A Story about the Tourism Industry in Oaxaca, Mexico

this is definitely not how I wanted to tell you the story this was supposed to be like my other edited videos with drone shots music an interview so you could hear directly from the people I talked to but now I'm legally not allowed to show you that video why not well I was originally working on this story in collaboration with a big Media company and everything was going great until about a month ago when I was called into a meeting and one of the directors of the project I was collaborating with told me I had to remove the name of a hotel chain from the story because that Hotel chain is a client of the media company they went on to try to convince me to publish the story without the name of the hotel and to me this was a classic example of censorship to protect the economic interests of two private companies the name of that hotel company was in the story for journalistic reasons and now they were telling me I had to remove it or the story would not get published think about what that means for me as an independent reporter I quit my job with corporate media precisely so I didn't have to answer to the money interest of Corporations and here I was being told what I could or could not say so I didn't affect the business relations of a company and I can not accept that and this is not the easy route because by talking about this I'm going against the wishes of a very powerful Media company and I cannot put into words the Stress and Anxiety I've been going through in the last couple of months while dealing with this it also breaks my heart because I believe it is such a good story and an important story and so much hard work went into getting the interviews researching the topic and editing the video but but I do not own the rights to that video so I can't post it however I do own my journalism and I have a right to free speech so I will now tell you what they told me I couldn't report let's start at the beginning enimas media invited me to collaborate on a story you might not recognize the brand enimas media but you do recognize telisa which recently merged with Univision Animas media is a new telisa Univision project geared towards younger Generations we agreed to work on a story about inequality in the tourism industry in Waka Mexico I wanted to look into the following question does the current tourism model in Waka lead to deeper inequality I'm interested in this because I'm from Puerto Rico in countries like my own the government wants to increase tourism with the promise of Economic Development my question is who benefits from that Economic Development because it is one thing to say more money comes in thanks to tourism but how is it distributed and what basic resources do locals have to sacrifice in the process so I wanted to look at Waka because it significant part of that State's economy depends on tourism and I wanted to see how it has played out there if I could show you the images we recorded you would see colorful Colonial architecture beautiful beaches and lots of tourists imagine local vendors selling clothes and souvenirs on the streets lots of restaurants hotels and apartments that have been turned into short-term rentals but if you look at the walls in Waka you see the sentiment of the people who are not happy with the increase in tourism we found graffiti that set things like gingo go home we found a sticker that said excess of Gringos here's a picture I took as I'll explain later in this video some of the discontent with the increase in tourism comes from people who believe the current model allows a few to profit off the land While most struggle without the basics and it is a risky trade-off to give up basic resources like land and water in exchange for the promise of jobs so in this video I'm going to explore that question of whether tourism leads to deeper inequality but I'm also going to tell you about an indigenous Community we visited that has a different model they decided they will not give up the land that feeds them and the forest that give them water in exchange for profit so back to the discontent there was a protest at the beginning of the year wakos marched on the street and they said things like Waka is not merchandise Waka no it is not for your consumption the March was meant to protest gentrification in the city now I talked about gentrification before it is when people with higher buying power move into a place prices go up and locals get pushed out rent in the center of the city of Waka has more than doubled in The Last 5 Years according to numbers from the state the average rent used to be the current equivalent of about $440 now it's almost $1,000 that has forced some locals to have to move further out away from the popular city center the protest that happened in January expressed outrage over this and it ended with police arresting six activists the governor of Waka responded by calling the protest racist in a press conference the state government showed videos of protesters breaking the glass windows of some businesses in the city center they also showed images of the graffiti protesters wrote like this one that said yes to migrants no to Gringos the governor said I don't know if this is a social cause against white people against foreigners but he said racism is reprehensible and he mentioned Hitler as an example I interviewed one of the activists who participated in the protest their name is Andrea they responded to the governor's remarks by saying that political leaders are pretending to not understand what this is really about Andrea told me the March was not a rejection of all visitors and foreigners but instead a rejection of a kind of Tourism that doesn't serve locals they said quote traveling is not the problem the problem is that travel has become a product that's being