of social instability, political corruption and economic anarchy. The whole practice becomes detached of its social conditions of production (I start to sound like Bourdieu). This desocialization of cocaine trafficking is similar to any peripheral or semi-peripheral countries that opens itself to core tourism in the name for foreign investments. Global tourists do not want to be bothered with the social realities of the countries they visit, or only if such social conditions can be turned into exotic traits. Only a few in these countries dare to remind the tourists of these realities, like this hostel owner who posts on his website,
“If not for your own well-being, we would encourage you to refrain from supporting violence against the Colombian people by purchasing cocaine.”
The Global South is not the Northern hemisphere playground.
Posted in Economy, Globalization, Organized Crime, Social Privilege, Trafficking | No Comments »
