1In Brazil, since the presidential campaign period, the elected government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), popularly called the “Lula Government” has demonstrated its intention to pursue ways to reconcile economic growth and social equity within the development of Brazilian late capitalism. This scenario pointed to the resumption of some Keynesianism postulates in political-economic sphere, which helped to strengthen the hypothesis among researchers about the emergence of a "new developmentalism", as a symbol of the search for the consolidation of a utopian welfare state, never achieved in Brazil (Bresser-Pereira, 2009; Paccola and Alves, 2018).
2However, far from the consensus that the politically and economically approaches adopted should be considered solely neodevelopmentalist or a deepening and continuity of the neoliberalism emerged in the previous decade, the political praxis of the government in this period signals the coexistence of both perspectives, revealing a fundamental ambiguity characterizing PT [Partidos dos Trabalhadores – Workers’ Party] governments at the beginning of the 21st century (Fagnani, 2011).
3There was a clear distancing from the neoliberal tendencies disseminated throughout the world between the 1970s and 1990s. The denial of the neoliberal paradigm materialized with the insertion of Keynesian propositions and of a developmentalist character in the direction of public policies, to promote social inclusion, income distribution, and to reduce inequalities associated with the pursuit of growth (Pochmann, 2011; Carvalho, 2018). At the same time, the position and decisions in the conduct of the economy were consistent with a recent Brazilian neoliberal past, in which neoclassical orientations emerged, guided by the prioritized adoption of an orthodox agenda of economic measures (Boito Jr., 2006; Tristão, 2011).
4In Tourism, in 2003, inaugurating an important change in the management and conduct of tourism public policy in Brazil, the Ministry of Tourism (MTur) was created among contradictions of the Lula Government in face of the simultaneous and conflicting existence of neodevelopmentalism and neoliberalism. Considering the dual character featuring the actions in the Brazilian federal government between 2003 and 2011, what the extension of the coexistence and influence of neodevelopmentalism and/or well-known neoliberalism principles in the conduction of tourism, based on the guidelines of MTur?
5With this central question for the understanding of the guiding elements of tourism public policies in Brazil, the present study analyses the national plans and programs to develop tourism activity, elaborated by the Ministry of Tourism, with a supposed propagation and reproduction of the paradigms and principles of neodevelopmentalism and neoliberalism, both considerably present during Lula Governments. Methodologically, bibliographic research was used to survey studies on neoliberalism and neodevelopmentalism in Brazil in the 20th and 21st centuries, and documentary research to survey and review documents on tourism policies and programs, specifically in the period investigated (2003-2011).
6Neoliberalism was initially constituted from a movement of intellectuals (Walter Lippmann Colloquium) as a reaction to Keynesianism and social liberalism postulates with the perspectives of a developmentalist-nationalist state, preaching the return to the economic format of laissez-faire liberalism.
7The purpose of neoliberalism is to recover the capitalism classic feature of laissez-faire, placing limitations on state intervention in the economy. From a refoundation of the theoretical bases of liberalism and the definition of a new politics, the birth of neoliberalism will aim at a specific, properly liberal intervention of the State (Dardot and Laval, 2010).
8However, despite having been initially debated in the 1930s, just after the great crisis of 1929, neoliberalism faced a long period of political and intellectual desert with the rise of Keynesianism. In this way, neoliberalism only achieved some kind of hegemony with the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s, which led to the fragility and instability of the ideological model until then guided by the "new liberalism", based on the theories of Keynes.
9In an attempt to reverse the recession that shook the world economy, threatening the capitalist structure to a possible extinction on economic and political level, neoliberalism advocates the protagonism of the market, believing in efficiency and effectiveness based on the incessant search for profit, as well as through the laws of the free market and free competition with minimal state intervention in the regulation of economic activities.
10In addition, neoliberalism is based on the defence of economic freedoms with free enterprise through deregulation of the economy and markets, legal flexibilization, debureaucratization, and decentralization of decision-making power through State reforms, stimulation and propagation of values linked to individualism, entrepreneurship, and competition. On the other hand, it also sustains productive restructuring with the economic globalization of production and consumption, promoting, and involving the free circulation and mobility of capital flows through companies and corporations that begin to act on a transnational scale in order to cross territories, borders, and sovereignty of nation-states (Harvey, 2003; 2005).
