A Call for Ethical Standards in the Long-Term Partnership of African Diaspora Heritage and the Tourism Industry.

“There is more in the mortar than the pestle”
African-Caribbean Proverb

It is not the intention of this paper to make any specific criticisms of particular tourism projects that may be guilty of some of the examples to be mentioned, as we all know of similar cases throughout the region, but rather to address the fact that there are higher principles involved with a long-term partnership between African Diaspora heritage and tourism, principles beyond the requirements of other forms of tourism. It is hoped, for those projects that can be identified with some of these examples, that this paper is an encouragement to improve their tourism concepts more specifically towards a sensitivity of African Diaspora issues and host community values.

The topic of human enslavement is an emotional and painful issue, however we must confront its existence for the education of the human condition, both in history and at present. Yet where do we draw the line to separate education from exploitation? Studies of the African Diaspora and those ethnographic material remains representing the atrocities of slavery provide us with important resources for re-educational purposes. Nonetheless, those Diaspora issues and objects are now also being exploited for purely financial benefit of multinationals and individual entrepreneurs. The goal of this paper is to suggest that a long-term future partnership between African Diaspora heritage and cultural tourism requires clear definitions of acceptable values representative of the host societies, including an established code of ethics, and the need for stronger linkage of historical developments of Africans in the Diaspora to a broad base of global economic systems, including tourism. This paper supports the interpretations of Ruth Hamilton for a new paradigm that conceptualizes diasporas in a global perspective as a specific type of social grouping, characterized by a historical patterning of particular social relations and experiences (2001:18). This paper further presents a hypothetical example where the limits of distinction between education and exploitation of African Diaspora heritage are shown to be vague, thereby providing a model of how heritage tourism development can go dangerously astray. During the last major international conference on Heritage and Tourism, ICOM at Peru in 2000, statements and innuendos were repeatedly made as to a threat from multinationals in exploitation of heritage tourism. I feel that it is time to open this Pandora’s box further, to include warnings about individual entrepreneurs, as well as multinationals, and to challenge the tourism industry to create viable ethical standards related to African Diaspora heritage presentations, with respect for local communities while also offering a satisfactory tourism experience.

Slavery, is an act of extreme human cruelty and regarded as a form of extra-economic coercion; the suffix “-land” is derived from an entertainment park in California, USA, called Disney-land. This paper discusses a preoccupation with the current tourism industry trajectory towards a popular acceptance of the concept of exploitation of African Diaspora heritage for economic profit in priority to education, as a hybrid I will call “Slaveryland”.  The very concept of a “Slaveryland” as an entrepreneurial enterprise is a blatant insult to many, yet ironically it is also a potential attraction to others, with the separation not always delineated by ethnic background. From an Anthropological point of view, tourism is a trans-cultural activity (Smith 1982), that is closely linked to the present social mechanisms of consumption in a globalized world. Clearly, there is an understanding that tourism can generate and promote trans-cultural harmony, as noted in both the WTO charter and numerous UNESCO publications. What is crucial to understand however, is that this trans-cultural harmony cannot be based on economic profit alone, but must also be based on respect for the values and decisions of the host communities (Herreman 2000:32). By accentuating intercultural exchange as a structural component of the present globalization process, it will be far  more difficult to minimize the social and cultural attributes, which up to now have been dominated by business or economic policies (Ibid:34). More specifically, African Diaspora heritage issues are far more volatile within tourism development, than other forms of tourism, as it deals with deep emotional and symbolic expressions of identity. Clearly, tourism and other types of trans-cultural contacts have a vital role in identity confirmations, yet the contact relationship as a tourist contrasts sharply from migrations, exiles and diasporas (Handley 2001:18). A traditional tenet of tourism has been that the tourists always knows they are eventually going ‘home’ from a destination that is of ‘others’. Mowarth and Munt have recently defined various new forms of tourism (1998), and now, African Diaspora heritage is another distinctive new form of tourism, whereby the deeply emotional act of ‘returning to roots’ has become a part of global tourist space. However, this concept of ‘returning’, for African-Americans in particular, distorts the traditional tourism definition of ‘home’ and ‘other’ concepts, into an encounter of re-uniting with ‘one’s own’ after long hardships for the descendants of the Diaspora (Handley 2001:21). This ‘return’ concept can be most beneficial as having recognizable commonalities with the host society, shared experiences, and reassertion of mutual goals. However, this new form can also have complicating factors, in part related to differing views of the African Diaspora and slavery experience, particularly among Africans and descendants of the Diaspora. Obviously, slavery is an important issue for both communities, yet West Africans for the most part see slavery as one aspect of a long and dynamic history, whereas African-Americans tend to see enslavement as the defining moment of their common identity (and often the reason for tourism travel to Africa) (Ibid). This polarization of perspectives is a critical platform for potentially contentious discussions about which view of history to present and how to present it, particularly within the contexts of tourism for Diaspora societies.      

