Indigenous tourism and cultural justice in a Tz’utujil Maya community, Guatemala

Abstract

Despite explicit links to justice issues inherent in indigenous rights movements, little research has been undertaken to understand Indigenous Tourism from a justice perspective. This study employs ethnographic interviewing, participant observation, and archival data to study tourism in the Tz’utujil Maya community of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. Findings emphasize emic views of local community members that offer valuable insights for understanding justice as it relates to Tz’utujil culture. We argue that the loss of Indigenous culture, ways of living, and ways of knowing would almost certainly be hastened if tourism and the associated cultural valuation were not present. Furthermore, direct participation in negotiation on tourism related matters is a key principle to facilitate autonomy, agency, fairness and equity in cultural justice. Authenticity, similarly, is a negotiated concept, requiring direct participation to facilitate fairness and equity in cultural tourism, as seen being practiced by the Tz’utujil people. The cultural justice framing here makes a valuable contribution to recent writing in tourism studies on indigenous environmental justice.

Keywords:

• Indigenous tourism
• authenticity
• agency
• cultural justice
• ethnography
• Guatemala

Acknowledgements

The authors thank The Pennsylvania State University’s Interinstitutional Center for Indigenous Knowledge, which supported this work with an M. G. Whiting Graduate Student Research Award, and The Penn State College of Health and Human Development, which supported this work with a Small Projects Grant. Additional thanks to many friends, informants, and colleagues in Santiago Atitlán and to the NC State University Ethnographic Field School.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Commonly known as Quetzaltenango, but often referred to in this part of Guatemala as Xela (pronounced SHAY-lah), a shortened version of its Indigenous name

2 Such inequities will only continue to be exacerbated as biodiversity loss, species extinction, global warming and its related impacts continue through the Anthropocene (Steffen et al., 2007).

3 Note that Jamal et al. (2010) also attempted to dissolve the artificial nature-culture divide by grappling with the notion of eco-cultural justice, drawing strongly on principles of environmental justice.

4 As Whyte (2010, p. xx) explains, “[t]he norm of direct participation requires accountability on the part of tourism operators and tourists in ways that are not covered by the norm of participative justice.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucy C. Harbor

Lucy C. Harbor received her MS in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management & the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment in 2018 from The Pennsylvania State University. She is interested in the relationship between natural resource extraction and ecotourism, especially among rural communities in Latin America working to promote positive local social, economic, and environmental outcomes.

Carter A. Hunt

Carter A. Hunt is an Associate Professor of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management, and Anthropology, at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences from Texas A&M University. He is an environmental anthropologist and conservation social scientist who researches the intersections of tourism, biodiversity conservation, sustainable community development in Latin America and beyond.