sold and it is not being determined by the People by those who were the original owners of the land Andre says the problem is touristification now let's talk about that term because it refers to a place becoming an object of tourist consumption and as a consequence the needs of tourists become a priority over those of the local population in Waka there's a very clear example of that when it comes to water when I visited Andrea they opened the faucet to show me there was no water coming out that's because it hasn't been raining as much as previous years in Mexico so reservoirs are running low to conserve what's left the state was only letting water flow through the pipes once every 20 to 39 days let me say that again when I visited Waka people were going 20 to almost 40 days without running water and these are the images I regret not being able to show you because what we recorded really gives you an idea of how hard it is to live without such a crucial resource like water when Andrea does have access to water they try to not waste a single drop so I'll describe to you everything they do they recycle water to get multiple uses out of it they have a big bucket in the sink so that when they wash the dishes they can collect that used water and it doesn't go down the drain instead they take that water strain it so that they could use it again for the toilet but most of the time they don't even flush the toilet instead they poop in a dry bucket to avoid wasting water also Andrea doesn't shower with running water instead they accumulate water in a large container and then they use a small bowl to pour water over them to use as little water as possible but if they're completely out of water showering is not even an option so they use wet wipes instead and here's what they mean when they say the needs of tourist become prioritized while I was in Waka I didn't need to do any of that I was staying only a few miles away away from Andrea but at the hotel I had running water the entire time and no one told me there was a limit to my water use because of the drought so why did the hotel I was staying at have water while Andrea didn't because there's another way to access water in Waka by paying for it people can buy what they call in Mexico aipa or a tank full of water because during droughts private companies extract water from aquafers and the outskirts of the city and sell it to the people in Waka but as the demand for water goes up so does the price of the water so these beepas have been getting getting more expensive one tank lasts the average consumer about a month and when I was in Waka companies were selling one tank of water for the equivalent of approximately $75 now if you live in the US $75 for the month might not sound like a lot because if you make the federal minimum wage in the US you'd have to work about 10 hours to make that much money but listen to this if you live in Mexico and you're making the minimum wage there you'd have to work more than five full days to earn enough money to buy one tank of water the way Andrea the ACT is puts it if you don't have the money you're screwed but even if you can't afford it aquafers also run low when it hasn't been raining so there's not enough water for everyone someone like Andrea is competing with hotels in Waka for access to that water and the pipa companies choose who they want to sell to while we were in the city center we saw a truck bringing water to the same Hotel twice in one day the truck was twice as big as the ones that delivered to residences and we spoke to the driver he told me he mostly delivers to hotels because they're more frequent clients they order water more often the driver said when the wells are low the orders get backed up and they just have to wait for the aquafers to fill up again so again even if you have the money on hand you would have to wait to get access to water the situation got so critical in March that according to local media a hospital in Waka had to suspend services and a school had to send students home because they ran out of water but if you go to Waka on vacation you might not even notice there's a water shortage that's why Andrea and other activists have a saying that goes noia is sake or it's not a drought it's pillaging they say it's all reminiscent of colonial times when outside interests flocked in to exploit local resources and the D told me quote the colonial project never ended they say the extraction from the land of indigenous people continues today so now I want to talk about colonization in Waka because I spent hours reading books and articles about it to see if there was any parallels between what happened then and what's happening now and what I found is fascinating we know that Spanish colonizers arrived in what is today Mexico looking for gold well when the ASC Emperor Muma told it Nan Cortez there was gold in the Sierra mountains of Waka the colonizers traveled there to look for it and they subdued the indigenous population of the region now it's important to note there were already hierarchies in the Indigenous societies of what is today Waka there were Nobles priests and commoners Spaniards took advantage of those hierarchies that already existed to continue to exploit lower class natives they forced them to work the mines and grow the crops that the Spanish wanted to consume and trade now in Waka the Spaniard didn't find as much gold as they had hoped but what was extracted went towards enriching those who claimed the mines and to pay the cut ow to the Spanish Crown meanwhile the indigenous peasants who were the ones doing the heavy labor were often paid poor wages for backbreaking work now a quick aside I don't want you to think of the natives of Waka as completely helpless in the face of Spanish domination in Waka many were able to hold on to the land which is huge and