Tourism, mobile livelihoods and 'disorderly' development in the Colca Valley, Peru

Debates about tourism and rural development in Latin America commonly represent peasant or indigenous populations as socially cohesive but economically unsophisticated, implying that they require outside assistance to engage with tourism. A multi-local or mobile livelihoods approach can help destabilise these representations and draw more attention to the agency and diversity of rural populations. This is illustrated by a case study of tourism development in the localities of Cabanaconde and Tapay in the Colca Valley of southern Peru. In these localities, existing rural-urban links and processes of livelihood diversification enabled people of local origin to independently access tourism markets but also made collective action more difficult. The result was a 'disorderly' development of tourism, with benefits accruing to local families countered by failure to achieve collective control or link local resources and identity to tourism. These findings have significance for both policy and research on rural tourism in Latin America. First, they suggest that development institutions should acknowledge that local populations may be more entrepreneurial and individualistic than is commonly assumed. Second, they point to opportunities for more research that takes mobility and multi-locality as frames for studying rural tourism development.