Global Tourism and the Production of Inequality: Transformations of the Mayan Society in Tulum, Mexico
Introduction
The Maya is one of the greatest civilizations known in human history. By the first millennium a.d., they had mounted extraordinary architectures and created calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writings. Their intensive agriculture, a slash and burn system called the Milpa, was the main means of survival to obtain grains and vegetables such as corn. (Re Cruz 2003, 491). Today, Maya descendants still reside in Tulum, Mexico, where once was their sea-trading nexus before the 15th century (Juárez 2002b, 34). These Mayas are legacies of the successful resistance against the government during the mid-19th century Caste War. It was a struggle for autonomy that left many heritages; most prominent were the miraculous crosses managed by some rebel factions, which served as guiding forces for the Maya in the conflicts. (Juárez 2002a, 114).
In the 1960s, the Mexican government started to implement tourism as a national project to boost economic development as recommended by the Inter-American Development Bank (López Santillán 2017, 725). Cancun, an island city near Tulum along the Riveria Maya, was selected to be Mexico’s major tourism site, which later became a popular destination with planned resorts starting in the 1970s (Torres 2002, 95). Since then, the tourism era has begun. Multinational capitalism started dominating the economic and cultural life of the northern zone of Quintana Roo, impacting the Tulum Mayas in diverse ways.
In this essay, I aim to surveil the shift in the Mayas’ socioeconomic and cultural environment due to the massive influx of tourists, immigrants, urban infrastructures, and a commodity-based economy. Through closer looks at these two façades of the Mayan society, inequality was visibly produced. Firstly, I argue that the economic transformations under globalization and neoliberalism were incubators of an inequitable tourism system that harmed Mayas’ interests, especially through the framing of a modern paradise. Then, I analyze the rise of inequality in the cultural aspect, particularly due to the post-Fordism tourism model and the local conflicts with immigrant workers. I also provide reasons behind Maya’s cultural marginalization in the local-foreign relationship using Frantz Fanon’s theory of colonization. Overall, this essay addresses the production of inequality in the Mayan society led by global tourism, under the lenses of socioeconomic policies and neocolonialism.
Globalization, Neoliberalism, and The Making of Modern Paradise
Tourism development in Cancun was initially intended to strengthen the economy, relieve the national debt burden, and alleviate the unemployment rate (Juárez 2002b, 34). However, under the interweaving forces of globalization and an increasingly neoliberal state, instead of benefitting the Mayan society, the image-making of Cancun as a modern paradise arguably produced a soil for expansions of inequalities and ostracism of the Mayan identity.
Although the Mayas were not strangers to the global economy, the tourism era completely altered their form of economy and mode of subsistence. Juárez’s fieldwork in Tulum in the 1990s noted the transformations of Maya’s working conditions during this transformation. Instead of relying solely on milpa productions for subsistence, Mayas were increasingly more aware of their apparent poverty and the need to earn money to survive (2002a, 119-120). It was a shift from “seeking food” to “seeking Money” (Collier 1990) due to the economic change from agricultural-centered to commodities centered. This change is brought about by the gate opening of the country for tourists and for cultures. As Mexico welcomed global tourists from the north who were primarily white, living life in booming capitalism and bathed in commodity consumption, the local economy also had to adapt to the ideals of postwar Fordism, which entailed standardized and mass-produced products for consumption (Harvey 1990, 135-136). Accordingly, the hotels were built to resemble the typical middle-class living arrangement of the northern guests. The tourism destinations also became flooded with products and services. This commodity-based culture is led by globalization (Kenny & Smillie, 238) which enabled the traveling of the absolute needs in having and spending money from the north to the south.
Under the globalized economy surrounding the Mayas, Juárez observed patterns of instabilities in their labour conditions as they moved away from agriculture. The participants in her study jumped from job to job, which often had dismal pay and required long hours and hard work; many were in the local resorts where the weekly salary was $65 with $20 of it covering merely transportation. (2002a, 120). With their socially and racially subordinated status, Mayas had minimal access to means of production or even private properties under intensified commodification, which rendered them in the lowest social strata, working the less-paid jobs.
