ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the importance of the black legacy related to the period of slavery as a key element of ethnodevelopment in the process of building the Paraiba Valley as a tourist destination. It analyses to what extent the neglect of black history related to the slave period in the Vale do Paraiba, a Brazilian coffee-producing region during the nineteenth century. Brazilian coffee-producing region has hindered the recognition of this territory as a historic place as well as its consolidation as a tourist destination shared between different social segments, despite having a wealth of natural and cultural attractions. The chapter inserts the touristic use of cultural elements representative of the Afro-descendant community in the discussion about ethnodevelopment and its capacity to emancipate economically and politically populations once prevented from carrying out their own development paths. In Vale do Paraiba, farmers were agents of a huge landscape change with coffee plantations, with negative environmental impacts in reducing soil productivity.
