Introduction

1In the Global South of Latin America, heritage has been institutionalized to increase the flexibility of tourism production, serving as an innovative mechanism to disrupt the competitive advantages of transnational corporations in central regions and break down barriers for operators in non-central regions. Particularly in South America, the Amazon rainforest has been leveraged as a cultural resource for tourism. The official heritage matrix has been employed as a strategy for economic diversification of businesses within the tourism sector, particularly those associated with cultural tourism and its creative and experiential segments, a model endorsed by international organizations for its sustainability in balancing the preservation of cultural heritage and the establishment of creative cities (UNWTO, 2016; UNESCO, 2022).

2As per the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the volatility of tourism demand and global economic downturns do not hinder the growth of the tourism market, with cultural tourism showing considerable resilience in this context due to its relevance. The segment, moreover, seems ideally suited for the Global South due to its ability to make tourism production more flexible, encourage creative innovations, and promote a competitive strategy for the deregulation of international trade.

3Given this context, tourism production effectively connects the concept of institutionalized cultural heritage to the entrepreneurial spirit of cities, seen in trends such as the Slow City and Slow Food movements. These movements guide the normative framework of a dynamic “new neoliberalism” that reproduces itself by appropriating local idiosyncrasies as instruments of flexibility. This global prioritization of World Heritage sites has led to them becoming leading global tourist attractions, paralleling institutionalized national goods where “institutional commodification” and “social entrepreneurship” are synergistic (Offeh and Hannam, 2016; Ioannides and Petridou, 2017; Ochoa-Zuluag, 2019; Coca-Stefaniak, 2019). This dynamic has spurred an increased tourist influx into cities in the Amazon River basin, such as the cities of Leticia in Colombia and Manaus and Belém in Brazil, particularly during the 2010s. These cities maintained their popularity until the covid -19 pandemic.

4We investigated the impact of this regulatory framework on the organization of heritage management, as influenced by the liberalization of tourism production in the eastern Brazilian Amazon (EBA). This region comprises the states of Amapá (AP), Maranhão (MA), Pará (PA), and Tocantins (TO) (Figure 1). This examination involved a thorough review of data and documents between 2019 and 2023 from Brazilian databases, platforms, and websites of entities such as the Ministry of Tourism (MTur) and the Ministry of Culture (MINC). International platforms and websites, including by UNWTO and UNESCO, were also audited, alongside social media accounts of various heritage groups and sites, such as associations of tour operators, folklore and handicraft groups, gastronomy clubs, music organizations, and souvenir companies, among others.

5The EBA represents the most urbanized section of the Brazilian Legal Amazon, with an average urbanization level of approximately 73%. It encompasses roughly 39% of the total area and is inhabited by around 17 million people, equivalent to 3.7% of Brazil’s population. Among the four states constituting the region, Pará State accounts for 62% of the area, 43% of budget revenue, and a significant proportion of the population. Conversely, Tocantins has the highest human development index in the region, at 0.73, compared to the regional average of 0.69. In terms of socioeconomic factors, the region’s average per capita income equals one minimum wage, underscoring its vulnerability (Brasil, 2022a). This apparent socioeconomic fragility is further exacerbated by a low technical density and substantial infrastructure, service, and environmental issues. These challenges stem from a labor market with a territorial division, necessitating the implementation of strategies to bridge the competitive advantages and logistical privileges enjoyed by global operators and southeastern Brazil.

6Therefore, the region has gravitated towards low-tech sectors, such as tourism, which are emblematic of the broader economic diversification strategy within this industry. This approach, primarily focused on leveraging institutionalized heritage, has been particularly prominent in the region’s most heavily urbanized areas, namely Macapá (AP), Belém (PA), and São Luís (MA) (Brasil, 2022a, 2022b).

I. Tourism production and cultural heritage in the normative framework

7The production-consumption model in today’s global capitalist economy is explained by how flexible production reorganizes global territorial and social divisions of labor. This reorganization is driven by technological innovation, economic financialization, and competition for advantageous locations in newly industrialized areas. Economic policy, configured according to a neoliberal model, promotes global competitiveness, thereby linking social development and human improvements to expanding individual entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional structure marked by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade (Harvey, 2008).

