Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
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Back in early February, we met with Jose Rochi, El Salvador’s Minister of Tourism, and had a fascinating conversation about the ways in which portrayals of his country by the media of other countries affect tourism in a negative way.
Photo: adobemac
El Salvador, which has only had a tourism department and tourism marketing budget for the past five years, has a monumental task: to convince the world’s travelers that the country is safe enough for them to visit.
This job is made exponentially more difficult by depictions of El Salvador as a nation overrun with gang violence so pervasive it has spilled into other countries, even the United States. The Minister hardly has time to dream up and implement a glossy ad campaign when he’s busy defending the country against the charges lodged against it by foreign media.
Photo: adobemac
The challenge is not unique to El Salvador. In many nations categorized as “post-conflict,” such as Nicaragua and Colombia, an already-limited amount of resources are devoted not to building a new image of the nation from within, but rather constantly contesting images of the nation that come from the outside and exert considerable influence over travelers’ decisions. It’s a no-win situation: the country will never get ahead in self-promotion.
The problem is that these images from the outside often reflect a profound gap in understanding–both of the history and current conditions of a country–on the part of the external media. They are also images constructed by means that are never entirely clear to the viewer: how do the media gather and assess the information they acquire from their sources? How do they put statistics and dramatic stories into context?
Mr. Rochi spoke about a specific example: a National Geographic Explorer documentary narrated by Lisa Ling titled “World’s Most Dangerous Gang.” Mr. Rochi claimed the documentary had a devastating impact on the country’s tourism industry and on the projects he and his colleagues had worked so hard to establish… and he was further infuriated when he attended a trade show a month later and was approached by a National Geographic magazine executive, who offered him a “deal” on an article and ad package that would showcase the country’s charms. “Charms?” spat the enraged Mr. Rochi. It was pretty clear National Geographic had specifically overlooked any charms in the documentary, and he felt that the magazine’s shameless courting of him was merely a means of trying to exploit the country further: El Salvador will have to pay if it wants some positive coverage.
Photo: Matheus Kawasaki
I was troubled by the meeting with Mr. Rochi, because I’d spent 2008 traveling to countries where the same phenomenon was occurring, producing the same negative effects. For every article published and TV show broadcast about the Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador or drug running and kidnapping in Colombia, there are dozens of stories untold. And for every bad story, the Minister of Tourism said, a country that has tried to take two tentative steps forward falls–and hard–ten steps back. Meanwhile, the rest of the world wonders why these countries just can’t get ahead.
I went home and watched “World’s Most Dangerous Gang” on YouTube. I wanted to judge for myself if the documentary was as bad as Mr. Rochi claimed it was:
And it was.
Among the many problems of the documentary was the tendency toward gross hyperbole, embedded in words like “virus” and “invaded,” and phrases like “[violence] sweeping across an entire continent,” threatening “middle [and presumably safe and normal?] America.” The logo of the Mara Salvatrucha gang was superimposed over a map of the world, showing just how this cancer of violence has spread– it’s coming to your neighborhood soon! And then there were the images of dead bodies in pools of blood and heavily tattooed men whose swaggering, devil-may-care body language clearly conveyed their life philosophy. The repetition of violent images was powerful, enough to make you believe, at the end of the documentary, that you’d never want to touch a toe in El Salvador.
There’s no question that the Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador are a serious concern. But they’re not the only story. When Lisa Ling reads a narrative script (written by whom?) and National Geographic broadcasts these sensationalist shows, though, they’re committing an act of violence of their own, one that’s sophisticated and subtle, yet devastating in its own way.
This is like hitting someone in the knee, crippling the person, and then later try to sell a wheelchair.
There’s a limited market for “feel good” stories. What’s the saying in the news industry: “Lead with blood.” Having been part of the media I know this to be completely true. I wouldn’t have expected this from National Geographic.