ABSTRACT
South America has a greater latitudinal range than any other region in this book, although it occupies only 15 per cent of the world's land surface. For tourism purposes this produces an amazing set of environmental differences, from the mountains of the Andes right southwards to the edge of Antarctica. Tourism to Antarctica is considered in this chapter because, although not technically part of South America, tourists visiting seasonally accessible parts of the Antarctic continent usually leave from South American ports in Chile and Argentina. Many South American destinations are relatively late to emerge on the global tourism stage, and the potential of the continent has not yet been fully realized. The Caribbean, however, is firmly established as a holiday destination, with heavy reliance on the USA market and on the developing cruise industry. Central America has seen rapid growth over the last decade, with Mexico and Guatamala becoming firmly established, along with ecotourism in Costa Rica and the rise of Cuba as a new hot destination. All three areas (Map 7.1) share main elements of travel history; initial colonization by Amerindian people from the north, ‘discovery’ by Columbus and his successors, and a colonial period with South America mainly under Spanish and Portuguese dominance. These were followed by a post-colonial period driving towards independence, marked in South America by struggles to replace military dictatorships with democracy, and protectionism with free trade. A similar pattern can be seen in the Caribbean, although colonial interests were more varied and the picture is complicated by the importation of slaves from West Africa, mainly imported to work in the sugar-cane fields. Before the arrival of Columbus, both Central and South America had seen the rise of major pre-Columbian civilizations, some of which came to occupy enormous territories. Of these the most significant were the Aztecs and the Incas, whose vast empires were dismantled in the fifteenth century by small numbers of incoming Spanish conquistadores. The remains of their civilizations are central to the tourism industries of Mexico (Aztecs) and Peru (Incas). The Aztec Empire in Mexico probably included between ten and twelve million people at the time of the Spanish conquest, with the Inca Empire, centred on Peru, having a population of about half that. Although there were some other major population centres it seems probable that, at the time the map of South America was to be shaped by the arrival of the conquistadores in the sixteenth century, only about a million people lived in the rest of the continent, divided into thousands of small tribal societies, most of them nomadic and only a few with settled agriculture. At that time travel outside the Inca Empire was local, domestic and on foot. The Spanish conquest of Central and South America included the introduction of the horse, which revolutionized travel in the continent and led to rapid Spanish expansion, the discovery of new mining areas and the foundation of Christian Missions. The early coastal trade routes were replaced by the establishment of Spanish foothold ports in the late fifteenth century, followed by formal Spanish colonization over a large part of the continent by the sixteenth century and the export of its wealth via huge galley fleets to Spain. In pre-Columbian times Central and South American travel was dominated by coastal short-haul trade routes circulating luxury goods around the coasts, to be replaced by the long-haul sea travel of incoming colonizers. Outgoing spoils of the empires, including the fabled Spanish treasure ships, were often preyed on by the pirates (buccaneers) of the Caribbean. As the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries progressed new sources of mineral wealth, especially tin and silver, were exported from the continent to Europe and North America, later to be joined by sugar (the main cash export of the Caribbean islands), rubber (from the Amazon Basin) and meat products (from Argentina and Brazil). Land travel in the Andes was always carried out on foot, with the Incas developing and maintaining a spectacular system of roads along the western spine of the continent. These routes are still used as tourist itineraries, such as the walking routes of the Inca Trail and its numerous subsidiaries in the Andes and the Ruta Maya (Mayan Trail) in Central America from Honduras to Mexico. But it is the Spanish influence and language that have shaped the culture, language and religion of the vast majority of this region. Spanish influence still remains pervasive in the transport network of the region today, with the Spanish carrier Iberia gaining control of various South American airlines and improving access to other continents from regional hubs served by local domestic feeder airlines. Improvements in the regional airline networks have opened new areas up for tourism. Central and South America are developing new markets in beach and adventure tourism, and (especially) in ecotourism to the Amazon, Costa Rica, Belize and Guatemala.
