Copyright by Blake Charles Scott 2016
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Copyright by Blake Charles Scott 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Blake Charles Scott certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: From Disease to Desire: Panama and the Rise of the Caribbean Vacation Committee: Frank A. Guridy, Supervisor Virginia Garrard-Burnett Mark Atwood Lawrence Megan Raby Paul S. Sutter From Disease to Desire: Panama and the Rise of the Caribbean Vacation by Blake Charles Scott, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements If you are expecting a fun-filled guide to pampered leisure, then you should put this story back on the shelf. What follows may be disturbing and ruin your vacation. Facts sometimes have that affect: In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois declared “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”1 Over the last one hundred years, the “color line” – with small actions and huge historical turns – has slowly eroded only to reveal equally pervasive lines of privilege and inequality. Today, it seems, the problem of the twentieth-first century is the problem of mobility. Some people can travel and change their reality, and some cannot. Some people travel for pleasure and in luxury, while others travel to survive, to escape war and poverty. The origins of this problem are old, but its sustaining ideas and practices have taken on renewed power in the modern era. Tourism has become the largest and most lucrative of global industries, and yet at the same time, this mobility is far from accessible. Parallel to leisure travel, we are seeing one of the worst migratory crises in history. Millions of Iraqis and Syrians flee a war initiated by the United States and are turned away at border after border. Meanwhile, European and U.S. tourists travel in the other direction and visit luxurious resorts in the southern Mediterranean. The problem of mobility crosses the Atlantic Ocean; perhaps it began here. In the Americas, millions of tourists from the United States travel to fancy all-inclusive resorts and take luxury cruises to the Caribbean, while countless Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians and other Latin American residents search for a clandestine way to cross the border north. It costs a family from the United States a few thousand dollars to comfortably vacation abroad and cross multiple national borders, with almost no questions asked, while a single migrant from the global south may pay upwards of $6000 to be hidden in trucks and safe houses, and abused by “coyotes” (people smugglers) in search of a better life. 1 W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1907), 13. iv Clearly, something is wrong. Some “boat people” are welcomed (red carpets rolled out, lobsters buttered, best wine served), while others are unwanted refugees, hunted and locked up in prisons and deported south. Some people are deemed “desirable” travelers and others as illegal, “undesirables.” Where in the world did these boundaries of mobility and immobility come from? I address this troubling issue, in this dissertation, through the study of tourism – a form of travel I know perhaps too well. Growing up in the town of Winter Park, Florida, a small resort community sucked up by the expansion of Orlando’s Disneyworld boom, I have observed firsthand the intimate proximity of travel “haves” and “have-nots.” Florida is a destination for retirees and tourists (with money to spend in search of vacation dreams) and also for countless migrants and refugees from the south – from Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Mexico, and so on. In Orlando, literally on one side of the street, there are tourist attractions and fancy hotels, and on the other, run-down apartment complexes and crowded homes of undocumented people who make the tourist machine operate and who, with their low wages, keep the vacation dream affordable. The tourist economy, of course, is not run solely by migrants. Many people born and raised in Florida have also turned to the service industry for work, serving drinks, food, and entertainment to tourists. For a smile and a fun experience, they earn more than they could teaching or working in something related to their university degree. The pay isn’t bad, but the hours and the culture can be rough. To experience someone else’s vacation everyday can take a toll on one’s body and soul. Social critics, anthropologists, sociologists, journalists and any number of authors have tried to make sense of the sometimes seedy and unjust tourist culture shaping communities in Florida, the Caribbean, and throughout the world of sunny and tropical destinations. But most of these studies, from my perspective, merely scratch the surface, explaining contemporary “effects” – the social interactions, tourist fantasies, and work conditions of service employees. I want to know much more, and in particular – how it started, and what tourism’s emergence and its early practices tell us about the way people traveled thereafter? How did it begin? And what does history tell us about ongoing v experiences of mobility and immobility? What does tourism’s early history reveal about the disparate identities of tourists and migrants, of desirable and undesirable travelers? Answers to these questions are far from straightforward. (As an historian, I can always begin with the statement. “It’s complicated.”) Through the mode of storytelling, however, closely following and analyzing an earlier generation of travelers, I hope readers will begin to understand some of the “roots” and “routes” that have shaped tourism and travel in the modern era. Patterns formed nearly a century ago have become the guiding principles and practices of today’s traveling culture. Eight years ago I began my own journey – both intellectual and physical – to try and make sense of a history so intimately connected to my own community and my own sense of self, as both a tourist and also a member of a “touristed” community. Along the way, I had the privilege to live and work in many places and form new friendships. The route of tourism I study – from the east coast of the United States to Florida and through the Caribbean – was also the route of my research. During my graduate studies, I likely traveled as much as my tourist subjects. And in a sense, I mobilized a similar privileged identity…although to question, deconstruct, and historicize that very identity – the privileged white American crisscrossing borders. With eyes open, and with critical analysis, I have tried to understand where travel privilege comes from. At the same time, I have worked to avoid some of the pitfalls of being an American abroad. My interest in tourism’s past is bound up with the present. The dissertation I present is based on my work as an historian, ethnographer, traveler and tourist, and resident of the U.S.-Caribbean world. Archives, travels, research, conversations, filming, interviews, and just “hanging out” inform the narrative that follows. I have written this dissertation backwards and sideways, over many years, scribbling notes while in archives and in the bathroom stalls of tourist bars. Along this journey, many friends welcomed and took care of me. I don’t think I could have endured alienating archives or the existential dread of footnotes or being surrounded by tourist crowds, or learned, little by little, how to be my own type of traveler without them. I started this research as one person and came out another, and I vi believe/I hope for the better. There are many communities and people to thank for that slow metamorphosis: Over the past year, I lived in the mountains of western North Carolina and completed most of the dissertation writing there, thanks to the hospitality of good friends - Harris, Agata, and baby Croc. Mornings were spent in a retrofitted cabin, at the computer, and afternoons in the woods and working outdoors. It was a year of productive solitude in nature, and I’m grateful for the Blackwell family for that opportunity. In late spring 2015, Ana Knapp also invited me to her peaceful home in Pecos, New Mexico. In between thinking about Smithsonian naturalists and their influence on tourism, I wandered through piñon forests with my hiking companion Buddy (the neighbor’s dog). Ana’s friends June, Blake, and Dominique also inspired me with their good food and storytelling, and reminded me that I really wasn’t alone in the woods. Friends, family members, and mentors have taught me how to learn and travel as a way of life. While doing research for this dissertation project, I spent a generative year in New York City and met friends who contributed to my thinking: Wendy James and I made some short films together and discussed critical ideas, particularly those of James Baldwin. Laurie Thomas and Elizabeth Cramer also helped me reflect and share stories of Florida nostalgia. Corey Ellis, my neighbor, student, and friend, reminded me of the value of saying complicated things plainly yet with emotion. Journeying a little further south, I had a meaningful stint at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. My advisor there, Pamela Henson, pushed me to dig deeper into the archives and my own assumptions. Jeffrey Stine and Marcel LaFollette also offered kind words and useful reading recommendations. In the city, bouncing between museums and archives, Pierre Pratley, Holly Flickinger, and Kirsten Tyree shared reflections and laughs. In addition to learning in the libraries of New York and Washington D.C., my friends and companions also taught me a bit about big city life.