8This structure intertwines with a socio-political project. According to Dardot (2016) and Dardot and Laval (2019), neoliberalism’s systemic plasticity of power extends beyond economic policy, making it a global normative, rational, and subjective force. The result is a global normative framework where capitalist logic interweaves with and transforms everyday modes of action and inter-individual relationships, embedding competitiveness, and entrepreneurial approaches to managing debt and instability.

9This framework supports the dominion of private law, even challenging democratically agreed processes, and consolidates neoliberalism’s univocal relationship between State policy and market economy. Even though capital is maintained by the State and used by the market, both by taking over state public policies and implementing business logic in the State structure. Neoliberalism, as Dardot and Laval (2019, S/I, our emphasis) admit: “does not hesitate to instrumentalize the resentments of a broad sector of the population [...] including through the declared offensive against human rights.” From this perspective, the naturalization of neoliberalism asserts itself as a broadening process of monetization, financialization, commodification, and austerity—despite socioeconomic deficits, collapses, and existentialization of entrepreneurial ways of life and the empire of private law allows contemporary neoliberalism to assume subjectivities that give it the capillarity to the existence of deepening processes of monetarization, financialization, commodification, and austerity, even in the face of the socioeconomic deficits and collapses experienced by the very nature of the capitalist mode.

10The restructuring of post-industrial production prompted the flexibilization of production, driven by new expansive forms of subjectivity—ultimately more extensive than those afforded by consumption and industrial parks. Production flexibilization, seen through deindustrialization, decentralizes activities from urban, commercial, administrative, and cultural centers, focusing instead on technology, information, and services in entertainment and leisure. This dynamic aligns with urban marketing strategies and tourism-focused service economies aimed at countering the collapse of production and work sectors.

11Drawing on Ioannides and Petridou (2017), tourism emerges as an economic and social restructuring strategy. City promotion correlates with the ‘new neoliberalism’ of tourism consumption-production and its segmentation as a tool for place competitiveness and creative entrepreneurship. They argue that urban economies leverage the mass appeal of tourism to endure neoliberalism’s flexibility and to orchestrate the revival of neighborhood idiosyncrasies outside of standardized city-center tourist enclaves.

12Urban creative economies impose a business logic streamlined by tourism dynamics. This influence can be seen even within seemingly unique and endogenous forms such as the Slow City and Slow Food movements centered around community development, local cultural traditions, and in ‘creative’ and ‘smart’ city concepts (Coca-Stefaniak, 2019). Ioannides and Petridou (2017) suggested that the involvement of local forces and creative thinking in addressing global issues reflects the pluralistic and plastic system of neoliberalism.

13Higgins-Desbiolles, S. et al. (2019) observed that the segmentation in tourism aligns with efforts to broaden capitalist investment, address economic and employment crises, and open the tourism sector to private capital. This trend is visible even within purportedly sustainable, alternative, and community-based eccentricities. Despite initiatives aimed at socio-environmental quality, the immediate return on investment and economic convenience often end up taking priority.

14Segmentation is proposed as a strategy for productive diversification, prioritizing efficiency and versatility in the economic system. Versatility through segmentation is vital for promoting tourist mobility and encouraging local creative forces to innovatively channel environmental, social, and cultural resources. This dynamic stimulates competition and is independent of governance and business distribution structures in tourism.

15The notion of ‘neo-bohemia’ as outlined by Ioannides and Petridou (2017) illustrates the neoliberal dimension of these processes. Neo-bohemian projects cater to culture-consuming individuals who seek unique experiences in specific locales, providing a counterpoint to global chain companies. Ultimately, these experiences leverage local innovation to diversify tourist offerings, reflecting the versatile nature of creative economies at the neighborhood level. The authors’ analyses support the broader concept of productive flexibilization within the tourism sector. This is observed as local reactions to national and global company influences show that experiences are influenced, if not entirely shaped, by neoliberal macrostructures. The implications of these analytic reveals are that as the consumption and utilization of tourism diversification increases, standardization, conventionalism, and homogenization also become inevitable. This is alongside the reproduction of employment conditions inherent within the “tourism bubble” jobs, characterized by low wages, multitasking, and lax regulations and fees, which are requirements for local competition in the tourism supply and demand market.

