Tropicality and Decoloniality: Sex Tourism vs Eco Tourism on a Philippine Beach

Abstract

The small beachside town of Aplaya, Puerto Galera, on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines has a sex, beach, and diving tourist economy. Aplaya is considered a place of isolation, providing unspoiled tropical nature. Many foreign men discuss their desires for a Utopian paradise, a tropical beach that is imagined as uninhabited except for the necessary extras – the welcoming natives and compliant women. Foreign men depict the Philippines as a place where women are ordinarily sexually available, part of the natural excess of the tropics. This discourse of tropicality is here put into context with a discourse of decoloniality. The Philippines archipelago was colonised for over 400 years firstly by the Spanish, then by US colonisation, followed by Japanese occupation in WWII, and a return of the US until 1946 – after which post-colonial US influence continued. Despite this long and complex history, tourists who recount desires for a natural world and a nostalgia for a lost paradise in relation to the West help produce Aplaya as paradise found, rather than a particular version of paradise made. Amidst these ideas about natural women and traditional gender arrangements there are also ideas about the tropical natureculture, its natural state and cultural interventions. In Aplaya, a conflict is occurring between the development of sex tourism and environmental conservation through ecotourism. The domains of nature and culture, their articulation in the tropics, the environment, and development are produced and contested around this beach.