From religious tourism to nostalgic pilgrimages. Reflections from Mexico

ABSTRACT

By exploring the origin, motivation, and behaviour of visitors to the Saint Francis celebration in Real de Catorce (Mexico), this article exposes the link between religious tourism and nostalgic tourism in the case of regional migrants. The methodology was designed to use triangulation of three methods: questionnaires, informal conversational interviews, and direct observation. The results reveal that the celebration has strong family-tradition content. In this pilgrimage, religious faith coexists with longing and the search for identity. Religious tourism blends with nostalgic tourism. This becomes evident in the responses about travel motives and also in the origin of the journey, the frequency of the visits, and the kind of activities in which visitors engage. The visitors tend to come from the main destinations of past migrants from Real de Catorce. For them, a religious festival is a good excuse to embark on a recreational tour legitimated by the idea of family union and devotional obligations. By travelling to the festival, devotees comply with religious obligations, connect with family origins and enjoy recreation. This innovative study of religious and return tourism on a relatively regional scale shows that nostalgia is not associated exclusively with international migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Pilgrims
• immigration
• root tourism
• nostalgic tourism
• Real de catorce

Acknowledgement

The authors want to thank the students who supported fieldwork in 2016 and 2019: Celeste Rosete, Álvaro Díaz, Marco Barriga, Mariana Vázquez, Erandi Solís, Itzel Rojas, Ulises Antonio, Benjamín Torres y Sara Hernández.

We are grateful to Ann Grant for the careful review of the final manuscript. Our acknowledgment to Arturo López Rodríguez for the cartographic edition. The first authors thanks DGAPA-PAPIIT-UNAM for the support through the IN302619 project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This comprises the municipalities of Apodaca, Cadereyta Jimenez, El Carmen, Garcia, San Pedro Garza García, General Escobedo, Guadalupe, Juárez, Monterrey, Salinas Victoria, San Nicolás de los Garza, Santa Catarina, and Santiago; San Luis Potosí M.A., by the city of San Luis Potosí and Soledad de Graciano Sánchez; and Saltillo M.A. by Arteaga, Saltillo and Ramos Arizpe.

2 Originally in Spanish, and here in translation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [Grant number: PAPIIT-IN302619].

Notes on contributors

Ilia Alvarado-Sizzo

Ilia Alvarado-Sizzo is a researcher at Institute of Geography of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her research interests are territory and tourism, cultural tourism, image and tourism, heritage and society. She is leading the research group “Space, culture and tourism”.

Carmen Mínguez

Carmen Mínguez is an Associate Professor in Geography at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research examines the relationships and the interdependencies between tourism and historic cities, specifically focusing on how to improve cultural heritage and functionally revitalize historic centers and monumental areas of cities. She is a member of the “Tourism, heritage and development” research group.