There is an additional concern that some museums and educational programs for African Diaspora heritage have become simply memorials to victims, with shackles, cages, and objects of abuse as the primary display focus. Where the accurate broad perspective record of events and daily life-ways in the Diaspora, are being superceded by sensationalism, personal agendas, and a thirst for the horrors of the past. It is the opinion here, that factual accuracy can never be sacrificed to personal opinion or political correctness. Recognizing that often the overcompensation by descendants of enslavers is as much a threat to accuracy, as under representation of the descendants of the enslaved. Indeed, the legacy of extreme liberalism, reinforcing a narrow view of Africans only as beaten and abused victims, is a serious problem for objective historical representation of Africans within the Diaspora and thus also a problem for potential tourism images. There are even cases at Elmina in West Africa, where the slavery re-enactments in the tourist sector, assisted by liberal specialists, have even lead to attacks on white tourists by African-American tourists, rather than by the Africans themselves (Bruner 1996:296).

One can suggest that from a Euro-American cognitive view of the African Diaspora, including enslavement, these issues are perceived as a necessary topic for the enlightenment of the human consciousness. The material remains of these atrocities are seen as having great value for preservation of posterity, and become potential commodities for entrepreneurial enterprises, thus also more vulnerable to theft and fraud.  No less so, than when treasure hunters destroy the archaeological record of sunken shipwrecks for gold, and no less so, than when Disney features fantasy replicas of reality for viewing by a paying public. A similar view of artificial codification of African heritage has also been previously noted for Diaspora sites in Ghana (Osei-Tutu 2001).
A suggested African cognitive view, would see the holistic perspective of past-present–future combined, including enslavement, in which material remains are a mere transient identifier of self and contexts. With long traditions of economic marginality for Africans in the Diaspora, having now created the current prodigy of consequences in history, and a conceptual “Slaveryland” is rapidly becoming promoted as a part of tourism norms and seen as a viable basis for economic exploitation. Heritage is being seen as just another profit-making product, like the sun and sea. Therefore customs, traditions, rituals and festivals can be changed, minimizing their importance, or transformed to suit the expectations of foreigners, thus diminishing the true nature of the actual heritage, in what has been called “Reconstructed Ethnicity” (Herreman 2000:35). From Bahia to Cartagena to Havana one can now buy tourist souvenir statues of enslaved Africans in chains, is this the direction we want to go for pride in African heritage, or perhaps somewhere-someday to pay a fee and be put into shackles? How far can a host society let its values go, before it crosses the line between educational-entertaining presentations of the African Diaspora, to become a regression to the degrading exploitation of African enslavement history for profit? Within global economic systems, the tourism industry is at the very crux of this debate, foreseeing African Diaspora issues as a looming economic potential, yet with a dynamic political catch. However, also having to deal with the reality that racial division of labor is still evident in parts of the world, and often controlled by multinationals or individuals that dominate the management and decision-making of specific local tourism infrastructure. Clearly, dangers can also arise from a lack of adequate research and planning, because often research is left behind faced with the onslaught of economic power supported by multinationals and the media (Herreman 2000:33). The key seems to be that it is not tourism that leads to development, but rather it is a country’s cultural confidence and general development that makes tourism profitable. For countries within the African Diaspora heritage realm, cultural confidence is as important a factor in development, as business confidence is for the economic climate in developed countries (Claxton 1989:14). This was a contributing factor as to why in 1970 a formal UNESCO convention was created to control illicit trafficking of cultural objects in the world.

