LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue XXX, Vol. XX No. XXX, Month 201X, 1–20 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17702359 © 2017 Latin American Perspectives 1 Community-Based Tourism and Political Communitarianism in Prainha do Canto Verde, Brazil by Francisco Javier Ullán de la Rosa, Antonio Aledo Tur, and Hugo García Andreu Community-based tourism is advocated by indigenous organizations and leftist actors throughout Latin America as a tool for furthering their political and cultural agenda. The ideological biases and structural weaknesses of this model become apparent in a case study of the fishing village of Prainha do Canto Verde, Brazil. The communitarian agenda cur- rently being implemented by means of the community-based tourism project in Prainha is based upon an ideological construct and being imposed through political engineering upon what is simply a local segment of Brazilian rural society. As a result, it is encounter- ing strong resistance. There is also structural tension between the inevitable sociocultural change caused by the development of tourism and the rigidity and essentialism of a com- munity-based tourism model offering a “traditional way of life” as a touristic product. The model is ultimately conflictual and unstable, and there is serious doubt about its long- term sustainability. Organizações indígenas e instituições de esquerda defendem o turismo comunitário na América Latina como forma de apoio às suas agendas políticas e culturais. Contudo, a fragilidade estrutural e o preconceito ideológico desse modelo tornam-se aparente no caso de uma vila de pesca em Prainha do Canto Verde, no Brasil. A agenda comunitária hoje implementada por meio do projeto de turismo comunitário em Prainha baseia-se em con- strução ideológica e é imposta por meio de engenharia política do que consiste somente de um segmento local da sociedade rural brasileira. Consequentemente, essa agenda encontra forte resistência. Demais, há tensão estrutural entre as mudanças culturais inevitáveis, causadas pelo desenvolvimento do turismo, e a rigidez e essencialismo do modelo de turismo comunitário que oferece “um estilo de vida tradicional” como produto turístico. O modelo é fundamentalmente conflitante e instável, suscitando dúvidas quanto à sua sustentabilidade a longo prazo. Keywords: Closed corporate societies, Communitarianism, Community-based tourism, Indigenous movements, Social change The origins of community-based tourism can be traced back to the sustain- able and ethnic tourisms of the 1970s. These first phenomena were originally cultural in nature, driven by postmaterialist values, but were rapidly commod- ified and became a “postmodern industry” (Krippendorf, 1986; Turner and Francisco Javier Ullán de la Rosa is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology II at the University of Alicante, Spain, and a specialist in social change in Latin American indigenous populations. Antonio Aldeo Tur is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology I at the same university, and Hugo García Andreu is an assistant professor in the latter department, both of them focusing on tourism studies and environmental sociology. 702359LAP XX X 10.1177/0094582X17702359LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESUllán et al. / COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM IN PRAINHA DO CANTO VERDE research-article 2017