16This flexibilization uncovers a realm where public-private partnerships shape tourism production and control budget distribution and investment, mediated by various instances of neoliberal governance across multiple geographical scales. Moreover, it highlights how tourism diversification through segmentation positions the State as an enabler of optimal conditions for competition among cities and locations. This is done through urban policy choices of expansion and monetary-financial maximization of businesses, sometimes leading to overtourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2019). This condition reveals the massive saturation even of segmentations classified as alternatives or of quality, which is recurrent as the segmentations linked to cultural heritage. This is due to the relevance of the urban and the city as a competitive tactic in attracting tourist flows, which “puts heritage areas in focus” (Ioannides and Petridou, 2017, p. 29), as well as the voluminous cultural consumption of historical centers, exhibitions, and identity productions declared as world heritage by UNESCO, through the confirmation of their bias of exceptionalism.

17Establishing segmentations within urban areas as a competitiveness and competition tactic relies on the diffusion of cultural heritage and the reevaluation of the cultural tourism typology’s nature and niche (Richards, 2018; Espeso-Molinero, 2019). This reevaluation occurs within the context of the “culturalization of society” spurred by globalization and the “heritage boom” at the end of the 20th century, which extends to include intangible or immaterial “heritage” resources. Later reformatted as heritage tourism, it accompanies the evolution of creative tourism, aimed at providing experiences influenced by the daily life of the visited locales. Globally, culture’s vast potential to attract tourists has led governments at different geographical scales to implement strategies to make culture more accessible to tourism and, consequently, the mass market. This aligns with the guidance from UNESCO and the UNWTO, who view visitation as a tool for preservation and safeguarding and cultural tourism as a driver for economic development in Global South countries (UNWTO, 2019; UNESCO, 2022).

18Moreover, the instrumentalization of heritage necessitated by neoliberal social consumption pressures the State to adapt locales to global tourism, fostering institutional organization and visitor access to heritage sites. As per Offeh and Hannam (2016) and Espeso-Molinero (2019), this adaptation creates new forms of local management in governance spheres that involve various social groups and economic sectors related to heritage and tourism. This connection between the heritage-driven tourism market and neoliberal processes of the creative economy, technical innovation and differentiation, and public-private partnerships impacts the ongoing symbolic reinvention of tourism’s relationship with culture and the creation of destination images. Essentially, the interplay between the Western reverence value transmitted by the exceptionality defined and propagated by UNESCO and the financial value of heritage-influenced cultural practice has significantly affected the correlation between the requalification of culture as an institutionalized commodity and the segmented definition of cultural heritage tourism.

19Currently, intangible property serves as a foundation for diversification and enhancing the appeal of attractions and destinations within the tourism industry. This strategy improves their competitive capacity for generating the flows that attract global mobility, a point endorsed by UNESCO. Tourism’s use of cultural heritage has been demonstrated to increase flexibility in the sector’s production processes. Despite the existence of legal regulations and institutionalization instruments, these tools ultimately facilitate the organization of cultural property for capital. Concurrently, they enable the formation of public-private partnerships, which usually results in increased financial support from the State, albeit coupled with more volatile employment and more precarious pay (Ioannides and Petridou, 2017). Hence, according to Offeh and Hannam (2016), the State increasingly emphasizes on private law and entrepreneurial freedom in its political discourse on tourism, thereby endorsing the pertinence of State appropriation by the market and aiding the overall dynamics of transmutation of the neoliberal normative framework. This framework establishes "institutional commodification" as a crucial tool and implementer of public policy in the neoliberal agenda.