In the cultural presentation of the African Diaspora, museums are crucial mechanisms for public education and awareness development. Museums dealing with African Diaspora issues can choose to operate according to a variety of standards, as; professionals, amateurs, or ‘treasure collectors’. We therefore should recognize a museum’s potential variable impact on the public consciousness about slavery and African Heritage: as representing the code of ethics and expertise for professional exhibitions; or the limitations of amateur exhibitions which nonetheless maintain a code of ethics; or the intellectual destruction by the treasure collectors where a code of ethics is absent. From a professional muselogical perspective, representation of African Diaspora heritage should manifest an expression of the cultural values of the broader society. This can be seen with the recent reinforcement of these concepts in Cuba earlier this year at the UNESCO Trans-Atlantic Slave Route Project meetings, and also with the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC) compilation of ‘Places of Memory sites for the Caribbean’, as an African Diaspora heritage sites inventory selected by each participating nation for their own islands, with current WTO applications also in West Africa. Whereas a private ‘treasure’ exhibition perspective is most often the expression of the cultural values of an individual person or limited group. The basic premise of a treasure hunter mentality is a vandal, either physical or intellectual, as a kind of cultural heritage thief, often with extreme egocentric orientations regarding specific collections, such as objects of the African Diaspora. Very often the ideology presented in these private exhibitions stems from a latent axiom of distinction between non-European and Euro-American views, and is an extension of the colonial logic that dependent peoples are in need of guidance, as a form of ‘white man’s burden’.  Osterhammel even goes further to say that historically both the enslaved and enslavers were mutually de-humanized, and thus these expressions of ideology can also be seen as social pathology (1997:108), some observations of which have been previously made for inter-ethnic relations in the Caribbean (Haviser 2001), manifesting what Hilary Beckles calls the Shame-Guilt cycle (2002:206). In the modern context of globalization, some individuals and multinationals are now attempting to exploit heritage beyond ideology, assigning it a role similar to that of the consumption of industrial supplies, as if it were simply another capital investment (Herreman 2000:33). The problem is not with the use of heritage in tourism, rather assertions of the relationship of power between guests and hosts when dealing with such sensitive emotional and political issues as the African Diaspora and slavery. Furthermore, a Pan-Africanism unification approach within the Diaspora, does create a basis for direct marketing of destinations for African-Americans, but it may also function with some difficulty at the face-to-face level within the tourism space, due to different understandings of what is “African-ness” (Handley 2001:21).

For hundreds of years Africans were enslaved and brought to the Western Hemisphere by European entrepreneurs. For this hypothetical example, various authorities over a Caribbean island have given nearly ‘carte blanche’ rights to a foreign millionaire for the personal entrepreneurial exploitation of the heritage of those same enslaved Africans.

In this hypothetical case, a new museum is opened which hails to have the ‘largest African artifact collection’ in the Caribbean, it is the private collection of this millionaire with almost all exhibition texts written by him and expressing his personal view of Africa and the African Diaspora. There has been no previous comparable African heritage exhibitions of this scale on the island nor in the region, and thus the populations both local and regional, are eager to see this magnificently expensive and elaborate museum. As well, the public is eager to absorb all the information given in the exhibits as factual and unbiased. If it is noted in the exhibition texts that the structure housing the museum was an old slave prison, that is accepted as fact, regardless that there are no historical records of this as ‘fact’. Yet, the selling power of seeing a slavery exhibit in a ‘real’ slave prison is emotionally enthralling for the visitors. ‘Facts’ are presented within a wide panorama of political aspects, most often with very simple answers given to complex issues, such as ‘slavery ended because of rebellions’. When most scholars see abolition movements linked to a variety of factors, including ironically, the development and spread of global capitalism (Kolchin 1998:44). As well, numerous personal views of African heritage issues, including targeted criticism of select groups and families, exaggerated historical evidence, and other personal opinions of the owner are throughout the exhibit, rarely with any documentary backing. Staff for this museum would be personally selected for their loyalty to the owner, including a willingness to accept unethical practices if necessary, rather than having a formal background in museums work. Throughout these impressively expansive exhibitions, there is an absolute minimal reference to local African-descendents of the island, but rather the primary focus on the slave trade and Africa. The very title of our hypothetical slavery exhibition would be intentionally selected to be controversial and thus would draw more attention to the exhibition by using politically charged terms like perhaps ‘black holocaust’.

