The touristification of the territory travelers and tourism magazines in southern Chile, 1853-1950

Abstract

The touristification of the territory is a process that societies have experienced during the 20th century, from the implementation of policies aimed at inserting local spaces into the global flows of tourist mobility. Both Chile and the rest of the Latin American countries were not exempt from these dynamics. Indeed, tourism, understood as a way of assigning tourist value to places, is developed both from above, by the action of the State, and from below, based on the decisions that tourists make when traveling. This article aims to analyze, from a historical and geographical perspective, the role that tourism has played in the construction of the territory, the State and the Nation in Chile during the 20th century from two approaches: a) travelers and tourists in La Araucanía a late 19th century: Edmond Reuel Smith, Gustave Verniory and José Alfonso; and b) the tourism magazines in promoting the tourist imaginary of modernity and the nation in Chile, which were classified into three categories: private magazines, association magazines and state magazines. It is concluded that both the travelers of the late nineteenth century and the magazines of the first half of the twentieth century, configured the construction of the tourist territorial imaginary of Araucanía and southern Chile, based on the notion of nature, of the subjects that there they are. live and the values of modernity.

Touristification

travelers

tourists

tourism magazines

Chile