The Governance System of Rural Tourism in the Guanentá Province, Santander: Cultural and Political Transformations

Abstract

Rural tourism impacts more than just the political and socio-economic dimensions of rural regions. Introduced into the Guanenta Province in Colombia, rural tourism is a new function of the region that can be understood as resulting from planning efforts, put forth by the system of governance and taken up by the regional culture, in a long-term and cumulative process. This dynamic leads to a set of transformations for its implementation and consolidation, which reconfigure the spatial structure in the region. Our understanding of this process helps to explain the dynamics of regional construction over the course of the last decade.