Issues in measuring success in community-based Indigenous tourism: elites, kin groups, social capital, gender dynamics and income flows

Abstract

Tourism development is a key feature of the neoliberal economic development model. Through a mix of state and private investment, Indigenous communities in Mexico are encouraged to transform local cultural and environmental resources into tourist consumption sites. The process results in a shift toward reliance on tourism, in place of farming, leaving households with few alternative earning strategies amidst fluctuating tourist arrivals and income, confounding the relationship between tourism and sustainability and questioning the utility of tourism as a sustainable tool for development. This article analyses a community-based Indigenous tourism project in a rural Maya village in Mexico's Yucatan, and discusses strategies employed at household level to navigate the arrival of tourism. Funding agencies assessed this project based on a triple bottom line metric that accounts for ecological health, financial sustainability, and its relationship to local social capital; however, these fail to account for differences between local and non-local conceptions of authenticity, indigeneity, and success. From a social perspective, the project has exacerbated existing tensions and has arguably widened the gap between the politically and economically powerful and less powerful, marginalized families in the community. Questions about policy, governance systems, and elite domination and kin group control are raised.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous tourism
• community-based tourism development
• Maya
• household economic strategies

Acknowledgements

The author thanks residents of Ek'Balam who participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Christine E. Bose and Edna Acosta Initiatives for Women grant (2009), the American Philosophical Society's Lewis and Clark Exploration Grant (2010), the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies’ DeCormier Award (2010), and the David and Sally Jackman Endowment (2014).

Notes on contributors

Sarah R. Taylor

Sarah R. Taylor received her PhD in anthropology from the University at Albany, SUNY in 2012. She was an assistant professor of anthropology at Wichita State University in Kansas. As of Fall 2016, she is an assistant professor of Anthropology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her research began in the Maya village of Ek'Balam, Yucatan in 2004. She has spent more than 24 months conducting ethnographic research there. Her research interests include land use decisions made at the household level, participatory research design, and the shifting economic strategies employed by residents as they negotiate the arrival of tourism in their daily lives.