Further speaking, Juárez’s fieldwork took place after Mexico transformed into a neoliberal state with flexible market laws and diminishing welfare spending (Harvey 2005, 29). Under the neoliberal logic, individual freedom is best guaranteed by a free market that prioritizes the interests of corporations and private property owners over proletariats (Harvey 2005, 7). With tourism along the Riveria Maya generating about one-third of the national tourism income (Pi-Sunyer and Thomas 2015, 91), the interests of the tourism businesses superseded those of the indigenous people under the apparatus. On the one hand, the large hospitality complexes built with recognition from the states needed a constant supply of cheap labor to maximize profitability, making the Mayas perfect candidates for relatively unskilled labor. On the other hand, the construction and maintenance of hotels also expropriated the natural resources of the local environment, impacting the bio-diversities and pushing Mayas away from a subsistence-based economy (Pi-Sunyer and Thomas 2015, 91-94). Notably, this dispossession of resources is also known to occur in the tourism building of Jalisco, a central Mexican state (López Santillán 2017, 726). Under this multiplicity of conundrums, a layered form of exploitation is created. Mayas not only work but also live to be taken advantage of by the tourism industry. Tourism first depleted the resources of Maya’s natural habitat, causing disruptions to their subsistence activities. It then profited from Maya’s manpower through gruesome terms of labour contracts. As a result, Mayas were losing their autonomy and forcibly lived under increasing commodification with generalized poverty and undignified labour.
Above all, Maya’s labour in tourism is visibly inferior due to their working environment, usually luxurious hotels full of patronizing gaze from the wealthy and white tourists. This inferiority is even more pronounced due to the placemaking of Cancun to be a modern paradise through a “development of romanticized place myths” (Lash & Urry 1994, 206). These “myths” promote tourist destinations through the circulation of signs in the age of globalization (Feldman 2011, 46). Cancun is geographically part of the Caribbean hospitality image of smiling white travelers being served by local people of color that signified convenience and pleasure. These visual images of tourist imaginaries are influential in building the fantasies of traveling (Salazar 2010). However, apparent dichotomies are reproduced in them: the wealthy vs. the poor and the colonizer vs. the colonized. They have close associations with the global wealth disparity between the north and the south and colonialism. To make matters worse, Mayas as indigenous groups, already less seen in national discourses, are even omitted in the creation of these inherently colonial global images that by nature dismiss indigenous existence in exotic destinations.
Last not but least, the power of these images in promoting tourism is directly linked to this purposeful omission of the harsh realities endured by the local workers (Feldman 2011, 47). Paradise needs to be a joyful place without coercion. The dispossessions of land, the long hours, and the bleak financial prospects must be carefully hidden to not spoil travelers’ fantasies. Still, it must be equipped with modern efficiencies under the neoliberal logic of profit-making, meaning capitalistic extractions of surplus values and oppression. In short, the modern paradise projects a delicate display of effortlessness that renders Mayans’ living situations irrelevant. In another saying, the inequalities faced by the Mayas must be deliberately overlooked to make the modern paradise possible. They were an inconvenience to paradise. To which I retort, closing one’s eyes upon others’ misery is arguably the most effective way to elicit true devastation.
Post-Fordism, Immigrate Relations, and Resistance
As tourism flourished since the 1970s in Quintana Roo, the original Fordist modes of standardized production were moving in a global trend towards more flexible and specialized post-Fordist modes (Harvey 1990). The increased individualization in production and consumption prompted new forms of tourism that included highly differentiated products such as “archeo-tourism” (Mowforth & Munt, 1998). Specifically, the Tulum’s ruins of sacred Mayan sites became popular among tourists (Juárez 2002b, 39). In addition, along with strong alliances between the Mexican government and the international developers for tourism, massive immigrants flooded the area to enrich the workforce, using cities like Tulum as “bedroom communities” for themselves (Juárez 2002b, 40-41). These newcomers occupy, control and develop the Mayan spaces, inciting local conflicts. In turn, this “traveling culture” out of the un-border-ed postmodern conditions (Said 1983) transformed Mayas’ lives. In a way, it generated a new form of exploitation, viewed by many indigenous as a “new form of sugar” (Rajotte 1987), euphemizing external neocolonial forces subjugating the localities.
First, the Maya-foreign relation was intensified during the promotion of archeo-tourism on Tulum ruins to cater to a post-Fordism consumption ideal of niche markets. The Maya attempted to keep visitors out of this archeological site throughout the 20th century but failed. The relationship then worsened when the government proposed a tourist market near the ruins for the Mayas to manage. Mayas rejected this plan out of reluctance to leave homes and milpas and lack of confidence in their skills, even though many later regretted not taking the opportunity and not requesting state assistance in this matter (Juárez 2002b, 45-46). In this case, the roles of the Maya were arguably accrediting authenticity and antiquity to the area and the traveler’s experience as part of archeo-tourism. The use and appropriations of the sites in the first place were done with little indigenous involvement or consent. The later intended incorporation of them is even less remediation-oriented than market-orientated. Specifically, the actions to include Maya in the later stages of this development project resembled traits of tokenism. It was a marketing gesture that fed on Maya’s imagined and symbolic identity. Instead of supporting them to learn the skills necessary to adapt to the changing economy, the state reduced Mayas to a mere symbol of tradition that radiates profitability. As newcomers took over the economic activities populated in archeo-tourism, Mayas were again left behind as a historical audience that simply witnessed the accumulation of wealth and status in their neighbor immigrants’ lives.