11Although neoliberalism has been hegemonized by political-economic agents located in the countries of the north of the globe, it was in Latin America where the first imposing processes of neoliberalization happened. The countries of the South, already weakened, by the implementation of authoritarian regimes and subsequent processes of economic recession, served as a laboratory for neoliberal experimentation, correlated to the challenges and objectives of always starting a new cycle of accumulation after a démarche of devaluation. The processes of neoliberalization of economic adjustment in Latin America entered the 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s, guided by the Washington Consensus, imposed on countries as a condition for the renegotiation of foreign debts (Soares, 2002).
12In Brazil, the "debt crisis" and the economic recession characterized by high inflation, economic stagnation, fall of growth rates, increase in the external debt generating a deficit and imbalance in the trade balance, the dependence on high-interest loans from the IMF, and the consequent increase in unemployment levels, meant the end of the economic miracle under the military regime and heralded the crisis of the developmentalist-nationalist state and its consequent exhaustion (Tristão, 2011).
13After a long period of economic growth through the nationalist developmentalist policies adopted since the 1930s – based on industrialization and import substitution – the economic, political, and social collapse drove the decline of the military dictatorship and the establishment of the redemocratization process in the 1980s. The political opening, to a large extent caused by the deep political effervescence and the economic and social crisis, meant the exhaustion of the hitherto regime of accumulation and followed the trends of changes occurred at a global level in the structure of capitalism (Gennari, 2001; Soares, 2002).
14However, this perspective is installed in parallel with the fact that, in the case of Brazil, socioeconomic inequality persisted, since the country followed unequal processes of regional development. In this way, the processes of neoliberalization are installed at a time of deep economic, social, and political fragility, being responsible for significantly accentuation of a panorama of alarming underdevelopment present in all Latin American countries.
15With the turn of the decade, the 1990s would be the milestone for the beginning of the process of effective neoliberalization in Brazil in the face of persistent economic stagnation and social instability. The government of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-1992) inaugurated the rupture with the previous developmentalist state model by demonstrating commitment and adhesion to neoliberal postulates and the Americanist policy of trade openness. However, neoliberalism was in fact boosted in the government of his successor, Itamar Franco (1992-1994), with financial deregulation, and especially in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso - FHC (1995-2002).
16FHC's government, deepens neoliberalism in Brazil widely defending and applying policies instilled in the principles of state decentralization versus market centralization, both guided by the free market. Therefore, within the scope of his administration, FHC promoted, implemented, and enacted the disarticulation of the State in order to make it "minimal", expanded the opening of markets with the deregulation of capital flows, enacted the privatization of public assets, expanded the financialization of the economy, resumed the Americanist paradigm in terms of foreign policy, among other actions clearly linked to the neoliberal paradigm, such as the centralization of the macroeconomic tripod in the economy (Sader, 2013). In this sense, the entire political-economic framework was formulated to establish a new regime of accumulation based on internationalization, subordination, and dependence, aimed to grant guarantees for the free capital valorisation in the country.
- 1 This is the perspective presented by Emir Sader (2013) when he argues that Lula's governments are m (...)
17In 2003, even though a so-called left-wing government characterized as post-neoliberal1 was at the head of the country's leadership, neoliberal policies continued to be perpetuated and reproduced in several areas such as health, education, labour, tourism and, mainly, in the economic agenda adopted. According to Tristão (2011), the process of inflection of the government of Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and the Workers' Party [Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT] towards neoliberalism happened gradually between the electoral campaign and the government itself. However, the actions of the Minister of Economy at the time demonstrated that this was not a period of transition to another political agenda, but a deepening of the neoliberal economic policies initiated by the previous government (FHC) in search of the confidence and credibility of the market.
18The government has taken the tone of economic growth and moderation, refusing any sign of market regulation. On the other hand, the actions of Lula administrations also gave rise to analyses focused on a political trend called "neodevelopmentalism". This trend was established in Latin America from the 2000s onwards, especially in Brazil and Argentina (Bresser-Pereira, 2010; Mafort; Assunção, 2016). Neodevelopmentalism is defined as a kind of "new developmentalism", a supposedly alternative strategy based on a critique of the conventional orthodoxy of classical liberal and neoliberal policies. In contrast to structural reforms, neodevelopmentalism represents an attempt to rescue Keynesian postulates, aiming at the return of the old Brazilian developmentalism of the 1930s, which occurred during the golden years of capitalism in the 20th century (Bresser-Pereira, 2009).
