Visitor economics in Puerto Rico and Hawai’i: Interrogating woke tourism on the margins of Empire

Abstract

Memoria Decolonial is a non-profit organization based in San Juan, Puerto Rico that explores colonial heritage through a decolonial lens. Founded in 2020, this collective of researchers, educators, and community leaders disseminates the findings of their research through digital and public humanities projects. The latter is undertaken through Desvío, a series of decolonial walking workshops designed foremost for Puerto Rican youth and also the general public and aimed at fostering critical consciousness of Puerto Rican history, heritage, and the legacies of militarization and colonial displacement. The project is inspired by Hawai’i based DeTours, and its own walking tours which to raise awareness over the Pacific Archipelago’s history with colonialism and militarization. In this paper, and as the Director and founder of Memoria Decolonial, I discuss the parallels between both projects and explore the ways they interrupt visitor centered economies on the margins of the United States. I reflect on the dangers of accompanying visitors from the US around their colonies to expose them to their nation’s imperial history by posing the following questions: Who does this serve? Who does this benefit? The tourist/settler or the local population? How can these projects detour away from the tourism industry without giving in to the visitor economy? What types of organizational models can be put in place to achieve these goals? Do these projects satisfy settler/tourist needs for innocence (Tuck and Yang, 2012), wokeness, and responsible tourism, or do they contribute to decolonization processes?