La construcción simbólica del turismo en los orígenes de San Carlos de Bariloche

Abstract

The city of San Carlos de Bariloche is usually characterized as an eminently tourist destination by much of the academic bibliography and public documents. In them, the figure of Ezequiel Bustillo at the head of the National Parks Directorate is usually highlighted as the main or even the only promoter of this city project. Through the analysis of various documentary sources, period testimonies by A. M. Elflein, E. Morales, A. de Anchorena, F. P. Moreno and B. Willis, as well as the review of historical archives, this work aims to qualify, relativize and contextualize the role of E. Bustillo as the main promoter of the town as a Europeanized tourist destination. In this sense, the material practices deployed by the latter were combined with a long-term historical, cultural and social process and decisively influenced the symbolic construction of the landscape and the city as a tourist destination.