20This commodification has been observed in Ghana, where heritage tourism promotion as a state policy has acknowledged the most popular destinations for African-American tourists and, more generally, has led to the destabilization of the heritage bases of local handicrafts. It has also fostered an informal economy tied to the global economy by producing and marketing non-artisanal handicrafts as souvenirs of local cultural heritage (Offeh and Hannam, 2016). In Mexico and Colombia, Espeso-Molinero (2019) and Ochoa-Zuluaga (2019) have noted a type of “community entrepreneurship” among indigenous peoples where local operationalization of heritage-based tourism is based on tradition and the legacy of collective management. This system is tied to economic projects linking natural and cultural resources to alternative tourism and conserving and safeguarding local heritage. This form of entrepreneurship is characterized as social entrepreneurship that activates the tourist offer through local creativity and tourist diversification as a form of a democratic medium that mediates market freedom.

21Incorporating this entrepreneurship into the market underscores the indelible impact of neoliberal rationality on the daily lives of tourism subjects. It reveals how social entrepreneurship embodies the potential of an economic solution to the restructuring and ambiguity generated by tourism, thereby easing the economic conditions of heritage conservation for local communities and groups. This shift also liberates heritage assets to monetarist business groups, leaving the State in a supportive role with scant distribution of subsidies. In this vein, the subtle dissemination of neoliberal rationality and subjectivation in tourism production, is reinforced by the paradoxical implementation of social entrepreneurship. This implementation allows for preserving heritage under the control of the groups that produce it socio-culturally with the prospect of income (Sandbrook, 2010). Nevertheless, it also articulates the intangibility of cultural heritage to monetize the tourist experience as entrepreneurial creativity, inducing disruptions in the stringent international marketing practices of the tourism sector.

22As Sandbrook (2010) illustrated within the context of rural tourism in Uganda, despite inequalities in power relations and lack of local group participation in the redistribution of tourist income, these earnings can surpass other forms of income in countries that are not leading players in the contemporary capitalist territorial division of labor. Power imbalance, price discrepancies in products offered by operators to travel agencies, and employment instabilities in the generation of extra income derived from inequalities in standardizations and certifications, the system of payments and commissions in the tourist industry, as well as the need to overcome the precarious logistics of access, are all determining factors as observed in the analyses of Ghana, Uganda, and Mexico.

II. Tourism and cultural heritage in impoverished areas

23Tourism has gained critical significance in the EBA primarily due to the lack of other mechanisms to address socioeconomic vulnerability. The vulnerability emanates from the territorial division of labor imposed on the area, which has led to a low human development index in the region. The EBA includes four states and 516 municipalities, and 124 locations are shown on the MTur Tourism Map. This visibility demonstrates tourism’s crucial role in the area’s economic diversification strategies by leaning on preserving and promoting institutionalized heritage. This growth in tourism is facilitated by an increase in the recognition of both tangible and intangible heritage elements in the area, fueled primarily by locally-driven initiatives. However, these efforts are often influenced by political rather than technical criteria. The region’s tourism approach aligns neatly with the structure of the national tourism market, anchored in public-private partnerships, with State financing and a reserve fund providing the impetus for growth in the sector.

24National cultural and tourism policies, along with their associated plans and projects, prioritizing fostering innovation, creativity, and sociocultural entrepreneurship to enhance the flexibility of the production chain and stimulate job and income generation. These neoliberal socio-political aspects are evident in national plans supporting culture and tourism and are reflected in governance through tourist regions. The merging of Cultural Policy into the Ministry of Tourism from 2018-2022, alongside the dismantling of Heritage Policy, has led to the privatization of heritage and public tourism infrastructure, such as environmental conservation units and listed buildings (e.g., museums, mansions, theaters, etc.). Thus, the public-private partnerships at EBA are driven by global indicators of growth in the tourism sector, particularly with culture as a significant asset in mitigating logistical shortcomings in mobility and accessibility (UNWTO, 2019).

