Narrative of the landscape of small towns and their representation for the imaginary of tourism

Abstract

The proposal developed in the text is to focus on the background of today’s small-town tourism. This background is occupied by the landscape, collected in a multitude of images ranging from the wide angle of the territory to the zoom of the picturesque corner, all render account of the warp on the horizon in sight. The analysis is based on Georg Simmel, who anticipated the Eurocentric vision of the landscape as a fringe of nature, leaving aside the view of the urban structure. Only that, in America, particularly in nineteenth-century Mexico, the landscape understood as a European one was built, as well as the fusion of the city and the natural environment, often referring to towns and small cities, even coexisting with technological intrusions. In the 21st century we witness the rebirth of this landscape, a common ingredient in the tourist imaginary that exhibits its attractions to occupy the void associated with contemporary metropolitan urbanization, in which the absence of security and citizen harmony is perceived and suffered. However, when exploring a sample of towns, we observed that the simulation of simplifying images of irretrievable realities in the interior of the territory postpones the experience of the wealth retained in the diversity of the bowels of the country.