Mexico's Mayans the Last to Benefit from Tourism David Dudenhoefer - Indian Country Today
go to original September 13, 2013

The ancient city of Tulum, on Mexico's Caribbean Coast, was part of a Mayan trade route 800 years ago. (David Dudenhoefer)

More than a thousand years ago, Mexico’s Caribbean coast was an important point on the Mayan maritime trade route between the Yucatan Peninsula and Central America. It is now Mexico’s top tourist destination, with more than eight million visitors arriving each year to enjoy its beaches, coral reefs and archaeological sites. Yet while many resorts and restaurants have “Maya” in their names, and the coast south of Cancun has been dubbed the “Riviera Maya,” most of the region’s Mayans have barely benefited from the tourism boom.

There are approximately 200,000 Mayans in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, which comprises the country’s Caribbean coast, but most of them live in towns scattered across the peninsula’s forested interior – a world apart from the resorts and beach towns. Whereas the hotels, bars and restaurants near the coastal ruins of Tulum offer WiFi and cable TV, and English is spoken as commonly as Spanish, a short drive inland are Mayan towns where most people still speak Yucateca Maya, the native language, and continue such ancestral traditions as holding ceremonies before planting and harvesting their milpas (mixed farm plots of corn, squash, beans, chiles and other crops).

Marcelo Jimenez, who heads Quintana Roo’s Popular Culture Office, observed that while tourists flock to Tulum, Coba, Chichen Itza and other ancient Mayan sites, few of them know or care about the region’s contemporary Mayan culture.

“Nobody wants to talk about the living Mayans, just the dead ones,” Jimenez said. “We remain invisible.”

Read the rest at Indian Country Today

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!