From Cancún to Chichén Itzá: Cultural Tourism and the Riviera Maya

In December 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office. Among his many campaign promises, he vowed to build the so-called Maya Train. If completed, this federal megaproject will connect the iconic resort town of Cancún to several archeological sites, including the ancestral Maya city of Chichén Itzá. Despite widespread opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups, the train is currently under construction. Yet, while many commentators have noted this problem, few have recognized that the controversy surrounding the Maya Train is part of a larger story.

Since its inception in the early 1970s, Cancún has served as Mexico’s most popular and profitable destination. Its appeal grew even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many US tourists flaunted inter/national protocols in pursuit of leisure. Perhaps that is hardly surprising. After all, Mexican developers initially conspired with international investors to expel the local Maya from Cancún. They then refashioned the island as an international tourist paradise. However, by the late 1980s, many tourists were bored. Craving something more “exotic,” they demanded to see Chichén Itzá. And thus, the Riviera Maya was born.

This paper weaves together the interrelated histories of Cancún, Chichén Itzá, and the Riviera Maya to help us understand the shifting meanings of “cultural tourism” in Mexico’s contemporary Yucatán Peninsula. Drawing on a combination of private papers, periodicals, and other sources, I argue that we should understand late twentieth-century Mexican archeology as part of a larger cultural and political project whose ramifications are still present today.