ECOTURISMO E IDENTIDADE NO PANTANAL SUL:USOS DA CATEGORIA “PANTANEIRO” EM PERSPECTIVA

Abstract

Ecotourism in the Pantanal has developed and consolidated mainly since the 1980s, related to international debates and the search for alternatives for sustainable development, generating great expectations. The appreciation of nature raised by the environmental concerns in vogue placed the biome in evidence in a context of a crisis in livestock, the main economic activity in the region, and at a time of globalization intensification in the Pantanal which, through the construction of infrastructure, facilitated the access and communication of regions hitherto in relative isolation. Local research on the changes that have occurred in the Pantanal since then shows a profusion of uses of the “pantaneiro” identity category by native or non-native people, in addition to its use by brands, products, and companies. The target of this analysis is how the uses of this identity category occur in the context of ecotourism inns located on Estrada-Parque Pantanal in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul. Understanding tourism as an arena that promotes borders relations and between-places, which, by putting the difference in contact, favors the production and enunciation of identity, it was analyzed the daily life of tourists, tour guides, and owners of inns was examined to outline the references present in the respective notions they have about the Pantanal and mainly about what it means to “be a pantaneiro”. It was identified that, with the appreciation of nature and the decentralization of livestock as a reference to identities, the category in evidence has been used more broadly, as it is no longer limited to cattle ranches as it used to be in the original context of this category. However, clashes in the tourism arena, which occur mainly among tour guides, bring together values and behaviors as criteria of belonging that move the two references - nature and livestock -, making internal and external discourses interact in a heterogeneous and hybrid way about the Pantanal and the pantaneiros, as well as the definitions of the present and the past, as the latter is adjusted, updated and re-signified according to the situation of the universe of tourism, in which nature becomes the central world reference.