25The organization of heritage for tourism production within the EBA is primarily concentrated in the areas surrounding the cities of Macapá, Belém, and São Luís, and it is chiefly through the tourism dynamics of these three cities that tourism relations within the region are cultivated. Nonetheless, these relationships are constrained by a lack of a distinctly outlined and segmented project, generally driven by irregular and unsatisfactory public-private partnership proposals. Like many other regions globally, the EBA has been affected by the economic downturn due to the covid-19 pandemic, evidenced by a sharp decline in tourism indices. Despite the worldwide setbacks, the post-crisis period saw a recovery in the sector, with only Tocantins reporting a drop in federal revenue (Brasil, 2022a). According to the table 1 below (Table 1) the tourist flow and cultural heritage in the AOB from 2021 to 2022.

Table 1: Tourist flow and cultural heritage in the EBA, 2021–2022.

EBA
Variables	Amapá	Maranhão	Pará	Tocantins	Total
Foreign tourists
Direct number	2.166	-	1.091	-	3.257
Arrivals (%)*	-	-	0.27	-	0.27
Domestic tourists
Arrivals (%)*	0.35	1	2.8	0.3	4.45
Ranking	26ª	14ª	9ª	21ª	-
Demand (%)	0.1	2.3	3.9	1	7.3
Expenditure/trip (%)	0.2	1.3	2.1	0.7	4.3
Federal revenue (%)	3.2	25.8	61.1	9.9	100
Total equipment/provider**	275	1.315	1.492	737	2.819
Formal occupation	2.453	18.771	30.013	8.145	59.382
Cultural heritage
Global (UNESCO)
Materials	-	1	-	-	1
Immaterial	1	1	1	-	3
Domestic (IPHAN***)
Materials	2	25	51	2	80
Immaterial	2	6	5	2	15
Governance/locale
Tourist regions	5	10	14	7	36
Most visited area	Macapá	SãoLuís	Belém	Palmas	4
Segmentation	Natural sun and beach	Cultural/ business sun and beach	Cultural/ natural/ business	Natural/ sun and beach	-
Cultural heritage/locale
MATERIAL Historic urban centers	Vila da Serra do Navio	São Luís and Alcântara	Belém	Natividade Porto Nacional	5
IMATERIAL Records of celebrations, expressions, forms, and knowledge	Kusiwa art, Wajãpi body painting, graphic art, and Marabaixo	Bumba Meu Boi, Tambor de Crioula, Repente, and Matrizes do Forró	Círio de Nazaré, Carimbó, and making gourds from the lower Amazon	Making Karajá dolls and Expr. of the Karajá people	12

^*Compared to all Brazil. ^**Agencies, guides, accommodation, and catering establishments registered with MTur. ^***National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute. Source: Prepared by the authors based on Brasil (2022), MTur (2024), MINC, MTur, SECULT, and SETUR websites and platforms for Amapá, Pará, Maranhão, and Tocantins States.

26Table 1 provides an overview of tourism and cultural heritage in the EBA between 2021 and 2022, a post-pandemic period in which tourist flows in this area accounted for 4.45% of total national demand. This highlights the peripheralization of this industry within the region, forming a market of minor significance concentrated primarily on internal dynamics (MTur, 2024). Table 1 reflects the effects of the global recession in tourism in the post-pandemic period, corroborated by the drastic reduction in international flows to Macapá-Belém-São Luís area, which were thirty times higher in 2019 than in the entire EBA in 2021.

27Based on the data presented in the table, it is evident that tourist flows in the region between Belém, Macapá, and São Luís are distributed geospatially, integrating and dispersing in various directions within the area. This geospatial distribution illustrates how tourism is organized around key rivers and natural areas, connecting different regions and destinations. In southern Pará and northern Tocantins, flows follow the shores of the Araguaia River; in southeastern Pará and southwestern Maranhão, they concentrate along the beaches of the Tocantins River. In northeastern Pará and northwestern Maranhão, tourism expands from the capitals towards Marajó, Santarém (PA), and the Lençóis Maranhenses, while between northern Pará and southeastern Amapá, there is a direct connection to Marajó. This organization of tourist flows highlights the significance of these routes and areas as key hubs for tourism in the region, establishing the area between Macapá, Belém, and São Luís as a central tourism nucleus.

