Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán by Matilde Córdoba Azcárate (review)

Reviewed by: Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán by Matilde Córdoba Azcárate Jayne Howell Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán. By Matilde Córdoba Azcárate. Berkeley: UC Press, 2022, p. 278, 29. 95. Matilde Córdoba Azcárate's brilliant ethnography explores the myriad ways that the "predatory" tourism industry has transformed Mexico's Yucatán peninsula over the last half century (13). Based on two decades of ethnographic field research (e. g. , participant observation, interviewing and conversations), she demonstrates throughout this engaging text why locals perceive themselves as "stuck with" tourism" (16) in a region that offered few economic alternatives to "make a buck" (3) following the collapse of the henequen industry in the 1960s. Her sophisticated theoretical framework integrates perspectives from anthropology and geography revolving around spatial, economic ecological, and cultural dimensions of this multifaceted phenomenon. Her convincing overarching argument contextualizes this study within the larger global discourse regarding tourism development and rich historical and ethnographic studies of the Yucatec Maya. She recognizes the benefits of tourism, including providing locals with opportunities for paid employment and expansion of the infrastructure (e. g. , improved roads, plumbing and systems, electricity grids, and communications systems). At the same time, she notes, the extractive nature of this process exploits landscapes and labor for profit (13), seemingly with no regard for the impact on the natural environment or residents' lives. The text marks an important departure from the common anthropological approach focused on a single community by providing a comprehensive regional perspective. As a talented ethnographer, she makes the text even more engaging by integrating sensitively drawn portraits of Maya workers she has met, beginning with four vignettes in the opening pages. These become a lens through which to view the lived experiences of residents of communities participating in different dimensions of the tourism process in the next four chapters. Cancún, the "engine" driving the tourism economy (30), offers a mass tourism experience to visitors seeking "sand, sea and sun" in all-inclusive resorts, where visitors' comfort is privileged over the needs of permanent residents. This latter point is underscored in the millions of dollars the government invested to reconstruct tourist areas following the devastation of Hurricanes Gilbert (1988) and Hilda (2005) while local residents, including resort employees who are mostly cityward migrants, were left without suitable housing, income, or access to basic resources (44). In Chapters Three though Five, Córdoba Azcárate explores the impacts of tourism in three smaller communities. Tensions arose in Celestún, which grew rapidly after becoming a "tourist hotspot" (80) after it was transformed into a Biosphere Reserve in 2000. As natural resources are the primary attraction in the first two chapters, Maya cultural heritage End Page 312 and culture are commodified in the two that follow. Indigenous workers at the Hacienda Tomozón Sur toil in the "servitude" reminiscent of the now-luxury hotel's former existence as a working henequen plantation. Here, demand for iconic guayabera shirts produced in Tekit have turned the community into a "pulverized maquiladora" (151) with residents engaged in different aspects of textile assembly, often at the expense of their health. Córdoba Azcárate impressively supports her argument that tourism benefits those with money through sensitively written examples that reinforce that workers' lived experiences include substandard wages and living conditions. She connects this pattern to historical patterns of Maya servitude, with indigenous workers toiling initially for Spanish setters and their descendants, and now for foreign visitors and Mexicans wealth-ier than themselves. This point is the basis of the strong concluding chapter, in which Córdoba Azcárate's probing analysis weaves together the threads that run throughout the text to reflect on the contradictions of tourism that lead to ambivalence among many who are dependent on it. gt Ultimately, readers are left with a sense that while there are Yucatecos who have reaped the riches of the tourist boom, doing so comes with sacrifices – including, for thousands, relocating from their villages to chase the tourism dollar. The latter is evident in attitudes toward the Tren Maya megaproject that is projected to increase the number. . .