The visitor is gut-wrenched by the pain and suffering of the slavery exhibition, almost to the point of callousness, as seen through a recreated slave ship, hundreds of shackles everywhere, and other bizarre instruments of torture. Yet there are minimal exhibitions of the daily life and successful adaptations of Africans in the Diaspora, beyond the abuse, and almost no artifacts representing this. However, a deeper ethical deception in our hypothetical case is that most of these artifacts are replicas, with no clear indication of this for the viewer to know they are not authentic. Again, the selling power of seeing these ‘real’ objects of African suffering is shocking for the visitor, while they are viewing the ‘largest African artifact collection’ in the Caribbean. The objects in this museum may have been made in Africa, but many are modern, often cheap, replicas. To the untrained popular eye they are an impressive collection, yet presented as authentic historical artifacts they are a misrepresentation of African craftsmanship.  Diaspora education utilizing replica artifacts is certainly a viable tool and not being criticized here, however when those replicas are presented as authentic, it is a fraud that is condemned by international museum standards.

Of far greater concern, are situations in the region where authentic artifacts indicated on international red lists sustaining the 1970 UNESCO convention, which are forbidden to exportation from their native countries, such as Nigeria and Mali, appear in private collections for a paying viewing public, this is exploitation for personal profit in its most grotesque form. Yet we must unfortunately note the actuality that various developed nations, such as the Netherlands, did not sign the 1970 UNESCO convention, and thus some guilty artifact traffic could not be pursued (Bedaux 1995:208). This is an example of obvious disrespect for the patrimony of the Africans from where those artifacts originated.

However, the museum exhibitions are only the initial-phase of this hypothetical example of exploitation of African Diaspora heritage. This millionaire envisioned creation of a hotel-cultural center to accommodate and profit from the affluent African-Americans whom he expected to visit the museum. The African museum was created primarily as sensationalized bait for African-American tourists, with minimal serious interests in a balanced education of African Diaspora heritage. The calculation was that the visitor reactions to these types of exhibits would be generally blinded by admiration of the scale of investment involved, rather than the validity of the data presented.

The concept of historical tourism use for an area of an urban center is not original, various local monument foundations and other individuals can have previously proposed almost identical ‘heritage tourism village’ plans with local government and community backing. The primary factor that blocks these earlier projects is funding. The millionaire has no problem with funding, yet he does not open the project to other investors either (particularly excluding local governments). Thus he maintains full, minimally monitored by law, control over the project with no local community voice in the heritage development decision-making. Ironically, the aesthetic expression of his larger hotel-culture complex is created with a completely Colonial theme, having no inclusion of African heritage at all. In fact, the vast majority of this man’s investments on the island are put into restoring the Colonial character, curiously intermixing various colonial styles, yet omitting the local African-descendant contributions representative for the majority of the population. There are dozens of architectural restorations and building reproductions which are of an authenticity minimally required by law, often with completely inaccurate embellishments used extensively. Eventually the area no longer even represents the original colonial city center that it was, but is now a full-blown artificial tourist trap. As the visitor walks through these colorful and excessively ornamented streets, they are thrilled by the beauty, yet confused as to what is authentic historic and what is reproduction. The reproduction posing as authentic historic is a fake. Following experiences in Cuba, Clavijo Colom notes that although the tourism-heritage relationship has great advantages, the consequences of inappropriate interventions cannot be ignored, and a process of evaluation and control of the effects of investments must be followed to obtain satisfactory results (2000:135).

Clearly there must be some accommodations made for the needs of foreign tourists, yet not to the point of demeaning the local cultural presence.  Where are the pride in, and values related to African heritage stimulated, as originally promised in our hypothetical case by the creation of an African museum?