28From the data collected, it’s also possible to identify interconnections between tourist flows from Macapá-Belém-São Luís and other parts of the Brazilian Amazon and the South American Amazon, which suggests the potential for expanding domestic tourism into these regions. Key hubs in this potential expansion are Macapá and Belém, thanks to the Franco-Brazilian Binational Bridge and the establishment of direct flights between Belém, Cayenne, and Paramaribo (Brasil, 2022a) — a result of state-provided resources and strategies to overcome peripheral structural backwardness through public-private partnerships.

29Tourist demand is nurtured by awareness and experience of heritage sites established by UNESCO within the EBA’s area of influence. Established in the last decade of the 20th century, these heritage sites rank highly among tourist attractions within the Amazon’s inter-regional interaction space. A prime example is four UNESCO world heritage sites in Suriname, French Guiana, and Venezuela, with three additional major attractions in the Macapá-Belém-São Luís area, including two intangible cultural heritage sites: Kusiwa art, body painting and Wajãpi graphic art; the Bumba Meu Boi cultural complex; and the Círio de Nazaré as well as the architectural complex of the Historical Center of São Luís (Brasil, 2022b; UNESCO, 2022).

30Secondary to these main attractions, national institutionalized heritage assets are utilized, which is noticeable in French Guiana’s and Venezuela’s approaches to their respective carnivals and cultural centers. In the EBA, diverse cultural resources such as celebrations, local knowledge, expressions, shapes, and places are deployed for tourist appeal (refer to Tables 1 and 2). Based on the primacy of these heritage sites, the cities of Macapá, Belém, and São Luís oversee three main tourist regions: Meio do Mundo, Belém, and São Luís. These regions demonstrate examples of local enterprises thriving due to tourism, particularly those related to food and gastronomy, with high seasonality (especially in June, July, and October) linked to festive events and centered around hotels.

31Nonetheless, among these cities, São Luís is unique in designating its cultural heritage sites (CHS) as a world heritage site, even though it neglects to classify the Bumba Meu Boi as a UNESCO heritage site — a crucial part of the local tourism industry (150,000 visitors and income close to BRL 85 million in 2022). There are similar trends in Belém with the Círio de Nazaré (50,000 tourists and income of around BRL 150 million in 2022), which is only listed as a religious tourist event. Furthermore, Macapá accentuates the São José Fortress (candidate for UNESCO heritage status) and the Ciclos Festivos do Marabaixo. With these potential attractions, coupled with the competitiveness of tourist routes in northern Brazil and Caribbean world cruise operators, Macapá has the potential to further boost its tourism industry. Table 2 presents the focal points of cultural heritage in the AOB region for the period from 2018 to 2023.

Table 2: Focal Points of Cultural heritage attractiveness, 2018–2023.

