“The house became a business”: tourism and gentrification in the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

Abstract

Gentrification, refers to a series of transformations in strategic areas with the aim of redeveloping spaces and encouraging the reoccupation of these areas for economic gain. In Brazil, this phenomenon also occurs in coastal regions with tourist potential, protected areas and regions occupied by traditional peoples and communities, resulting problems and socio-environmental conflicts. This is what is happening today in the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, created in 1981, overlapping territories traditionally occupied by families of traditional communities. Initiatives by the state and by political and economic agents aimed at transforming this place-territory into a tourist site have led, among other implications, to a process of gentrification of traditionally occupied territories. The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of gentrification in some traditional communities in the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, occupied by families who have had their places of residence and work converted into tourist destinations. In this scenario, gentrification is expressed in transformations to the landscape, intensification of speculation, pressure on the use of historically managed natural resources and changes to traditional forms of sociability. It is also reaffirmed by the introduction of architectural patterns that differ from those that exist locally, an increase in the cost of living for traditionally resident families, and lifestyles and social behaviors that differ from the native way of life. Based on a qualitative methodology, this work is anchored in ethnographic information from fieldwork consolidated through direct and participant observation.