Resumo: The paper begins by revising the point of view of community-based tourism as a mechanism to combat poverty among indigenous and peasant families. It continues by discussing the definition of poverty sustained by pro-poor tourism, which, among other things, presupposes a quantitatively and universally valid vision of the world, an etic perspective. Furthermore, said definition does not consider that poverty is a social construction that also involves qualitative aspects, such as the ideological elements inherent in its definition or the meanings underlying the point of view of people considered poor –an emic perspective. The predominant notion of poverty has left aside the multidimensional nature of this phenomena, as well as the need to study the dynamics that reproduce inequality and contribute to social exclusion, which does not allow us to understand why pro-poor community tourism fails to alleviate poverty.