19In criticism of this proposition, Sampaio Jr. (2012) points out that neodevelopmentalism is nothing more than a third way/discourse representing an ultra-light version of neoliberalism that imposed the structural adjustment of the Brazilian economy in accordance with the imperatives of financial capital, with a different premise to mitigate the most deleterious effects of the global order on growth, for instance, the deepening of social inequality. In this sense, "the challenge of neodevelopmentalism is, therefore, to conciliate the "positive" aspects of neoliberalism – commitment to currency stability, fiscal austerity, the search for international competitiveness, the absence of any kind of discrimination against international capital – with the "positive" aspects of the old developmentalism – commitment to economic growth, industrialization, the regulatory role of the state, social sensitivity (Sampaio Jr., 2012, p. 679).
20Concerning to Lula government, it signalled an economic agenda to meet the neoliberal assumptions in terms of monetary and financial stability, without breaking with the handbook of the previous government. At the same time, it sought the return of the perspective of economic development based on social policies, even though for authors such as Sampaio Jr. (2012) the junction between economic growth and social equity was incompatible in the long term.
21Based on the strategy of political coordination between the various sectors of civil society, such as the market, social movements and, at the international level, with other Latin American countries, President Lula represented a new era in the Brazilian political and economic scenario. The breaking point that distinguished the Lula era from other governments lies in the fact that it adopted the orthodox neoliberal agenda in economic policy, on the other hand, it partially contradicted it, when it created and applied a set of income transfer policies to combat poverty, with active State intervention to mitigate socioeconomic inequalities (Pochmann, 2011).
22As one of the results of these policies, we can mention Bolsa Família, one of the largest income transfer programs in the world, which was responsible for reducing extreme poverty in the country by 27%, contributing to reducing income inequality (IPEA, 2010); and the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program, created in 2009, in association with the private sector, which aimed to subsidize affordable housing for low-income families, producing around 6 million housing units (IPEA, 2015).
23The new developmentalism adopted by the Lula government partially presented a Keynesian-inspired aspect, signalling the complementarity and partnership between State and Market. Also, the ECLAC's structuralism in defence of the strategy of productive transformation with social equity, trying to enable the compatibility between economic growth and better income distribution, even with the significant dominance by the market. This combination demonstrates that "the rise of neodevelopmentalism shows that the state policy under the PT governments has a clear direction and aims at capitalist development, however, it does not break some pillars of the neoliberal model" (Boito Jr., 2013, p. 174).
24In conflicting and contradictory coexistence and complementarity, it seems clear that, without breaking the foundations of the neoliberal model, Lula government began to bring together neoliberalism, remaining, as a hegemonic project in Brazilian politics, a scenario of social policies escaping from neoliberal principles, a current called neodevelopmentalism (Paccola and Alves, 2018). Despite this, Lula governments were far from supplanting neoliberalism, achieving development, and putting an end to the regime of exploitation and dependence, the historical face of the country perpetuated day after day.
25Tourism orbits conflictively around two dimensions that define it: it corresponds to a social practice and, at the same time, an economic activity. Being a broad and complex social phenomenon, tourism encompasses, influences, and is influenced and conditioned by a set of factors and by the hidden spheres of modern and contemporary society, especially the economic and political ones.
26The tourism is undeniably a product of the liberal capitalist order, emerging as an economic and leisure activity in the 19th century. Even though the activity only consolidates itself throughout the 20th century, the first signs of the emergence of the practice coincide with the period of classical liberalism, which instituted the bourgeois free market within the scope of industrial capitalism (Magalhães, 2006).
27Tourism acquires and absorbs a broad-spectrum characteristic of the logic of the emerging commodity with the processes of industrialization, internationalization of capital, and the historical events signalled by technological advances, intensification of urbanization, and the conflictual relations established between capital and labour, all originated in the new society founded from the set of Bourgeois, French, and Industrial revolutions (Hobsbawm, 1996). Historically, tourism is a phenomenon emerged elementarily in the heart of modernity and is related to all processes related to modernity.
28In this way, tourism as a practice is not immune to the totality-world and does not exist in a separated reality. It must be considered an active constituent/producer and, at the same time, a product of modern capitalist society. Consequently, tourism is permeated by the paradoxical and enigmatic and contradictory relations, transformations, and movements arising from and accentuated by capitalism continuously hegemonized in space-time.
