Since its founding in 1970, millions of tourists have frequented Cancún. Subsequent resort towns have profited from Cancún's popularity. Even the height of the COVID-19 pandemic failed to disrupt the construction of Tren Maya, a federal megaproject designed to connect large swaths of the Mexican southeast. Amid these old and ongoing developments, anthropologist Matilde Córdoba Azcárate offers us a refreshing ethnography of tourism. Unlike previous studies of tourism and the Yucatán Peninsula, which have often juxtaposed Cancún and the countryside, Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power, and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán examines the region's local and global dynamics in tandem. As Córdoba Azcárate argues, tourism is an inescapable reality. Despite its social consequences, tourism ensnares locals through its “sacrificial logics” of “predation and provision” (pp. 18, 198). However challenging the labor conditions of the tourism industry may be, they are generally preferable to emigration. Tourism is thus here to stay.
Córdoba...
