Author: Matilde CordobaAzcarate
E-mail:
Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
Institution: The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Title: “Thanks God, This is Not Cancun!”
Abstract:
“Thanks God, this is not Cancun!” is an expression commonly used in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) to mobilize alternative tourist imaginaries beyond the sun, sea and sand tourist imaginary epitomized by Cancun at the Caribbean coast.
This paper explores how the imaginary of an alternative Yucatan is materially accomplished in practice. It will argue that alternative tourism imaginaries are best understood as a heterogeneous combination of socio-material arrangements and performative practices. Moreover, it will contend that these arrangements and practices are deeply political processes which connect and enact certain values, desires, technologies and infrastructures at the cost of veiling others.
In order to illustrate this, the paper engages with ecotourism and hacienda tourism as the two most recent alternative tourism developments in Yucatan. Specifically, it will use an in-depth ethnographical approach to (1) explore how tourism mobilities at the Biosphere Reserve Ria Celestun perform the alternative ecotourist image of a ¨pristine natural resort¨ by veiling other parallel tourist uses and imaginaries of the place; and (2) analyze how the construction and maintenance of the image of a “golden past” and a “taste of luxury” for elite tourists at Hacienda Temozon Sur is dependent on a selective recovery of architectures, a specific ordering of nature and several practices devoted to pamper tourists senses that veil a problematic past as well as contemporary processes of spatial and social segregation.
Author Bio:
Matilde Córdoba Azcárate is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is also a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. Her current research focuses on tourism (im)mobilities and development policies in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). Maîtresse de conférences à l'Université Complutense de Madrid, Matilde Córdoba Azcárate est actuellement Investigatrice Postdoctorale Fullbright dans Progamme de Sciences de la Terre et Environnementales, au Graduate Center de la City University de New York. Ses recherches versent sur les (in)mobilités au tourisme et sur les politiques de développement au Yucatán (Mexique).