Tourism is a wonderful industry; it pays our BEC, BTC, Water and Sewerage and Cable Bahamas bills, gives us money to shop in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale and creates mega-resorts that we wonder around as if in a dream.\u00a0 It creates the hottest, coolest clubs, restaurants and discos.\u00a0 It removes most resources from the local grasp, enclosing them within the resort\u2019s limits.\u00a0 Locals can only venture there at the owners\u2019 pleasure; it is private land on what may have been once upon a time public access property.\u00a0 Sadly, as I walked along the lovely newly fenced in Paradise \u2018public\u2019 beach access, it became clear that Bahamians are up against a monster.\u00a0 While the beach on this part of Paradise Island has been open to the public for years, it has not been public in the true sense of the word in many years.\u00a0 Atlantis actually acquired the beach years ago.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Bahamians were probably unaware of that fact.<\/p>\n
As the beach access is controlled and restricted, Bahamians seem to be unaware that they are losing rights that they thought they had as a part of their birth.\u00a0 Yet, people seem nonplussed by it.\u00a0 As the gate stands locked across the \u2018public access\u2019, tourists approach from the inside and are confused as to how to leave.\u00a0 Locals simply duck under, jump over or somehow negotiate in and out.\u00a0 Ease of access is gone.\u00a0 The owners are asserting their right to the land.\u00a0 As the new owners\/managers of Atlantis flex their muscles, asserting their ownership of the land that allows people to access the beach, the public wanders by apparently unaware.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, Adrian Gibson (Tribune 13\/11\/09) wrote a piece on public beach access and the right to it.\u00a0 Yes, Bahamians may use the beach up to the high water mark, but he left out that we are not guaranteed access to the high-water mark.\u00a0 Private property extinguishes the right to that access, unless there is a common law right-of-way provided to the beach, which is usual for many coastal communities, but seems to be tentative on Paradise Island.\u00a0 However, the signs do say, as is customary, that the beach is accessible to Paradise Island residents.\u00a0 This does not include New Providence residents.\u00a0 Tourists are less important \u2013 or perhaps more important than locals; they do not live here, they simply play here, they do pay though.\u00a0 However, they may gain access by the virtue of their identity; they are not local.<\/p>\n
All governments talk about tourism\u2019s benefits for the local economy, but what are they?\u00a0 It seems, to date, that they include jobs, at the expense of land.\u00a0 Low-paying service jobs at the expense of high-earning professions, all of which allow for diversity.\u00a0 Yes, we must recognize that the government has provided Goodman\u2019s Bay for public use, and so kindly too, along with Montagu.\u00a0 However, as the population grows two public beaches with a smattering of a few other local access points seem rather inadequate.\u00a0 Perhaps, though, we matter less in this country.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the more people feel penned in and ghettoized, the more they begin to act as people do when in confined spaces and not allowed to enjoy the pleasure they see on the other side.\u00a0 As the tourism areas grow, the local area shrinks.\u00a0 Areas such as Bain Town and Millennium Gardens become more crowded and other troubles brew.<\/p>\n
What tourism actually develops, as the title indicates is a two-tier community where the tourists that can afford, or apparently afford, the pleasure of luxury have the pickings of the coast and all the accoutrements of the resorts, while the locals serve them to be able to afford to eat.\u00a0 As tourists go, they are unaware of the disparity that they create.\u00a0 They save for months, or in some cases years to come here for a few days of luxury, or to take a cruise.\u00a0 Often, they live out their dreams while here.\u00a0 So the country becomes a place of play, according to Mimi Sheller and John Urry in Tourism Mobilities.\u00a0 It also becomes a place in play; a place that is created according to the whims of the tourist or those catering to them.\u00a0 The place is produced to attract tourists.\u00a0 What is the actual cost of that production?\u00a0 Local development is sidelined in favor of the mega-resort.<\/p>\n
