NARCOS AND THE COCAINE HIPPOS DARK-ECO TOURISM PERSPECTIVES
Abstract
This paper aims to explore two dimensions of the tourism industry that intersect issues of violence and ecology (dark-eco) on the appearance of a narco-tourism trend in Colombia. The first part of the paper provides a contextualization on the emergence of narco-tourism, to later consider how recent policies and strategies that have tried to erase Pablo Escobar from the tourist industry, create issues of memory towards a violent period that marked Colombian society. This study used a qualitative methodology based on multiple sources to collect data. The process integrates text-film analysis with ethnographic fieldwork that consisted on participatory observation and interviews with tour guides, tourists, scholars, planners and government representatives. The research results show that there is a connection between the Netflix series Narcos, dark tourism theory, and the growing supply and demand interaction between tour guides and tourists that commodify a tragic historical period of Colombia. Further, this section examines dark-eco tourism perspectives that relate to the development of a narco-zoo culture in Latin America that started in the end of the 1980s when Escobar smuggled wild animals into Hacienda Napoles. I explore particularly the recent rise of a group of hippopotamuses as tourist attractions, that after Escobar’s death escaped to the surrounding areas of the zoo and have been reproducing at alarming rates. This section then analyzes how and why the animals as an invasive species have started to pose great challenges for the community and the environment.
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