Abstract

The tourist activity promoted in Gran Valparaiso has not achieved the expected redistribution of benefits; conversely, it has strengthened socio-territorial inequality by concentrating the profits generated in specific areas. In order to overcome this situation, the State and other social actors have found in the concept of sustainability a reference that seems to respond to new ways of tourism in a more responsible and ethical way. Through an analysis of statistical information and official documents on tourism activity, and interviews with social organizations and small businesses linked to tourism and urban problems, the way in which the concept of sustainability begins to be co-opted by "officials" discourses to optimize the tourism strategy used so far and, at the same time, it has become a unifying element of different tourism oppositions promoted by other social actors. The official and the opposing discourses show discrepancies in the understanding, use, appropriation, and resignification of sustainability, however, it is the social actors who carry out concrete actions through their initiatives in the search for a fairer city, integrated and supportive.