Under the convenient argument that tourism is the least bad of development’s evils, its promotion is increasingly gaining ground in every corner of Mexico that remains unexploited. The “attraction” may be archaeological, scenic, based on traditional crafts, or centered on gastronomy or hospitality. The plague of “Magical Towns,” unleashed by the PAN’s neoliberalism in 2001 and fostered by subsequent governments, disguises the national landscape with “typical” backdrops that serve as irresistible hooks for consumerism. Under the guise of benefits for the entire population, profits are always concentrated in the hands of a few companies and landowners—a dream come true for “soft” capitalism, which is nonetheless destructive sooner or later.
While setting aside the experiences of community-based ecotourism and cases of sovereign land management in certain regions of Oaxaca, Chiapas, or Puebla, where the land is shared with sensitive visitors, tourism must be counted among the scourges of contemporary capitalist extractivism, to the extent that it serves as a Trojan horse for land appropriation, the dispossession of its inhabitants, and their eventual displacement or assimilation—two forms of genocide administered in small doses.
Around 1970, Mexico consisted of “29 states, two territories, and the Federal District,” according to the mantra of school geography. That changed during the administration of Luis Echeverría, when the two “territories”—which had until then been administered by the federal government—were recognized as states. Thus, the PRI created new electoral arenas entirely to its own advantage. From the outset, Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur were defined as “tourism-oriented” states—seaside and beach destinations, prime targets for real estate speculation. Thanks to the Agrarian Reform resulting from the Revolution, there were at that time a significant number of campesino ejidos in both states, which in the case of Quintana Roo were predominantly Mayan. From that point on, plans were made for the massive business venture that would involve expropriating thousands of hectares to build hotel zones and dollar-based consumer areas, as well as housing developments for migrant workers.
The GeoComunes organization recently released a study on these cases, the introduction to which Ojarasca publishes on page 7. The document reports that “between 1930 and 1973, before Quintana Roo became a federal state, 158 ejidos were created for campesinos who declared that they made their living from the forest, harvesting chicle, chicozapote, and resins from jungle trees. The land allotments for these ejidos tended to be larger precisely because of their forestry-based nature, giving rise to particularly large ejidos in the 1930s. These ejidos were tasked with the conservation, restoration, propagation, and exploitation of their forests and woodlands” (https://geocomunes.org/Analisis_PDF/GeoComunes_2026_Apro_Prop-Soc_Turismo.pdf).
Despite the long coastline, “the lagoon system, mangroves, and karst depressions that abound along the southern coastline meant that few of the ejidos received coastal territories as part of their land allocations. Those that did were settled to the north of this territory, where some of the country’s few island ejidos were established, such as Cozumel (1945) and Holbox (1939). It was in this group of ejidos in the northern region that, from the late 1970s through the early 2000s, expropriation decrees were carried out, which were instrumental in initiating the development of the major tourist hubs of Cancún, Cozumel, Puerto Morelos, and Playa del Carmen.”
Regarding the second case, GeoComunes notes: “Before 1970, the territory of Baja California Sur had 44 ejidos, many of which had access to one or two coastlines. Baja California Sur is the state with the longest coastline in Mexico, and most of this coastline is collectively owned.” It was an unspoiled coastline, except for the city of La Paz. Today, BCS is the state with the highest proportion of agricultural communities with land-use conversion agreements; half of the 96 certified ejidos have had one or more of these agreements, and 549,839 hectares “have been converted (more than 99 percent of this area was converted from communal use to individual plots).”
The topographical peculiarities of the coastal agricultural landscapes determined their very origin as entities. This gave rise to the concrete monstrosity known as Cancún and the Los Cabos strip around San Lucas, where English is now the dominant language. Similar developments began in 1980 in Huatulco and along the coasts of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, and Oaxaca, where the sea became the most marketable feature of the landscape. Fishermen and farmers left, and in their place came international airports, ports for large cruise ships, private beaches, a voracious hotel infrastructure, intensive urbanization, and highways.
These are extreme cases of “beach tourism,” but the touristification of the territory continually paves the way for processes of displacement, dispossession, urbanization, industrialization, gentrification, or the environmental devastation caused by mining, megaprojects, and the growing privatization of water resources in nearly all states. The dispossession of communities—some of them ancestral—is a recurring pattern throughout the country.
Whether we like it or not, the status of “visitor” has disappeared. Today, wherever you go, you are a tourist and you’re caught up in the same consumerist grind. The phenomenon is global: Venice, Manhattan, the French Riviera and the Catalan Mediterranean, Greece (and soon, a “restored” Gaza?), the beaches of Thailand and the Caribbean, the islands of the South Pacific. It’s pointless to add “and so on.” Since history also sells, what is traditional is drifting further and further from tradition and becoming a pastiche tailored to the tastes of domestic tourists—and even more so, foreign tourists. The Guelaguetza is a prime example of the commercial co-optation of folklore and “the community”—natural, idealized, and privatized. The process of dispossession—driven by the convenience of capital and the urban population—advances relentlessly with the San Cristóbal de Las Casas–Palenque highway, without the consent (what consent?) of the Tsotsil, Tseltal, and Chole communities.
Gentrification is viewed as inevitable but tolerable—and even desirable—by organizations such as UN-Habitat, not to mention the World Bank. Accepted uncritically by governments of all ideologies, it serves as a catalyst for the influx of large amounts of national and international capital. Following this logic, “Magical Towns” (currently 177), gentrified neighborhoods in Mexico City, “beach destinations” wherever they may be, and, in reality, any place where the landscape can be sold off to the detriment of its residents (especially Indigenous peoples and peasants) and its natural resources, have proliferated.
Luis Alberto Salinas Arreortua, a researcher at the UNAM Institute of Geography, has explained: “Gentrification is a process of restructuring social relations in space. Sectors with greater economic capacity appropriate urban spaces that possess certain qualities—such as green spaces, prime locations, amenities, infrastructure, and cultural areas—which are highly sought after by real estate capital. In these areas, which were previously impoverished but had certain qualities, buildings are constructed for middle- and high-income residents. The original residents can no longer afford to rent there.”
The effects of touristification and gentrification are devastating in the medium and long term. On the Yucatán Peninsula, home to some of tourism’s biggest windfalls, the loss of the Mayan language is accelerating rapidly—reaching 60 percent in recent years—and it is already difficult to find Mayan speakers under the age of 30. Add to that the exodus from rural areas, drugs, prostitution, and the breakdown of the family.
Tourism has established itself as the “vanguard of progress” in Joseph Conrad’s ominous terms. In other words, it is the invasion of the most brutal form of colonialism.
Original text published by Hermann Bellinghausen in the Ojarasca Supplement of La Jornada Edition 352.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.