Abstract EN:

The relation of western world to the Amerindian otherness has since the first times of the conquesr of the "New World" created many controversies, and ambivalent attitudes in its respect. The theological, ideological and political speeches did not have rest to think the indianity through a pendular tendency, oscillating between rejection and fascination. Successively, destroyed, protected, assimilated, preserved, devalued or survalorized, the indianity never had the occasion to be defined by itself. These various attitudes proceed of the same ignorance with regard to the Amerindian since they were finally used only to satiate personal interests, of domination and subordination. Paradoxically, today fascination for the autochtony, the indianity, has an international amplitude, so much that it has become for many tourists an object of discovery. My choice to study a specific form of Mexican rural tourism, progressing between ethnotourism and mystical tourism, precisely shows my will to examine in a current way, the relations maintained by certain tourists with the Amerindian cultures. Although the tourist activity is generally regarded as synonym of acculturation for the local populations, this thesis defends the hypothesis according to which this relation with the otherness can be revealing a process of identification and reculturation for the travelling tourists. Taking as example the study of tourist activities in the natural and sacred Wirikuta reserve, located in the state of San Luis Potosi - Mexico, I could observe that the national and international tourists tried to approach the Amerindian otherness by the means of the practise of a modern shamanism. This neoshamanism, as a rebuilding of a shamanic universe sent to European imaginary, shows an original way to represent and think our relation with the indianity, while taking the place of the Amerindian shaman, the tourists postulate that the Amerindian otherness is in eveyone of us.