29Especially during the 20th century, tourism emerged as an economic activity with the emergence and consolidation of the modern bureaucratic society of directed consumption (Lefebvre, 1970) that coercively led individuals to the purchase process, including leisure services, in which tourism products are included. According to Carlos (2002, p. 49) “[...] tourism reveals the change in the space-time relationship in the modern world, realizing space as a commodity and, at the same time, subjecting leisure time to the world of the commodity”, in a society that penetrates and dominates all moments of life attempting to realize the commodity.
30In the logic of capital, tourism is understood as an economic activity that has gradually become attractive due to the profitability obtained through the growing production of wealth provided in such a way that "tourism and leisure enter this historical moment as a moment of realization of the reproduction of capital, as a moment of the reproduction of space - brought about by the extension of capitalism" (Carlos, 2002, p. 49). At the same time, tourism is distanced by the hegemony of the economic approach to the notion of social phenomenon encompassing other critical spheres in which it impacts in the class stratifications of capitalist society.
31Understood as an important vector for the support and ratification of the mechanisms of reproduction, the premises concerning the hegemonic economic paradigm are multilaterally incorporated into tourism, under the precepts of free market, competition, and free enterprise. In this scenario, the defence of the market as the only possible way of developing tourism activity sets the tone for a clear direction to the class interests of accumulation and economic growth.
32With neoliberalism and the globalization of capital, the economic activity of tourism continues to be presented as an attractive sector of the economy for public and private investments and the exercise of capital accumulation through the dialectic of social production/private appropriation of wealth. More than perpetuating itself as an "alternative" way (to traditional industrial production) of economic development, in the inaugurated globalized neoliberal capitalism, tourism assumes a key role in sustaining the near-infinite world growth, configuring itself as one of the main activities recruited by the new moment of the long historical geography of capitalism and central to the newly ascended service economy.
33Being responsible for about 10% of the world's GDP (UNWTO, 2020), tourism assumes a certain protagonism in economic indices, in order that the hegemonic agents of the market begin to direct even more the tourist product as a fundamental element for the exercise of capital accumulation from the processes of reproduction and intensification of the stimulus to consumption. From the practice of tourism, the recovery from the crises of capitalism and the resumption of a new cycle of valorisation are pursued.
34Consequently, tourism was boosted by the expansion of the understanding of the sector, at the end of the 20th century, as an important activity that generates wealth and, therefore, with potential to propel and lead economic growth rates and, supposedly, reduce social disparities between regions and help to overcome economic crises.
35Measures to boost tourism are highlighted by the growing public institutionalization and the creation of policies aimed at the development of the activity in the territory. In Brazil, since the mid-1960s, and more incisively since the 1990s, the State has dedicated efforts to institutionalize and induce, through public financing, the private tourism sector. In addition, the stimulus to the provision of basic urban-tourist infrastructure, the opening of the trade and the entry of foreign capital played an important role in attracting private investment to the country, focused on commercial aviation and accommodation and leisure ventures, expanding tourist flows (Figure 01).
Figure 01 – Arrival of foreign tourists in Brazil between 1986 and 2009.
Source: BNDES. National Bank for Economic and Social Development (2011).
36The data referring to the arrival of foreign tourists in Brazil and disembarkations at Brazilian airports (Figure 02) point to an increase in flows at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, considering that the public policies of this period and public and private investments were destined to the development of the tourism sector.
Figure 02 – Passenger disembarkation at Brazilian airports (in millions)
|
Year
|
Domestic flights
|
International flights
|
Year
|
Domestic flights
|
International flights
|
|
1998
|
26,1
|
5,5
|
2004
|
36,6
|
6,2
|
|
1999
|
26,7
|
5,0
|
2005
|
43,1
|
6,8
|
|
2000
|
29,0
|
5,4
|
2006
|
46,3
|
6,4
|
|
2001
|
32,6
|
5,0
|
2007
|
50,0
|
6,4
|
|
2002
|
32,9
|
4,6
|
2008
|
48,7
|
6,5
|
|
2003
|
30,7
|
5,4
|
2009
|
56,0
|
6,5
|
|
|
|
2010
|
6,2
|
7,2
|
Source: BNDES. National Bank for Economic and Social Development (2011).
- 2 However, in Brazil, tourism became a matter of public policy originally at the beginning of the 20t (...)
