Tourism governance in the Mayan territory of Quintana Roo, Mexico

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the tourism governance exercised by eight groups involved in the Association known as Caminos Sagrados de Maya Ka’an in the territory made up of the municipalities of Tulum, Felipe Carrillo Puerto and José María Morelos from the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The research carried out between the years 2017-2018 using participant observation, network analysis and the application of semi-structured interviews both to members of the Caminos Sagrados groups and to consultants, tour operators, non-governmental organizations, ejido authorities, communal, and governmental, revealed to us a complex associative system sustained in a re-constructed temporality of 80 years (1935-2019). A total of 114 actors support a multi-interactive network in which collaboration, cooperation, affiliation and conflict are the most representative links. Although in this governance scheme the seven groups that make up Caminos Sagrados are transcendental, especially Xyaat and Community Tours Sian Ka’an, the actor with the most intervention in the territory where the Caminos Sagrados Association operates is the non-governmental organization for environmental conservation Amigos of Sian Ka’an. However, the success of the governance articulated by this does not mean that other actors in historical marginalization (such as the Cruzo’ob Maya or the Orquídeas de Sian Ka’an, women who are members of Caminos Sagrados) will be able to empower themselves and manage their territories more equitably. Due to the above, the conclusions emphasize that governance is a perverse problem, which addresses complex, ambiguous realities and without a definitive solution (Rittel & Webber 1973), but in whose process the asymmetry of conditions for territorial decisions is hidden (Scott 2019), where the same adversity is promoted as a estrategy to re-create and resignify the territory.