Creating Nature in the Yucatan Peninsula: Social Inequality and the Production of Eco‐Archaeological Parks

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the last several decades, scholars have reexamined the importance of spatiality to human life and argued that space produces and is produced by social relationships. This article adopts such a relational understanding of space to examine the production of eco‐archaeological tourist attractions in the eastern Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and beyond. Specifically, this article considers the common practice of declaring areas encompassing archaeological sites as nature parks or wildernesses. Because so many sites are currently located in areas that have been deemed natural, scholars cannot fully understand the contemporary production of archaeological space without examining the historic production of nature and wilderness. Using the Xcaret Eco‐Archaeological Park and the Otoch Ma'ax Yetel Kooh, this article shows that although the creation of archaeological nature parks frequently harms indigenous peoples through processes of spatial colonization and spatial commodification, the production of such spaces can also enable and empower local, marginalized groups. [wilderness, political authority social inequality, community archaeology, the Maya]

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