Holiday in Mexico

Critical Reflections on Tourism and Tourist Encounters

Dina Berger, Andrew Grant Wood, Dina Berger, Andrew Grant Wood, Gilbert M. Joseph, Emily S. Rosenberg

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780822345718, 9780822345541
• eBook ISBN: 9780822391265
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

With its archaeological sites, colonial architecture, pristine beaches, and alluring cities, Mexico has long been an attractive destination for travelers. The tourist industry ranks third in contributions to Mexico's gross domestic product and provides more than 5 percent of total employment nationwide. Holiday in Mexico takes a broad historical and geographical look at Mexico, covering tourist destinations from Tijuana to Acapulco and the development of tourism from the 1840s to the present day. Scholars in a variety of fields offer a complex and critical view of tourism in Mexico by examining its origins, promoters, and participants.

Essays feature research on prototourist American soldiers of the mid-nineteenth century, archaeologists who excavated Teotihuacán, business owners who marketed Carnival in Veracruz during the 1920s, American tourists in Mexico City who promoted goodwill during the Second World War, American retirees who settled San Miguel de Allende, restaurateurs who created an "authentic" cuisine of Central Mexico, indigenous market vendors of Oaxaca who shaped the local tourist identity, Mayan service workers who migrated to work in Cancun hotels, and local officials who vied to develop the next "it" spot in Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas. Including insightful studies on food, labor, art, diplomacy, business, and politics, this collection illuminates the many processes and individuals that constitute the tourism industry. Holiday in Mexico shows tourism to be a complicated set of interactions and outcomes that reveal much about the nature of economic, social, cultural, and environmental change in Greater Mexico over the past two centuries.

Contributors. Dina Berger, Andrea Boardman, Christina Bueno, M. Bianet Castellanos, Mary K. Coffey, Lisa Pinley Covert, Barbara Kastelein, Jeffrey Pilcher, Andrew Sackett, Alex Saragoza, Eric M. Schantz, Andrew Grant Wood

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Tourism Studies and the Tourism Dilemma
• The U.S.–Mexican War and the Beginnings of American Tourism in Mexico
• Teotihuacán: Showcase for the Centennial
• On the Selling of Rey Momo: Early Tourism and the Marketing of Carnival in Veracruz
• Goodwill Ambassadors on Holiday: Tourism, Diplomacy, and Mexico–U.S. Relations
• Behind the Noir Border: Tourism, the Vice Racket, and Power Relations in Baja California’s Border Zone, 1938–65
• Fun in Acapulco? The Politics of Development on the Mexican Riviera
• Colonial Outpost to Artists’ Mecca: Conflict and Collaboration in the Development of San Miguel de Allende’s Tourist Industry
• José Cuervo and the Gentrified Worm: Food, Drink, and the Touristic Consumption of Mexico
• Cancún and the Campo: Indigenous Migration and Tourism Development in the Yucatán Peninsula
• Marketing Mexico’s Great Masters: Folk Art Tourism and the Neoliberal Politics of Exhibition
• Golfing in the Desert: Los Cabos and Post-PRI Tourism in Mexico
• The Beach and Beyond: Observations from a Travel Writer on Dreams, Decadence, and Defense
• Conclusion: Should We Stay or Should We Go? Reflections on Tourism Past and Present
• Contributors
• Index