'Thanks God, this is not Cancun!' Alternative tourism imaginaries in Yucatan (Mexico)

摘要

This paper analyses the role of tourism imaginaries as generative social practices in the production of places as tourist places. This will be accomplished through an ethnographical analysis detailing the production of two distinct alternative tourist imaginaries in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). Firstly, this paper will explore how the ecotourist imaginary of a 'pristine natural resort' is performed at the Biosphere Reserve Ria Celestun through very specific tourism practices that veil other tourist uses and alternative imaginaries of the place. Secondly, it will explore how the tourist imaginary of a 'golden past' and a 'taste of luxury' at Hacienda Temozon Sur is performed through various highly selective material arrangements and practices that veil contemporary social inequalities as well as a problematic past. The detailed analysis of these processes will reveal these alternative tourism imaginaries as powerful forces in the reproduction of contemporary patterns of spatial segregation, social marginalization, and uneven development in the Yucatan Peninsula.