Tourism as a spatial logic. The case of Northwestern Argentina (1930-1960)

Abstract

The following article analyses the processes of touristification in the Argentine northwest between 1930 and 1960, using a multi-scale approach that includes the region, the province and the nation. It seeks to contribute to the knowledge of tourist territorialization in an area scarcely explored by historical studies of tourism. It is hypothesized that tourist production in the Argentine northwest was the result of the dialectic of different spatial logics, namely, regionalization and provincialization. Tourist regionalization was driven by the nation and led to the construction of a mobile, porous and flexible region constituted from tourist cultural frameworks, representations, images and patrimonialization processes. The homogenization of the nation resulted in archetypes that provincialization fixed in a differentiated way on a set of tourist sites and places, thus contributing to heterogeneity. To carry out this research, historical sources were used, including state documents, provincial and regional written press, travel guides, among others.