Trauma tourism in Latin America

In a section called "Some Social Dos and Don'ts," the Lonely Planet tour guide for Argentina warns tourists that the recent dictatorship is among the "sensitive subjects to avoid in conversation with Argentines (at least until you know them better)."1 The entry presents the authoritarian repression in Latin America's recent past as contested terrain locally and a tourist taboo. It also recognizes the curiosity of international tourists about that past and their desire to explore it in their journeys in the region. The guidebooks published by Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Moon, Frommer's, and Fodor's have responded to that demand by offering descriptions of some of the sites of atrocity in Latin America.2 In some cases, it is the sites themselves that provide overviews, tour information, and relate visitors' experiences, on official websites and in print publications. Visitors' travel blogs provide further exposure for such sites and the experiences they offer to tourists. So despite the taboo on tourism to them, the sites of authoritarian regime repression and of the resistance to repression nevertheless form part of the tourist experience in Latin America.