I'll tell you more about that later but the parallel here is that the relationship of subordination was very much present and the wealth extracted in the form of gold or silver stayed in few hands fast forward to today the product being extracted from Waka is an experience and people are willing to pay a lot of money for it last year tourists spent more than $1 billion dollar in the state of Waka meanwhile almost 60% of the people working in the tourism industry get paid minimum wage or less and minimum w W and Mexico is currently the equivalent of about $400 a month so when we were in Waka we wanted to talk to workers in the tourism industry so we could hear directly from them about their experience we asked around about the newer hotels in the city and they told us to check out Grand Fiesta Americana Waka a luxury hotel it's located in the city center and the cheapest rooms range from between $260 to as much as $1900 a night that's $1,900 a night depending on the season I spoke to an employee making minimum wage at Grand Fiesta Americana Waka I'll call her Mariana in this story to protect her identity she sent me her pay stubs showing the salary for a two-e period so remember I told you the minimum wage in Mexico is about $400 a month right now this pay Stu shows half of that because it is for a 15-day period Marina's in her 30s and with her salary she can't afford her own place so she lives with her mom grandfather three siblings and her siblings kids so as a a total of 10 people in the house she told me she has thought about moving out many times but she's afraid she wouldn't be able to afford rent on her own about her salary Mariana told me we see how busy the hotel gets we know how expensive the rooms are we think they could be paying us more grou balas is the company that operates Grand Fiesta Americana Waka and more than 150 other hotels in Mexico they reported $56 million in earnings in 2023 groupo badas is also the company out was told I could not mention in the story as a reminder I was collaborating on this story with nas media a project of telisa un but the way that these companies interact can get complicated so bear with me as I break it down media is owned byun according to a financial report from telisa dong is a company of the ascara family now take note of that last name because it will show up again according to that same report groa transferred some of its programming toon the ex Ive chairman of the board of groupa is Emilio ascara and the CEO of the hotel company group of badas is Jose Carlos ascara andrad I am presenting this to you without commentary except to say this wasn't supposed to be a story about the ascara family or about telisa or even group of badas this was a story about inequality in the tourism industry in Waka I was looking for employees who would tell me about their experience working in tourism that's what we do in journalism we look for examples that illustrate a greater issue I reached out to grou badas for an interview and did not get a response but media coverage of the opening of the grand Fiesta Americana Waka Hotel mentioned it was going to create hundreds of jobs and indeed that has been a benefit for people like Mariana who has a job thanks to the hotel and the tourism boom in Waka but I also want to talk about what the residents of Waka have to give up in exchange for those jobs because employees making low wages like Mariana cannot afford to live close to the city center where they work so instead they give up time traveling to and from work I spoke to another hotel worker who spends 3 hours traveling round trip every day because they cannot afford to live in the city center so in the absence of having enough money to live closer to work they give up time and remember how I told you that while we were in the city center we saw a hotel getting two large tanks of water it was the Grand Fiesta Americana Waka the hotel that Marana works for as I mentioned before the water sold to hotels and residents in the city center is a extracted from municipalities and the outskirts of the city of Waka that same Hotel worker who spends 3 hours traveling to and from work lives in a municipality where water is extracted from they say their Community used to have running water every day when I spoke to them they were getting water only once or twice a week and the reason I'm making a point to mention resources like time and water is because those considerations are often left out of the pitch of politicians who want to increase tourism we usually hear more tourists equals more jobs but with this video I wanted to look at what kind of jobs with what pay and what else is being sacrificed in the process to explore those questions I want to tell you what I found in the research because there have been many studies looking into the effects of Tourism development in different countries some have concluded that tourism helps alleviate poverty others have concluded it doesn't that of course depends on what country the researchers are looking at and what variables they're measuring but I want to tell you about these two studies because both have findings that are very relevant to the conversation we're having this 2023 study of tourism in Iceland makes the distinction between income inequality and wealth inequality income is the flow of money received like wages wealth is your valuable possessions like your house well this study found that the tourism boom in Iceland led to less income inequality but more wealth inequality why would that be well the study says the tourism boom pushes the housing price up and increasing house prices enlarges the net worth of the rich while raising the living cost of the poor reduces the net worth of the poor leading to more severe inequality in other words the gap between the rich and the poor gets wider that happens