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In addition to selling handicrafts to tourists visiting a Mbya community during an organized tour or on their own, Mbya artisans and their families can sell handmade items crafted from rainforest resources to tourists at the Iguazú National Park. Four Mbya communities in northern Misiones Province: Guapoy, Kaagui Porá, Yryapú, and Fortin Mbororé have a contractual agreement with the Argentine National Park service to sell handicrafts within the park. Because of the physical distance of their villages to the national park, artisans from Guapoy and Kaagui Porá usually stay with kin in either Yryapú or Fortin Mbororé, or they sell their handicrafts to buyers in Yryapú or Fortin Mbororé to be resold at the park.
For many years, tourists had a rich opportunity to interact with Mbya men and women who were selling their crafts from blankets along the edge of the walkways inside the park entrance. Tourists who were walking by could look over the merchandise, chat with the sellers, negotiate prices, and sometimes even observe artisans making products. Often the selling process involved several families members, and even nearby vendors when the actual seller did not have the appropriate change or directed tourists to where a sought-after item was located. All of this was conducted in an atmosphere of lively conversation, gesturing, and questions and answers about the items and how they were crafted.
While this arrangement provided an informal atmosphere for tourists to scan the merchandise on display and for Mbya people to sell their goods, neither the Mbya artisans and vendors or their handicrafts had any protection from the hot rainforest sun or from sudden intense downpours. In April 2009 the national park service built a large kiosk to house the vendors and their products in the central market area of the park. The roofed kiosk provides Mbya vendors with protection from the elements and locked compartments for storing their merchandise overnight, which previously had to be transported to the park on a daily basis. However, now the vendors must either stand throughout the day or sit on the concrete floor, out of sight of the tourists walking by.
Only twenty vendors are allowed to sell daily in the kiosk, eliminating many families from working together and interacting informally with tourists, and possibly reducing income to many families. The determination of the vendors who will work each day is left to each of the four communities, while craftsman permits, often to a husband and wife, are issued by a park service representative.
The kiosk has also led to a formalization of the buying-selling atmosphere and the interactions between artisan and customer. In the past conversations between tourists and vendors or artisans led to changes in the handicrafts that were made, especially in making religious items like necklaces with Christian crosses, carving a wide variety of animals in different sizes, and using colors on baskets and carvings that are not found in the items that the Mbya use themselves. With the exception of baskets and jewelry, many of the items for sale anymore are not part of the Mbya culture and are crafted strictly for tourist consumption. The dynamics of these informal conversations offer two salient examples of how culture and tourism interact. First, the artistic culture of the Mbya has been continuously shaped by the requests of tourists. Secondly, the variety of handicrafts for sale shows that Mbya artisans are sensitive to the market value of their handicrafts and have shaped their wares to be more attractive to buyers. Unfortunately the kiosk built in 2009 has diminished the ability of both vendors and buyers to engage in this type of informal “cultural negotiation.”