TOURIST
My island was a tourist destination before most other places on earth were inundated with tourists. And so, my image of tourists was formed at an early age, with a father, grandfather and uncles whose businesses catered to the tourists, who descended on the island from their cruise ships for just a few hours – only to shop.
Our lives were dictated by the cruise ships – if they should arrive on a Sunday or on feast days, even on Christmas or New Year, the stores had to be open, for that is why those American tourists came to the island - to buy duty-free merchandise from Europe and Japan. It was mandated by the government, as well as by the unwritten laws of commerce. And so, my father would not be home on his day off, and we could not go on our regular Sunday outing to the beach or the countryside.
I saw the tourists from America as loud and gaudy people, who wore tasteless dresses and Bermuda shorts, and walked around with cameras around their sun-burnt necks. It is hard to see a tourist without a camera – and I realized that cameras were what my father sold to them. He was part of the phenomenon, he fed the practice, enabling them to hunt, and proudly bring home their trophies from their tropical safari.
They shot only what was near the island’s shops - the pontoon bridge that swung open when the big ships came into the harbor; the floating market where you could buy fruit and vegetables straight off the little boats that brought produce from mainland Venezuela; and the local women sitting on the ground, behind their wares; and the elegant houses that line the harbor entrance and looked like those in Amsterdam, except they were painted in bright colors of the rainbow.
And so, local people sold them postcards of these sights and painted them on all kinds of souvenirs, (which is what my mother also did) learning to give them back what they wanted. Did we begin to see our island through their eyes? My parents even made one tourist film, in Spanish, commissioned by the tourist board, to attract tourists from Venezuela.
But their heart was in a very different film about the island – Rots en Water (Rock and Water) about the natural treasures of the island that the tourists who came for only a few hours would never see. And the making of that movie, when I was nine, was the beginning of my love of nature and hiking, as we went to every hidden corner of the island to film it, including an expedition at dawn to climb the Christoffel, its highest hill, the first of many times I climbed it.
Perhaps it is my first encounter with tourists that made me wary of becoming one myself. When I started to travel to nonwestern countries - it was only after the age of fifty - I have always tried to choose eco-tourism in places where the income from tourism goes directly to the locals. And to focus on the trek, walking continuously for days from village to village, camp to camp, avoiding ‘sightseeing’ with thousands of other tourists – preferring to arrive at distant places of beauty and sacredness after several days’ walk that prepares the spirit for the revelation. At the same time, I am hesitant to photograph people without establishing a real relationship of trust with them, relying on the camera not to keep a distance, but to get closer; while I constantly ask myself how to photograph these remarkable places beyond the expected, iconic shots.
****
Photo by my grandfather, Benjamin Gomes Casseres -
Tourist ship approaching Caracas Baai - in late nineteen forties, early fifties.
***
n preparation