At the beginning of the immigration influx, Mayas had always avoided contact with tourists and immigrants. Over time, these immigrant workers and business owners became necessities to the local economy, therefore, unavoidable. A relationship between the Mayas and the newcomers started to develop with mutual acceptance and exclusion depending on the context. In the late 1970s, Catholic churches led by immigrants grew to be a threatening force that contested the autonomous Mayan religious practices. This conflict first manifested in marriages. For instance, Dona Felipa, a Mayan woman, was marrying Nacho, a Mexican immigrant road builder. Nacho’s family insisted on the more “sacred” Catholic marriage traditions as the bride’s family gladly accepted the bridewealth. Though accepted the arrangements, the bride's father still banned the wedding from taking place in the Iglesia Maya, a sacred center of the Maya community. Moreover, in public terrains, the religious conflict also intensified. In the 1980s, Roman Catholics completely abandoned inclusions of indigenous practices and began asserting power by building a church and a plaza as new town centers (Juárez 2002b, 49-54).
Maya’s defeat during this neo-colonization of their cultural territories could be interpreted with Fanon’s theory of colonialism, where decolonization can only succeed through violence of similar brutality but greater in force as the colonization power (1963). Newcomers occupied important cultural and religious spaces with unyielding attitudes and the commercial logic of modernity. Mayas, bounded by their constructed “illiteracy” on economic hegemonies, were comparatively weaker. This weakness does not refer to Maya’s agencies but to the fact that the resistance mainly took forms of protection and solidarity. It included religious revitalization of their traditions and redirection of revolutionary faith in the once victorious crosses of the Caste War. They were not straightforward retaliations of greater magnitude, such as violent occupations or direct cultural homogenizations; therefore, the strength only declined over time.
Nevertheless, the encounters and conflicts with immigrants undoubtedly further exiled the Mayas. The immigrants were commercialized and possessed the dominant ethnicity and religion. The Mayas were subsistence-based and ethnic and religious minorities. The differences in economic operations and cultural history had built barriers between them to form an “imagined community” (Anderson 2006) of common wishes and interests. However, instead of being granted legitimacy in keeping their cultural identities intact, Mayas were deprived control of their religious monuments and branded as irrelevancies of the past. Instead, they only mattered in making up the authenticity of archeo-tourism. Inequalities were undeniably present in this neocolonial process, as touristic developments and religious place-making robbed their rights of consent, eventually materializing a geographically and culturally marginalized position.
Conclusion
Today, the inequalities facing the Mayas are in a flux of multi-dimensional forces. A combined arrow of the hegemonic economy and cultural imperialism is shooting at them from all sides. For the Maya, tourism in the modern age secretly works as a neocolonial power, which hostilely takes over the land, blatantly blasts toil on their bodies, quietly drinks the blood of their culture, and disdainfully ostracizes their place in society. We see big fig leaves in the tourism-led transformations, such as the paradise image and archeo-tourism waging the flags of globalization and neoliberalism, trying to conceal the damage tourism had done to indigenous communities.
However, power within the Mayas is unignorable. Foucault’s analysis of power suggests it to be rather institutional than structural. It comes from everywhere and goes in infinite directions (1976). Power is not unidirectional; it does not only operate from the top down. Regardless of the convenience of industrialization or technological advancement, Mayas never stopped critiquing the poverty that modernity put them in (Juárez 2002a, 120). In essence, they kept writing their history in active voices regarding outside invasions, stressing their strong will in defense and ridding the outsiders of glory. Also, culture is non-static. Changes may occur, and only through changes can culture evolve. Mayan culture is not simply eroded, it will grow new stems in unexpected shapes. Let us not forget, that people, do make their own history from the bottom up. Nevertheless, to effectively alleviate the severe economic and social stratifications, instead of considering Mayas as unnecessary details that have only historical value, policymakers need to truly listen to the Mayas and understand their own interpretations of the changing grounds.
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