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What Kind of Island? Sociospatial Interventions and the Control of Leisure Activities in a Mexican Natural Protected Area

Fri, May 26, 11:00 to 12:15, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 2, Indigo Ballroom A

Abstract

This paper explores the socio-spatial interventions that arise from the tourism industry’s representations of a densely populated protected area as a pristine natural ecotourism resort. Building on an extensive ethnographical study of ecotourism development in the Mexican Biosphere Reserve Ria Celestun since the late 1990s, I show how global tourism consumption-oriented representations of the place as “a natural island” in both governmental tourism development plans and tourism brochures, are in stark contrast with regional representations and local experiences of the place as the “Afghanistan of the Maya Coast” due to the conflictive nature of social relations there. As I will show, tourism development representations produce an a-geographical and a-historical stage for global consumption that is largely disconnected from regional politics, and sociocultural and environmental circumstances of the place as one of the largest coastal fishing immigration hubs. This disconnection has informed the emergence of socio-spatial interventions around popular ecotourism attractions in the community’s beach and the estuary. These interventions are informal makeshift infrastructures controlled by organized native social collectives of boat tour guides and craftswomen which, despite governmental efforts and international regulations, ensure locals exclusive access and control to tourism spaces and revenues by means of staying still and physically proximate to tourists. For the rest of the community, these practices emphasize the experience of the place as “an abandoned island” and “border zone” when it comes to evaluating tourism as a meaningful development strategy.

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