The Secrets of the Forest: Tourist Images about Puerto Patriada (Patagonia, Argentina)

Abstract

This article proposes debates –from an anthropological approach which combines fieldwork with the study of documents from state archives and other sources– about how images and secrecy practices interplay in the pleasure economy and attractiveness disseminated by the tourism device in Puerto Patriada, Chubut province –Argentine Patagonia. It examines the way in wich, through gaze framing and secrecy formulas consttructed and disseminated by tourist policies in Puerto Patriada, the contradictions of the capitalist system are recodified, new and old ways of understanding the term “natural” not only as a material fact but also a moral one are expressed, and pedagogies of ordering and intervention in the space, resources, and subjects are shaped according to this new model of development. Also, it will reflect upon how these “gazes” and their vanishing points were configured and redefined.