COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM IN THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEAST

Abstract

This research aims characterize procesess of development of community based tourism in the Brazilian Northeast, taking as reference experiences in Brazil and secondary sources that complement the analysis about benefits of tourism for local communities, as well as the understandings about community based tourism. It is concluded that tourism is not a cause of development, but a complementary factor and dependent of the overall development of a country. Tourism as an activity means that different subjects exercise situations of conflict due to the domination of spaces, such as protected areas, which are recognized as vacant lands, inhabited by no one according to the State, and that do not recognize their use or previous habitability by traditional communities. This happens too when tourism is used in a capitalist way trough real state especulation, using local communities as cheap labor, in this case community based tourism can be an alternative, based on reality of a territory and not just based of theoretical abstraction about benefits of tourism. Finally, the principles of community based tourism were systematized.