Current Issues in Tourism
Editor: C. Michael Hall (Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand) and Chris Cooper (Foundation Professor of Tourism, University of Queensland, Australia) Michael and Chris are joint editor of the book series Aspects of Tourism. Reviews Editor John Jenkins (University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia)
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Volume: 8 Number: 4 Page: 259–285
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Planned Tourism Development in Quintana Roo, Mexico: Engine for Regional Development or Prescription for Inequitable Growth?
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Rebecca Torres1 and Janet Momsen2
1Department of Geography, East Carolina University and 2Department of Human and Community Development, University of California at Davis
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In the 1960s the isolated tropical forest enclave of Quintana Roo was targeted by the Mexican Government to serve as the cornerstone for launching what is now considered to be one of Mexico’s most successful economic development strategies – Planned Tourism Development (PTD). This paper commences with a brief review of the role of state-driven PTD in Mexico’s national economic development agenda. Government discourse surrounding the Cancun project emphasised tourism as a mechanism for promoting ‘regional development’through creation of backward linkages to other economic sectors – notably agriculture and small industry – to benefit the region’s marginalised Mayan peasant population. Based on research in Quintana Roo, this paper contends that while PTD has generated profit for the Government, transnational corporations and entrepreneurial elites, it has failed to achieve backward linkages that may have improved conditions for the region’s impoverished rural population. Employing a case study approach, the paper illustrates the failure of PTD to stimulate balanced regional development, while analysing PTD’s role in reinforcing existing relations of domination and subordination to produce new patterns of uneven development and inequity within Quintana Roo.
Keywords: tourism, development, agriculture, Mexico, Cancun, Maya
© 2005 R. Torres & J. Momsen
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