Andy Robinson

In these pages, we follow Andy Robinson through ten chilling travel chronicles across the Americas, uncovering the dark side of post-pandemic tourism—an industry increasingly dominated by national and multinational monopolies that control hotels, airlines, restaurant chains, and entertainment complexes, all while pushing local communities to the margins.

Taking off from Madrid’s dystopian mega-airport, Robinson visits iconic destinations in the United States and Latin America, revealing the disturbing realities hidden behind their brightly lit façades. All-inclusive luxury resorts built on the exploited labor—and sometimes the corpses—of workers in Cancún. The forced displacement of residents in the city of magical realism, Cartagena de Indias, and of the Mapuche community in Bariloche, all to make way for snow-loving tourists. The themed desert of Las Vegas. The Louis Vuitton luxury train to Machu Picchu that leaves Aymara vendors stranded on the platform. The culture wars at Disney World, including those waged by its overworked employees. The crumbling ruins of Amazon Towers deep in the Amazon jungle. And a host of other destinations better avoided, as the author boldly ventures into a new genre of “anti-travel literature.”

Written with biting black humor, Horror Tourism exposes the contradictions and inequalities of an industry we are all part of. After reading this book, no traveler will see tourism the same way again.

"With many years of journalistic experience, Robinson takes us not just on a sun-and-sand getaway, but into the darkest corners of the tourism industry—into the world of mass tourism that overwhelms cities and causes them to die of their own success."Alejandro Gutiérrez, former Proceso correspondent in Madrid

This book revisits the still-open veins of Latin America and the disasters, both environmental and human, caused by the scramble for resources in the early 21st century

In his classic Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano famously stated: “We Latin Americans are poor because the ground on which we tread is rich.” That book became the Bible for a generation of leftists who took power in Latin America in the early 21st century, from Lula da Silva to Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Hugo Chávez. What has  happened in those countries since then?. Where are raw materials finally  consumed in a world of conspicuous consumption and extreme inequality? And what can we learn from indigenous peoples to avoid environmental destruction and meet the existential challenge of climate change?

Andy Robinson revisits in first person some of the itineraries Galeano described fifty years ago, and offers a a collection of personal chronicles overflowing with humour and clarity. Each story begins with a raw material, such as oil, gold, avocado, diamond, soy, beef or iron. The exploitation of these materials illustrates the dilema which confronts the region and its progressive movements: how to generate equitable growth and so reduce poverty  and inequality while avoiding the curse of dependence on volatile and environmentally destructive raw materials. The book also sketches the relationship between 16 commodities and the coup d’etats, citizens’ rebellions and environmental crises in the recent history of Latin America.

“Five hundred years after the colonization of the Americas, the lure of new riches keeps open the veins through which coltan, oil, lithium, soy, niobium and avocados now flow ... Andy Robinson gives names and surnames to the new looters, the new holy cross, the new swords. And they are more frightening than the pirates who flew the skull and crossbones.” Juan Carlos Monedero

"A sobering and well-documented picture, shot through with Robinson’s caustic wit." Publishers Weekly

Fear, loathing, and hope in the United States… In the style of his admired gonzo journalism, Andy Robinson sets out to explore the new American dolocracy along the margins of a road that keeps splitting further apart the more he travels it. On one side: megalomaniac ostentation, golf courses, elite universities, and the young billionaires of Silicon Valley. On the other: waves of racist violence, a swelling prison population, undocumented immigrants, precarious workers, hurricanes, and droughts. A country where the middle class is on the verge of extinction and grotesque plutocrats have seized the reins of politics with the stroke of a checkbook.

A journey that veers off the path usually taken by mainstream media, the book exposes the dire consequences of that global crisis which turned the American Dream into a horrific nightmare. Yet, what stands out most in Robinson’s prose is his sense of humor, optimism, and irony—indispensable when describing events as outlandish as billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s visit to Spain—and which allows glimpses of hope to shine through in the voices of figures like Bill de Blasio and Bernie Sanders.

Written in the form of short chronicles, with the author immersing himself in the daily lives of ordinary people, the book not only plunges us into cities like New York, Detroit, and San Francisco—emblems of the starkest inequality—but also takes us to Vermont and its independence movement; to Albuquerque, the backdrop of Breaking Bad, where police snipers kill drug addicts and the homeless with impunity; and to Nogales and Tucson, home to a sprawling border-security and private-prison complex that thrives on an inexhaustible supply of deported immigrants.

The meetings of the World Economic Forum in the tiny Swiss town that inspired Thomas Mann are proof of the endemic ills of the system that governs us—or at least of its contradictions. An agora where cynicism dresses up as philanthropy and single-minded thinking as open debate. A place where Bono and Clinton take on the role of prophets, star journalists forget their commitment to the public, and academics lecture audiences on the benefits of capitalism and the evils of interventionism before bankers and businessmen from all over the world.

Reporter Andy Robinson moves through the labyrinthine convention center, the bars of the ski resort, and the traffic jams of limousines to uncover how the elite—the richest 1%—secure their future at the expense of the average citizen, pushing for policies that further widen income inequality and fuel the growth of their own wealth.

A Reporter in the Magic Mountain traces the history of Davos, tax havens, and the farce of philanthropy, and with biting irony denounces how plutocrats push the world downhill while flaunting their opulence from the privileged Alpine resort.