Tourism and Maya Identity: Being a Young Warrior in the 21st century

Abstract

In this article we analyze how youth from aMayan community in the state of Yucatán are inserted into tourism through the representation of their ethnic identity. This staging is associated to the advance of tourism in the Yucatan peninsula, which has implied a continuous touristification process of new territories. The representation of what being Mayan means is influenced by a series of external agents that promote an ethnicity tied to the exotic and the pristine. Definitely, the entire figurative process of identity generates that young Mayans must adapt themselves to the transformations of the rural environment and the constitution of new tourist niches that appertain to the neoliberal globalization process.