MACAPÁ-BELÉM-SÃO LUÍS
Direct relationship
Government organization - Ministries and State Secretariats for Culture and Tourism. Public-Private partnerships (BNDS/BASA funding and Equatorial Energia/VALE support/sponsorship). Entrepreneurship - alternative and creative artistic and cultural businesses and scenes. Licensees. Social and/or collective entrepreneurship (suppliers, freelancers and groups, cooperative members, associates). Provider payment or benefit relationships.
MACAPÁ	BELÉM	SÃO LUÍS
Indirect relationship
Department of Labor and Entrepreneurship	State Secretariat for Labor, Employment and Income	Secretary of State for Labor and Solidarity Economy
Cultural heritage use
Central spatialization
Fortress Complex São José Fortress Museum - São José Park and Square (it is the place of memory of Marabaixo) — visitation, picnics, and visiting the Amazon River). Casa do Artesão An exhibition of 700 artisans from Amapá at the headquarters and the units in Beira-Rio Square, Sacaca Museum, Marco Zero Monument, and Macapá Airport. Exhibitions: Permanent with artifacts from the Maracá and Cunani groups; Rotation with artwork by artists; and marketable handicrafts from local producers and eight indigenous peoples (especially Kusiwa and Wajãpi art). Joaquim Caetano Historical Museum (historical images and documents and archaeological pieces). Flavors of Amapá Food Court (local cuisine).	Lusitano Cultural Complex Frei C. Brandão Square and its surroundings (Museu Forte do Castelo, Artes Sacras and Casa da Onze Janelas - exhibition and gastronomy). Cultural-Gastronomic Route Ver o Peso Complex - fair, meat market and Solar de Belém. Estação das Docas (Pará 2000) - 3 Warehouses (Arts, cinema and theater; gastronomy; and fairs and exhibitions) and Forte São Pedro Amphitheater Boulevard da Gastronomia - reinforcing the title of Creative City of Gastronomy (UNESCO) - a multi-use corridor of listed buildings in the vicinity of Praça M. Barata. (gastronomy, musical, artistic, and cultural festivals, exhibitions, fairs, events and business) Circular Network of art and culture partners in spaces, projects, and sociocultural and gastronomic actions carried out in listed buildings and their surroundings.	Circuit of Museums and Houses Portuguese Colonial Aristocracy: (Museums: historical and artistic, of sacred arts, and of tiles - renovating the metropolitan cathedral; Palácio dos Leões and Forte S. Luís and Teatro A. Azevedo). Popular culture: art, festivities, and gastronomy (Houses of: Maranhão, Festa, Tambor de Crioula, Tulhas and Nhozinho; and Museums of: gastronomy and reggae). Casarões Cultural Corridor Rota das Praças do(a): Nauro Machado (music festival and street theater); Faustina (Afro-descendant resistance and performs Tambor de Crioula); and Catraieiros (samba and African matrices). Passage Route Streets: do Giz (Escadaria de Campos) and Portugal (tiled façades); and 9 alleyways: Alfândega (São João), Catarina Mina (Memória da Guiné), and Silva (Escadaria da Correria). Mercês Cultural Complex Mercês convent and Square, Vale cultural center, central market, and bus terminal (gastronomy, musical, artistic, and cultural festivals).
Handicrafts
From various plant origins and organic food produced from Amazonian fruits and oils. Kusiwa and Wajãpi art.	Miriti (miriti toys from the Círio) and ceramics from Icoaraci, Marajoara, and Tapajônica, straw objects (varied).	From Buriti (varied); Bumba-meu-boi: costume pieces (clothes, masks, ornaments) — various materials.
Celebrations complex
Forms of Expression - (music and dance - Afro-descendant memory of the Congo) of the Marabaixo Groups in association with the Folias of popular Catholicism. - Marabaixo cycles in Macapá.	Círio de Nazaré Festival Devotions: Processions - Catholic Churches; Arrastão - Grupo Pavulagem; F. da Chiquita - LGBTQPIA+ Groups and Auto do Círio - Street Theater. Forms of Expression - (music and dance) of the Carimbó Groups (Afro memory).	Celebrations and Parades of the Bumba-Meu-Boi Groups Dramatic Expression (5 conventional accents) Devotion (mystical/religious) and Games (Dances), Tambor de Mina and Toadas (Afro memory), and Matrizes do Forró

Source: Prepared by the authors based on the websites and platforms of MINC, MTur, SECULT, and SETUR (for Amapá, Pará, Maranhão, and Tocantins States) and the social networks of the groups and locale.

32As illustrated in Table 2, institutionalized cultural heritage—tangible, intangible, and mixed—work as a focal point for tourist attraction supply and demand. They are mobilized through public-private partnerships from national to local levels and in association with social, collective, and/or business entrepreneurship, predicated on “creative innovations.” This tendency is also apparent in secondary relationships, where work secretaries are influenced by “entrepreneurship” and “solidarity economy,” as well as “employment and income.” Accordingly, they coordinate activities associated with more volatile incomes and launch social groups pursuing immediate and precarious productivity—even among professionals better positioned in the market. Business and collective entrepreneurship play crucial roles in shaping tourism in São Luís and Belém through the formation of gastronomy, music, artistic, and cultural festivals and events. Heritage sites, like the casarões monumentos [monument mansions], are mapped into the Central Spatialization Celebrations Complex, thus interweaving material and immaterial heritages.