37In Brazil, tourism began to be envisioned by the new Brazilian State, now a partner and inducer of the market, to the point of becoming a matter for the elaboration of broad public policies from the 1990s2, in the same moment in which neoliberalism began to be hegemonized in the country's politics and economy. In this period, following world trends, there is the beginning of an awakening regarding the potential that the tourism sector would have to attract investors and, therefore, foreign capital, in order to supposedly contribute to the strengthening of the national economy.
38Tourism begins to reflect the globalized ideological, political, institutional, and economic framework that begins to be present, first in policies and, later, printed through actions within the scope of the Brazilian territory, in order to incorporate into discourses and practices the elements determined by the new paradigm instituted. According to Cruz (2006, p. 337), "with the consecration of neoliberalism as an economic and political paradigm, in the 1990s, in Brazil, we witnessed possibly the most acute phase of the transition from an intervening State to a market partner State, which is reflected, in tourism, in the form of public policies committed to production and reproduction of capital vis à vis public investments".
39On the other hand, in addition to tourism being apprehended as a promising sector of the neoliberal economy, at the same time, tourism activity was appropriated by the processes of neoliberalization, reflecting and reproducing the tendencies of the emerging neoliberal political-economic scenario based on flexibilizations and deregulations, consistent with the principles brought by the Washington Consensus. In the 1990s, Brazil was in line with the trends of liberalization of the economy, and, under the tourism sector, the novelties of neoliberalism could be evidenced in the trend towards deregulation of air transport, operators, and travel agencies; opening of markets, allowing the entry into the country of multinational chains of accommodation, transport, and agency/operation, in essence, of tourist companies and corporations of all kinds, giving rise to a Brazilian tourism in line with the global, computerized, and globalized tourism of the neoliberal era of capital.
40In 2003, the elected government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the same time, signalled an economic agenda aimed at meeting the neoliberal assumptions in terms of monetary and financial stability, without breaking with the handbook of the previous government, and gave rise to the return of the perspective of the pursue for economic development based on social policies. Between 2003 and 2011, there was an agglutination of neoliberalism, remaining as a hegemonic project in the conduct of Brazilian politics, along with a kind of neodevelopmentalism, based on the elaboration and application of public policies to social issues, escaping the scope of neoliberal principles.
41In the Brazilian neoliberal period of the 1990s, the State played an important role in the conduct of tourism activity in the national territory through the creation of plans and programs guided by the National Tourism Policy [Política Nacional de Turismo]. During the process of neoliberalization in Brazil, tourism reached a prominent place never historically achieved in terms of the volume of public policies by the Brazilian State, the Program for the Development of Tourism in the Northeast [Programa de Desenvolvimento do Turismo no Nordeste] (PRODETUR) being one of its maximum expressions from the mid-1990s.
42In the neodevelopmentalist era, the role of the State in terms of elaboration, promulgation and dissemination of policies intensifies, justified by the perspective of the paradigm that provides for greater state intervention in the economy. However, in Brazilian neodevelopmentalism, State does not act only on the issue of induction and promotion of the sector, it also legislates in terms of regulation, marking the return of state intervention based, to some extent, on control.
43However, in the case of tourism, during the Lula Governments, the defence of the decentralization of tourism management was simultaneously perceived, demonstrating the coexistence of a neoliberal principle of reducing the participation of the State, at the same time that, in neodevelopmentalism, the same State must partially regulate economic activities.
44In 2008, in line with the State's action to regulate the activity, Lula government implemented the first amplified legal system for the sector containing sections and articles defining competences, responsibilities, regulation, and control: the General Tourism Law [Lei Geral do Turismo] no. 11,771, which provides for the National Tourism Policy [Política Nacional de Turismo] (Brasil, 2008). Despite the important institution of the regulatory framework for the activity in legal form with a specific law for the sector, the main legacy of Lula government for Brazilian tourism was the pioneering creation, in 2003, of the Ministry of Tourism (MTur).
45As a direct administration body, the activity would achieve prerogatives with its own ministry and exclusive budget, directed to manage plans and programs, in addition to being able to articulate directly with other ministries and governments at the state and municipal levels (Henz et. al., 2010).
- 3 EMBRATUR, originally created as the Brazilian Tourism Company [Empresa Brasileira de Turismo] in 19 (...)
