"Pro-Poor" Tourism in Nicaragua: A Case Study of the Telica Rota Natural Reserve

The following paper is an ethnographic study that was conducted over the course of eleven months while working in León, Nicaragua, for an international NGO. It adds to existing literature that illustrate the shortfalls of community-based tourism projects, particularly when multiple stakeholders are involved. It focuses its attention on the cultural misunderstandings between the NGO, municipal government, and a rural tourism cooperative regarding tourism development and land management. Furthermore, it highlights the cooperative’s efforts in maintaining its agency when it felt as though its interests were being ignored by organizations with greater social, political, and economic capital than they had.