From tourist to person: The value of intimacy in touristic Cuba

Abstract

Building on tourism scholarship on existential authenticity, touristic intimacy, and the limitations of the tourist role, the article provides an empirically grounded analysis of how the value of intimacy was expressed and negotiated in the course of encounters between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba. Tourism-related identifications in this Caribbean country are shaped by local notions of tourism hustling and pose a challenge to the development of mutually gratifying relationships between tourists and Cubans. The exploration of Cubans' concerns and informal ways of approaching tourists, and of the ways in which friendships, partying, and sexual engagements between them were enacted, highlights the efforts of the protagonists of these encounters to achieve relationships that could help them move beyond negative identifications and lead to the recognition of their individuality and shared humanity as persons. Intimacy appears as a fundamental regime of value informing these processes. The reflections that the article develops on the concrete manifestations of intimacy in touristic encounters and the kind of alliances it prompted open the way for further research on the role played by international tourism in the diffusion and actualization of this regime of value.