46The creation of the ministry also represented the rescue of the postulates of control by the State since it was assigned the tasks of regulation and standardization. In this context, the Brazilian Institute of Tourism [Instituto Brasileiro de Turismo] (EMBRATUR)3 was removed from its former functions to assume only those of carrying out the activities of promotion, marketing, and support for the commercialization of the tourist destination Brazil internationally, in order that issues concerning political and administrative decisions were a responsibility of the new ministry created (Santos, 2017). The creation of MTur and the new functions assigned to EMBRATUR undeniably pointed to new horizons in tourism planning and management within the federal/national public sector.
47However, despite representing the special focus of the federal sphere given to the activity and signifying a considerable advance for the sector, the recently inaugurated MTur, while outlining new actions and incentive strategies for Brazilian tourism, also continued to guide public tourism policies based on old guidelines from governments and, consequently, of the neoliberal paradigm. This became evident with the investigation of the national tourism plans launched, which, without transposing to the reading of the tourism that had been built over the previous governments, continued to propagate the tourist activity as an important business.
48In addition, the plans demonstrate the intention to reduce regional inequalities by generating employment and income by attracting foreign investment, stimulating competitiveness between destinations, increasing the share of tourism in the national economic indexes, and promoting the decentralization in the management of the activity in the country (Brasil, 2003; Brasil, 2007).
49However, Becker (2001) already warned that, although there have been intense political struggles for the end of the authoritarian regime and the centralism, on the other hand, there must be some caution regarding the risks of dilution of power in an unregulated decentralization stimulating aggressive competition between places. According to the author, it is up to the federal level to regulate the disputes that occur between the States, especially in the claim of resources, but it does not occur. It goes in the opposite direction by encouraging the practice of a competitive game between destinations and cities, typically neoliberal.
50On the other hand, innovative approaches have been stimulated in the field of tourism policies since 2003, although with little success and implementation. The premises of social inclusion with incentives for domestic tourism and the inclusion of classes with lower purchasing power in tourism practices, stimulation of endogenous development and local development based on the pillars of sustainability are highlighted (Ramos, 2010).
51The demonstration of the political direction that would be given to tourism from Lula government began to be outlined when the MTur launched a new National Tourism Plan 2003-2007 (Brasil, 2003). The plan proposed that the planning and management of tourism in Brazil should be based on the principles of ethics, sustainability, reduction of inequalities, and the generation and distribution of employment and income. In addition to the economic appeal regarding the creation of a quality Brazilian tourism product and the stimulation of its consumption in the national and international markets (Candiotto and Bonetti, 2015).
52Following the premises proposed by the PNT, the Tourism Regionalization Program – Brazilian Itineraries [Programa de Regionalização do Turismo - Roteiros do Brasil] (PRT) was also launched in 2004, to plan and order the tourist offer through, above all, the elaboration of tourist routes and itineraries. The PRT changed the scale of municipalization from the National Program for the Municipalization of Tourism [Programa Nacional de Municipalização do Turismo] (PNMT), created in the 1990s, to a regional panorama, as a strategy for planning and management, promotion, and commercialization, aiming at and proposing to expand the actions that were previously centred at the municipal level to regions that would be created and classified as tourist ones (Candiotto and Bonetti, 2015).
53Although the program is aimed at the regional scale, the defence of decentralization in tourism management continued to be emphasized in the PRT as well. PRT prolonged the problems in the management methodology that had been occurring since the PNMT, linked to the mechanical and random character that disregarded the specificities of each reality in the applications of the propositions contained in the program (Cavalcanti and Hora, 2002). Ramos (2010) criticizes the direction of the MTur towards regionalization by pointing out the problem of continuing to defend the institution of local governance through participatory management, since the political program ignore the complexity of the participation process.
54In addition to disregard the local desires and particularities about the elaboration of tourism products, as well as the development or not of tourism activity in the territories, "[...] the discourse of the Ministry of Tourism's political programs completely ignores local power structures and, although it focuses on regionalization, emphasizing the specific characteristics of each region, it disregards diversity" (Ramos, 2010, p. 30).
55In this way, the PRT focused on the creation of tourism products based on the elaboration of routes and itineraries that appropriated the attractive elements of each location to monetize them in the tourist market, to add competitive advantages to each destination that made up a given tourist region.
56Correlated to the objectives of the National Tourism Plan [Plano Nacional de Turismo] (PNT), in short, aimed to attract domestic and foreign tourists to the new formatted products to increase the production of foreign exchange, illuminating the economic facet of tourism as a priority in the management strategies outlined for the development of tourism activity in the country. Therefore, like the PNT, the PRT also presents itself as a policy concatenated with the tendencies of neoliberalization of tourism.