As Frantz Fanon argues, locals become second-class citizens.\u00a0 Tragically, the resentment and anger build and it often turns in on itself until it becomes too explosive.\u00a0 Rather similar to colonialism, tourism creates a separation between those who serve and those who are served.\u00a0 This separation is not only mental but physical.\u00a0 Or, it is not only physical but also mental.\u00a0\u00a0 It becomes real and as Fanon and Camus illustrate, manifests in physical and psychological ways.\u00a0 We not only begin to kill each other, we also begin to hate ourselves and what we see ourselves as.\u00a0 But we downplay the violence and crime, we protect the tourist areas with increased police presence, all the while encouraging the others out of those areas.\u00a0 Regulations are made to limit local access to said areas, after all, it is private property and if you do not look the part, management reserves the right of admission.<\/p>\n
As the coastline becomes out of bounds for many of the blacks who inhabit paradise, it becomes a place where those who fly in for five days and four nights enjoy all manner of pleasure.\u00a0 They play. Meanwhile, the locals who can no longer freely access the coast or most of the desirable spaces unless paying top dollar, are consumed as mere pawns to a hungry industry.<\/p>\n
As the local community gains jobs and loses land, it also feels like it has more disposable income.\u00a0 At least that is one of the objectives.\u00a0 We want to buy things.\u00a0 We are willing to sell our souls to buy some thing, any thing that we are told will make us better looking, more desirable or happier.\u00a0 We assume that the tourists who inhabit the destination that paradise promises are happy and rich.\u00a0 That is the image we see.<\/p>\n
When I walked past the beach this morning and realized that I no longer had access to it, a button was pressed and a sad realization took hold.\u00a0 As many of the taxi-driven, cruise-shipped-in tourists also realized, but they had to find an entrance.\u00a0 That entrance is at the pleasure of the owner.\u00a0 Tragically, the government did not have the foresight to write in a clause that would protect coastal land for continued enjoyment by locals and others who may wish to live near it.\u00a0 They simply sold it.\u00a0 The owners who bought then also sold and made massive profits.\u00a0 The ones who lost out and continue to lose out are those very people who are meant to be benefiting from all this development.<\/p>\n
In the long run, the tourists may be willing to pay $10 or $20 to visit the beach for a few hours as their ship passes by, but what of those rich, and noble locals who braid hair day in and day out, work in hotels, restaurants, banks, shops, laundries, those who work to pay to stay alive?\u00a0 If we go to the beach daily do we have to pay $10 or $20 to swim?\u00a0 It may sound like a little, but $10 times 5 equals $50.\u00a0 A mere drop in the bucket to swim in the beautiful aquamarine waters that hem in these islands.\u00a0 Many can afford to pay this and others will pay it and smile, because they look rich paying it.\u00a0 But the fact is that we have sold our navel string and birthright for a song, much like the yellow bird caught in that sickly sweet rendering of paradise.<\/p>\n
To be sure tourism is a great provider of jobs that pay bills.\u00a0 It creates wealth for some and pleasure for others.\u00a0 It also creates envy and discontent.\u00a0 More fully, it creates a two-tiered country where those who can pay to play and fly in for the pleasures of paradise, luxuriate in spaces that protect themselves with chain-link fences against the vagrancies and dalliances of those beyond.<\/p>\n
The segregation of the 1950s does not compare to the mindful segregation of a people no longer able to enjoy the natural pleasures of their land because said nature has been mega-resorted.\u00a0 More tragically, we do not even realize it is happening.\u00a0 The Bahamas is certainly becoming a destination, but not one that we can all pay to play in.\u00a0 Paradise truly exists behind fences.<\/p>\n
By: I. Bethell-Bennett<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What tourism actually develops, as the title indicates is a two-tier community where the tourists that can afford, or apparently afford, the pleasure of luxury have the pickings of the coast and all the accoutrements of the resorts, while the locals serve them to be able to afford to eat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[104,29,33,73],"class_list":["post-28437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-culture","tag-economy","tag-tourism","tag-travel-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}