My stepdad has been watching a lot of El Salvador vlogs which to no surprise are white youtubers getting access to our homelands while we aren't even able to go and reconnect (as CentAm twitter has expressed in the past) bc of finances or other reasons.

And I know it doesn't sit right with many of us bc these colonizers don't just have access to our homelands but often times the governments there intice these people to visit and popularize it which is very problematic in itself.

The main issue, I think, is that popularizing it (regardless of the intention) often comes with negative effects. These youtubers often exploit the local people for their videos (which often times you can VISIBLY see locals are not usually comfortable with),

narrow it down to their own experiences in our homelands and glamorize the natural beauty w/o focusing on day to day experiences of the people that ~actually~ live there. The issue definitely ties into tourism, which is a very harmful industry that again, is about exploiting-

land and the people which inhabit it. Tourism fuels environmental racism and degradation, exploits locals for their labor and gives nothing back to the communities which they profit from.

Whether these youtubers intend to or not, their videos are harmful bc they encourage others like themselves, with no ties to our homelands to visit. Often ignoring the daily struggles of those they're infringing upon and using the "friends" they make as props for their videos

- to make their videos "authentic"

I gtg for now but later I'll be linking actual Salvadoran youtubers you can support and not some hippie dippie white folk using our motherlands to find themselves

If that's something yall are interested in

okay, so bare with me, this is going to be a slow process

To start off this thread is Iván, a young Salvadoran youtuber that creates hilarious content. I'm on my second video and this dude has me cackling! Ya'll should check him out