Thinking post-capitalist alternatives for tourism: Reflexions from the example of the Yucatan peninsula

Abstract

Using the example of the Yucatan Peninsula, this article questions what could be an emancipatory transformation of tourism from a post-capitalist perspective. Although in the last years alternative proposals to conventional tourism have multiplied, particularly in the field of social and solidarity economy, these initiatives represent a minority fraction of tourist activity and have not managed to transform the hegemonic tourism model in the region, which continues to be governed by the logic of neoliberal capitalism. Starting from this observation, the reflection shifts the focus from the question of «alternative tourism» to the need to think about alternative tourism policies, framed in a post-capitalist agenda. Returning to the reflection raised by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (1944), we insist on the necessary regulation of tourist activity and the need to remove it from market forces, both regarding labor question as land as housing issues. Analyzed from such a perspective, the example of the Mexican Caribbean acquires a paradigmatic character for thinking about current debates on the political economy of tourism.