San Pedro and All-Inclusives

As I discussed earlier, I spent most of Monday evening at a hotel in San Pedro where the group from Pennsylvania is staying. Before leaving, I was waiting in the lobby while Maira returned another intern's computer to her room. That intern, Claire, has the job of coordinating trips for the various groups that come to visit either through Esperanza or through Hope (to again clarify, Esperanza and Hope are two distinct development organizations despite having the same name in different languages, they just have a partnership for work here in the DR/Haiti). While waiting for Maira, I talked with Maximo, an Esperanza driver who was nice enough to drive Maira and I home. He asked me how I was liking San Pedro, and I replied that I was. Not because it's a particularly attractive or inviting place through the eyes of a first-world foreigner, on the contrary, I like it in many ways because it's not. San Pedro is a true, working-class city in the Dominican Republic, and as such is a real representation of what life here is like for most people. There isn't a lot of attractive architecture, there are no five-star hotels or top-end restaurants; there certainly aren't a lot of people walking around speaking English, German, French, or Italian. Living here, I feel like I will leave having really spent time in the Dominican Republic as it exists for its citizens.

Maximo and I eventually got to talking about the all-inclusive resorts that the majority of tourists come to when they visit the DR. It seems to me that if all you do is go to one of these places when visiting a country and don't venture much outside it, you haven't really visited that country. Maybe the employees are a different color, perhaps the weather is a tad different, but after that, it doesn't make all that much difference if you're in the DR, or Hawaii, or Tahiti. Being in an all-inclusive prevents people from engaging the reality of a place in any meaningful way. The thing is, this is probably deliberate. People go on vacation, in many cases, to try and escape reality. They are, much of the time, craving the sort of stress-free, whitewashed, soothing illusions that all-inclusives offer. So, really, who can blame them? It's not a rhetorical question, and I'd love to hear readers' thoughts on this one.