in part because life gets more expensive for the poor so they're unable to hold on to the money they make that's why wages matter so this 2018 study of the Dominican Republic found that tourism had not alleviated poverty in the country it concluded that quote the benefits of tourism development favored the owners of tourist firms but as long as the employees of local communities are receiving low wages income inequalities will increase and this is not to say that all tourism is bad for local communities but this study argues the effect that tourism will have depends on the kind of Tourism that's implemented the authors suggests Alternatives like community-based tourism where local people can involve themselves in tourism development and benefit from the tourism generated wealth instead of the 12 staying concentrated in the hands of the businesses managing the hotel complexes and that's a perfect segue until the last part of this video I mentioned at the beginning I was going to tell you about the indigenous Community we visited we went there because we were looking for alternative tourism models so we traveled up the mountains to the community of Santa Katarina lachat that's where descendants of the Native sapos live and I wish I could show you because they have a beautiful view of the mountains and the footprints of colonization are still there they have a Catholic Church that's hundreds of years old and they also have the ruins of the asenda that Spanish colonizers used to process the gold they extracted from lachat but remember I said in Waka many natives were able to hold on to their lands while holding on to the land allowed the sapoto people of lachata to preserve aspects of their culture like growing their own food and communal living I interviewed one of the members of lachata and he told me quote the land belongs to all of us this part is important because what I'm about to tell you is a game changer for communities like lachat their autonomy is protected under state law by something called Usos EES or customs and traditions that means that as indigenous people they govern themselves according to their values so in lachat there is no right to private property and they do not sell L to Outsiders these two rules play a big part in the kind of Tourism they practice because yes lachata welcomes tourist too but on their terms I took video on my phone while I was there so I'm going to show you the cabinets they built they rent those out to visitors they take them on tours of their land and they cook for a guest in their restaurant then they divide the profits and reinvest in the needs of the community the tourism they welcome is small scale but as a community they've decided to not risk the well-being of the land they inherited from their ancestors as a consequence they've Protected Their access to the two resources we've been talking about in this video housing on the land that belongs to the community and water that comes from their forests here's a picture of me with hang the member of lachat that I interviewed we took drone video of Juan walking the trails on the mountains and we even caught the moment when he welcomed two visitors but I want to say that things are not perfect in laata they face their own struggles of population Decline and a lack of higher education so I'm not saying that their model would work for every location or that it would be a solution to all the problems we discussed in this video but I do think there are lessons to be learned from laat like how to Value what's truly Irreplaceable like land and water now before I end this video I want to leave some things on record in that first meeting with the Animas media team when I was told I could not mention the hotel company the only reason they gave me was an economic reason what they said was they are a client in later calls when it was clear I was not going to accept they tried to say there were also journalistic reasons to not mention the company I repeatedly asked them to detail those reasons and how I could address their concerns I have the emails that I sent them asking to let me know what additional work they believed was necessary to publish the story and I would do it well they did not respond they simply insisted that if that particular company was mentioned the story would not be published this part is important to me because I'm always looking to improve my work there were many versions of the script as I continued to do research and fact check the information so I was happy to meet whatever editorial standards made the story better what I was not willing to do was edit my journalism for the sole reason of protecting the economic interest of two companies but at that point the directors of the project told me the decision was out of their hands and then the legal department got involved and I know you guys are going to ask me if I'm scared of course I'm scared I do not have the resources that any of these corporations have but I will tell you what I told them all I have is my credibility and the commitment that I've made to you all to do honest and fair reporting and if I said yes to what they were asking I'd be throwing away the trust that I've built with so much effort in the last four years and I refused to do that I do see a silver lining to all of this for example I was able to experiment with a new format that allowed me to go deeper into the research so please let me know in the comments if you liked it my journalism is funded by my audience that's what allows me to remain independent so if you would like to support my work so I can keep making more videos check out my patreon I will be posting exclusive content on there and I will link to it below I love you all thank you for being here and I'll see you soon

2024-08-09 14:20

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