57In Lula's da Silva next term (2007-2011), the second National Tourism Plan (PNT 2007-2010) (Brasil, 2007) was published, linked, and integrated into the Growth Acceleration Program [Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento] (PAC) through the rhetoric "all Brazilians can benefit from the practice of the activity, whether as a tourist, or as a worker, service provider, businessman, among others" (Santos, 2017, p. 107, translation by the authors).
58The proposal of this PNT was more discursively linked to the promotion of social inclusion by intending to socialize the tourism practice with the increase of domestic tourism in production and consumption. However, there is a continuity of old guidelines based on concerns about economic factors, such as the stimulation of competitiveness through the generation of employment and income and the improvement of the quality and diversification of the tourism product. In spite of that, it is evident that there is a simplification of the proposed solution to the issue of social exclusion that did not consider the complexity of the concept that goes beyond economic terms and the precarious insertion of individuals in the productive market of tourism.
59Although present in the discourses of tourism policy, the premise of increased travel by the popular classes, as a form of social inclusion, was much more materialized due to the scenario of socioeconomic prosperity as a result of the improvement in income and increased employment in the macroeconomic scenario, than from specific actions arising from the national tourism plans. Nevertheless, despite the weaknesses and inefficiency of plans in the emphasis on the social function of tourism, in this period (2003-2011), new scenarios were consolidated in the planning and public management of tourism with the expansion, connection, and continuity of policies aimed at the sector. In addition, although insufficiently and in a precarious way, the tourism as a social practice was illuminated by these policies through the proposition of integration of the less favoured classes into the practices related to travel.
60This perspective differs significantly from the neoliberal model followed and applied in the tourism activity of the 1990s, reproduced in policies concatenated exclusively to the interests of the market, which, in turn, was focused on the classes with greater purchasing power as the target audience of the marketing strategies, making the tourist practice elitist and exclusive/exclusionary.
61As happened in the Lula da Silva government in several areas, as previously discussed in terms of the dichotomy between economic policies and social policies, the action focused on tourism is presented in a dubious and double way and reflects the contradictory and conflicting character of the confluence and simultaneity of two opposing paradigms in a single government: neoliberalism and neodevelopmentalism.
62In this way, tourism policies are influenced by both perspectives: sometimes they are presented with neoliberal inclinations, with the unrestricted defence of tourism activity as an important sector for national economic growth with the principles of competition and decentralization, sometimes with neodevelopmentalist tones, with actions and perspectives of social inclusion via travels, the tourism appears as a strategy of local development. In other words, it is evident that there is an attempt to balance tourism as a tool for national economic development along the lines of capital, while, at the same time that it is aligned with the attempt at small-scale social equity.
63The "Brazilian neodevelopmentalism" created governance devices in tourism marked by the logic of co-production of policies and operationalization by regional/local agents through public-private partnerships to execute the role of the State. The model imposes neoliberal tools by offering, as a counterpart to the capital market and large tourism operating groups, state facilitation action, commodification of nature, and opportunity for the insertion of international capital controlling infrastructures and strategic networks to enable the development of tourism activity.
64The configuration raises questions about the developments and substantial changes operated by these policies, in the sense of presenting an inclusive socioeconomic and spatially distributed or maintaining the concentrating character of tourism activity perspective. The reality only points to the increase of the "war of places" between the consolidated destinations, which have really expanded and diversified their offer, and the embryonic destinations, emerged as "islands of prosperity" mainly belonging to international capital that has inserted a double and contradictory rhetoric of "development" by directly affecting the commodification of nature and creation of public spatial infrastructures.
65Although these premises around tourism growth appear as ready-made recipes for regional or even national development, the implacable "invisible hand" of neoliberal capitalism reigns by expanding new forms of "unequal geographical developments" through successive deregulations and flexibilizations of rules, such as environmental laws and deregulation of air traffic.
66In this sense, in the two Lula da Silva administrations (2003-2011), the dual perspective of neodevelopmentalism and the maintenance of neoliberalism wove the tangled profile of the programs and plans put into practice in the Brazilian development agenda. The strategic direction of these policies confirms the maintenance of neoliberalism's assumptions about tourism activity in Brazil, since it maintains the status quo among the owners of the means of production (tourism corporations), while pointing to the unfinished expectations of self-sufficiency of supposedly sustainable communities, which were generated by neodevelopmentalist initiatives.
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