33In São Luís, monument mansions are frequently used for parades and cultural activities. In Belém, gastronomic events and cultural activities are popular attractions along the Círio route. In Macapá, exhibitions and fairs are prevalent around Forte S. José. The usage of these mansions as low-tech “creative innovations” redounds to the reduction of barriers and costs of creating jobs in tourism—the economic sector with the lowest monetary input—without undercutting its quality. Such a strategy allows financial support, concessions, and public exemptions for certain local private groups and a limited number of liberal professionals involved in collective entrepreneurship and businesses. This contributes, for instance, to the social organization Pará 2000 and the initiatives of the partnership network, Circular—Belém’s leading example of creative articulation. It is also worth noting state contributions, particularly the BRL30 million spent on the reclamation of Forte S. José in Macapá for UNESCO heritage status, and the involvement of companies that include Vale and Equatorial in cultural support tax laws.

34In an effort to boost employment and income, local social groups are strategizing to compete for project and funding proposals offered by public-private partnerships. Intellectual elites and liberal professionals—alongside the cities’ CHS and cultural groups—form these groups that benefit from the activities, presentations, and spaces thereby offered. This dynamic is mirrored in the way groups of neo-bohemians organize collective and associative ventures, such as the Espaço Vem store—marketing “creative, distinctive, and sustainable” clothing—and the Marca Artesanato Rio Grande, who showcase buriti crafts produced by the Rio Grande Mothers’ Association. Cultural groups organized into folklore associations such as Berço do Marabaixo, Raízes da Favela, Carimbó Sancari, Trilha da Amazônia, Bumba Meu Boi V. de S. Fé, and Boizinho Barrica, engage freely in the competition for shows, exhibitions, and performance slots, not only to generate income and self-sustain but also to cater to the high-season demands, thereby promoting cultural tourism.

Conclusions

35Tourism production in the eastern Brazilian Amazon aligns with global efforts to leverage institutionally organized cultural heritage, particularly UNESCO-listed sites. This alignment fosters diversification and flexibility strategies within the cultural tourism sector, helping to mitigate vulnerabilities and weaknesses. However, this process leads to a standardization focused on generating volatile revenues, with investments often involving short-term risks and challenges for long-term sustainability. The EBA’s internal and external interactions exemplify the construction of the normative framework of “new neoliberalism,” which merges social entrepreneurship with “Neo-bohemian” facets of local creativity. This approach fosters low-tech innovations concentrated in the area's urban centers, facilitating an organized allocation of assets to local permit holders and associations comprised of liberal professionals, public servants, and intellectual elites. In these urban centers, Urban revitalization through tourism in Eastern Brazilian Amazon cities, which is strongly influenced by cultural heritage and free from major global tourism corporations, differs significantly from the U.S. model, as noted by Ioannides and Petridou (2017). While the American model is dominated by large corporations and mass attractions, these cities adopt a more local heritage-focused approach. However, even though world heritage sites are utilized as attractions, this approach remains peripheral compared to demand in European and national contexts, particularly regarding intangible heritage properties.

36Within the EBA, intensifying “institutional commodification” through public-private partnerships fosters a more acceptable and flexible use of heritage resources. This approach benefits groups with political-economic influence and is supported by the neoliberal rationality of service-providing entrepreneurs. The revenue from “heritage shows” consolidates both the tangible and intangible heritage into attractions, such as the casarões monumentos, cultural corridors, and routes within the EBA. Hence, heritage resources serve as a catalyst for culture in the production of creativity and innovation, particularly favored in urban centers capable of directing flows into the monument mansions. Nevertheless, these public-private partnerships lack the comprehensive cultural and heritage segmentation required to fully engage the potential of these resources. This absence does nothing to support the peripheralization practices typically seen in the Global South’s UNESCO assets. However, the demands and flows of cultural tourism in the South American Amazon further mobilize public resources and social groups toward volatile entrepreneurship, with only short-term, precarious, and fragile economic returns. Considering the low average per capita income in the EBA, the proposition of entrepreneurship enabled by the tourist use of cultural heritage and the potential for residual income from the tourism sector bolsters neoliberal rationality.