Why Make Tourism Out of Observing the Suffering of Others?

 Come See the Mountain by Tom Zoellner (DECA: 2014)

I've been blown away by the quality of the work published by DECA in its first year in existence. While I hate telling anyone that anything is a "must read," I will break my own rule to tell you that COME SEE THE MOUNTAIN is, in fact, a must read. Some of you are aware that, bored by tourism where one travels to a place of beauty, or to relax in the sun, or to learn where one has come from, or any of the various things we do on vacation to escape the mundane qualities of the 9-5 life, certain privileged travelers have opted to see how the other half lives.

As a way of doing something "interesting," this new wave of tourists goes to places where they can observe horror. Auschwitz has long been on the horror tour, but these days, one can tour the slums of Mumbai, the favelas of Brazil, the charnel houses of Rwanda, places where something "interesting" happen(ed). Zoellner documents his experience with a group of tourists who come to Potosi, a silver mine in South America where it is estimated that eight million miners died between 1545 and 1900 in order to sate our lust for silver.

The tourists are not interested in saving anyone. They don't go to these places with the intention of doing something about suffering on such a scale; rather, they venture to such a place as Potosi to have the experience. And later, when they're back snug and warm in their bars and pubs, they can tell their friends that they have seen true suffering--they've experienced it--because of the 2.5 hours they spent crawling underground where men spend their entire lives digging out the silver.

Zoellner does a fantastic job of writing in that, while I was outraged, again, at the lengths that people with too much money and not compassion will do to entertain themselves, Zoellner is not overtly critical of those he traveled with. He tells the story and leaves it up to the reader to fashion his or her own reaction to the idea of tourists who mistake profundity with observing the suffering of others. The miners are objects to be examined, and, as if the miners were trained animals, tourists are encouraged to buy them treats that they can give to the miners for their willingness to let themselves be looked at.

Zoellner's writing is first-rate. My only critique was that I wanted to know more about this topic. When I finished the essay, I wanted to read more about these types of tourism. Perhaps that's the purpose of the essay. It made me want to know more while also moving me to sympathy for the miners, and disgust with the tourists for whom verisimilitude is close enough to real suffering for them.

When DECA did its original crowdfunding campaign over a year ago, little did I know that my $25 would bring me so much good writing. I anticipate each piece. My hope is that, after they have published their first ten or so long-form journalistic pieces, they will collect them and publish them in a hard copy book. Last semester, I wanted to assign this particular essay to my class. Since many of them did not have e-readers, it wasn't possible. But I hope that they are so successful that they will be able to offer hard copies for those who haven't gone digital.

Thinking with Travel

This book could not have come for a better time for me. I teach creative nonfiction at a small university in New York state. This summer, I had intended to teach travel writing as I took students through Spain and France. A couple of logistical issues, mostly having to do with university bureaucracy, has delayed the class for at least six months. Which turned out to be a good thing.

On the application for the class, students were asked why they wanted to learn travel writing? Almost without exception, they wanted to travel; they had no interest in writing about it, which means most of them would have been miserable when they realized that they had signed up for a six-credit course where the instructor intended for them to earn those six credits.

This was the context in which I asked to read this book. And I like it so much that I am thinking of assigning it next semester in the creative nonfiction (on-campus) course that I will be teaching on the subject of traveling.

Most travelers are happy to be tourists. They pile on to cruise ships or tour buses, happy to have someone keep them safe by arranging all of their accommodations, getting them menus in their native language, making sure the wait staff that are waiting on them speak their language, and getting to believe that the countries where they are being tourists are delighted to have visitors walking around and looking at things as if they were at the zoo. Or worse, a zoo where everyone is deaf, so tourists don't think about the fact that just because they're speaking in their native language, doesn't mean that no one else can understand their language. You would not believe what people speaking English on board a TGV will talk about, with their assumption that no one can understand them.

These are among the dozen or so issues to consider about the travel experience. Why do people travel? What do they expect to see? What are they hoping to gain? Why, if they are traveling to a foreign land, do they search out the places where they can find people just like them?

After a month spent in Barcelona and southern France in January, my new question is: why are people spending all of their time (now with selfie sticks) taking selfies of themselves? It's not as if they are taking photos of the architecture in front of them, or the statue, the natural wonder, or the street scene. They are taking photos--over and over again--of their faces while the things they came to see blur out in the background.

Whenever someone starts in on one of their "people are so rude in ____" stories, I usually find out that it's because the person relating the tale KNEW that the person they were struggling to communicate with must have spoken English; they were just refusing to speak it so they might embarrass the traveler. My usual response is to ask how many McDonald's or WalMart employees speak French, or Italian, German? So why do they expect every person in another nation to speak English?

The best thing about this smart book, which does a fantastic job of pointing out that the historical precedents established by travelers years ago have carried forward into the present age; that the seeing the world through the lens of a camera is a problematic issue; that cultures that overvalue long work weeks have a tendency to turn leisure time abroad into time to continue working, just in different countries.

And, at the heart of it is the difference between travel and tourism:

"The degrading slide from culture to commodity, from leisure to free time, from authenticity to phony reproduction--described with such visceral disgust by Adorno--is similar to the way many have described the transition from travel to mass tourism....[Adorno says] Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work."

While this book is published by a university press, that should not scare off any person who thinks about their participation in traveling. It's important to know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what you hope to get out of going to another country.

Reading this book gives one a great field guide of questions to ask yourself before you set off on your trip.