Looking to the Future

July 1st and August 1st  are important dates for particularly the English and Dutch speaking Caribbean, being a very significant symbol of emancipation for many nations across the region. Looking to the future, we need to find more of these cross-border commonalities for a somber but positive direction of the African Diaspora Heritage Trail, from important dates and events like July/August 1st, to social behavior in daily life and public market systems.  We must recognize that although economic growth is a fundamental factor in development, it is really policy decisions of a uniquely cultural kind which determine the direction it will take, and its usefulness to fulfill the needs and ambitions of individuals and societies (Claxton 1989:4). A country can be experimental and innovative in its choice of development techniques, including tourism, provided that these forms are culturally valid for their own people, and rooted in local realities reflecting the cultural values of the societies that they are designed to serve. Across the region it has been observed that native Caribbean peoples are developing and attempting to maintain a cultural autonomy by astutely co-opting outsider interests and influences, and playing them out in terms of their own social structures (for Aruba see Razak 1995; for Dominican Republic see Troncoso Morales 2000; for Cuba see Clavijo Colom 2000; among others). African Diaspora heritage is an essential part of these cases, as well as in almost all Caribbean cultural expressions, and will always play a role in each island’s globalization process for tourism and promotional developments. However, with many Diaspora societies, often the limitations of public financial resources, forces them to allow private investors to carry the burden of cultural and heritage representation, on the basis that “at least it is something”, without considering standards, regulations or the long-term symbolic impact. It is hoped this paper will stimulate an awareness and debate on the intellectual and social dangers inherent in a “Slaveryland” type tourism package, as exemplified here, when the shifted responsibilities of cultural and heritage representation are not controlled.

The question is, how far will we let the control over cultural value expressions relating to these very sensitive issues of African Diaspora heritage, pass from the hands and minds of the local populations, to be manipulated by multinational and individual developers for their private profits. I believe that to develop long-term tourism industry partnerships, we must either create anew, or incorporate into a larger institution, an international commission for the formation of standards relating to the ethics and values surrounding the use of African Diaspora heritage for cultural tourism purposes. This commission should recognize all peoples of the African Diaspora as a specific social group.  That this commission should have an inter-disciplinary and inter-ethnic composition, and that it be affiliated with such organizations as the World Tourism Organization (WTO), UNESCO, AFRICOM, International Council of Museums (ICOM), and other relevant international, regional and local institutions. Some of the significant goals for this commission should be:

• to offer plans of action for synchronized global and local awareness of African Diaspora heritage, which includes the importance of ongoing research for both academic and tourism industry needs;
• to create a code of standards for heritage tourism;
• and to create guidelines to follow those standards and promote sustainable cultural-heritage tourism results.

With regard to synchronization of the tourism industry and local cultural integration, Machuca Ramirez makes a convincing argument when he presents cultural rights as human rights (2000:177). He follows a document of the High Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, called the “Protection of the Heritage of the Indigenous Peoples”, in which three basic objections are noted as risks from tourism to cultural heritage. These objections included: 1. Attraction of foreigners into local communities without proper consultation about the cultures, customs and/or the growing influx of tourist impacts; 2. Degrading commercial images of the local peoples; and 3. Hidden aspects of coercion from exhibiting living peoples and communities as a tourism attraction. This last issue was clearly indicated to me during personal interviews with Saramaccan residents of interior Suriname, while conducting a study of tourism in the area. These proud maroon-descendant peoples were angry and horrified when foreign tourists would travel to their village and openly walk through their yards taking pictures of them bathing or during intimate family contexts.

I end my paper with this Suriname example, showing that it is essential to maintain respect for the host societies in order for African Diaspora Heritage tourism to succeed, that we must accept tourism as a vital global phenomenon of the world economy with significant potential benefits, yet that the tourism industry must also accept a sense of responsibility for the impact of their product on the very societies who created the attraction in the first place.

Afterword

This paper was presented in May 2002 to the first African Diaspora Heritage Trail Conference in Bermuda, which was attended by hundreds of participants, including high level delegates from numerous African, Caribbean, North and South American nations, as well as the presidents of the World Tourism Organization, Caribbean Tourism Organization, and the African Travel Association. The response to the paper was overwhelmingly positive, with the follow-up establishment of a formal international commission to formulate a code of standards for African Diaspora Heritage Tourism. The Minister of  Culture and Tourism of Nigeria, Honorable Ms. Boma Bromillow Jack, personally suggested that the author be on this international commission, which was accepted by the delegates. In the coming year, it is planned for implementation of suggested solutions for many of the issues raised in this paper.

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