San Miguel de Allende: Mexicans, Foreigners, and the Making of a World Heritage Site (original) (raw)
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Heritage, national identity and tourism in post-revolutionary Mexico
Mexico’s post-revolutionary period (1920-1940) was characterised by the creation of a new national identity promoted by the State and the country’s intelligentsia as a way to unify the population. New definitions of what being Mexican meant were created through education and art. The country’s historical past, monuments and cultural diversity – ranging from pre-Hispanic archaeological sites or colonial architecture to Indigenous and Mestizo living traditions– were key elements in this process. Although much has been written about nationalist education and arts, another important component of this process (which has been generally overlooked) is tourism. Mexican tourism industry’s foundations were laid during this same period. With mostly American travelers in mind, tourism promoters highlighted Mexico’s many cultural and natural wonders as the main attractions, while also creating the necessary infrastructure –highways, hotels, restaurants, etc.– that facilitated leisure traveling. Notions of “heritage” were vital for the promotion of Mexico as a destination, so many developers became involved, supporting the government in ensuring archaeological sites and historical buildings were protected and accessible for visitors. My RMA thesis focuses on the relation between heritage and tourism in Mexico’s national identity building process. I analyse heritage discourses, images and the “tourist gaze” generated by the tourism industry in guides and brochures through a case study of the state of Morelos. My aim is to understand the processes through which the main stakeholders created and displayed notions of heritage in tandem, conflict and/or even opposition with new Mexican identities, which may be even still operating today. Paper presented at the SOJA Symposium in the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, May 18, 2018.
Mexico City's Zócalo: A History of a Constructed Spatial Identity
Routledge, UK, 2021
This book presents a case study of one of Latin America’s most important and symbolic spaces, the Zócalo in Mexico City, weaving together historic events and corresponding morphological changes in the urban environment. It poses questions about how the identity of a place emerges, how it evolves and, why does it change? Mexico City’s Zócalo: A History of a Constructed Spatial Identity utilizes the history of a specific place, the Zócalo (Plaza de la Constitución), to explain the emergence and evolution of Mexican identities over time. Starting from the pre-Hispanic period to present day, the work illustrates how the Zócalo reveals spatial manifestations as part of the larger socio-cultural zeitgeist. By focusing on the history of changes in spatial production – what Henri Lefebvre calls society’s "secretions" – Bross traces how cultural, social, economic, and political forces shaped the Zócalo’s spatial identity and, in turn, how the Zócalo shaped and fostered new identities in return. It will be a fascinating read for architectural and urban historians investigating Latin America.
PhD proposal for the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (LAS) in Paris in 2009. In enrolled as a graduate student there in January 2010. My original PhD project described here was an ethnographic research in which video would be used as a primary tool to analyze what the members of some Macehual Maya families of Quintana Roo, Mexico (i.e. descendants of those who fought the Caste War of Yucatan) make out of their local history and religious and ideological heritage, putting particular emphasis on how this perception shapes their identity (both individual and communal) and their relation with the surrounding landscape.
Polimorfo - the journal of ArqPoli - the School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, 2019
Desde la década de 1950 con el surgimiento y desarrollo de importantes proyectos económicos, el gobierno de Puerto Rico ha considerado el Viejo San Juan como un recurso importante para el desarrollo económico y el turismo. Este modelo tradicional ha propulsado una serie de problemas urbanos tales como el turismo masivo, gentrificación, desplazamiento de sus residentes fuera de la ciudad, y el deterioro rápido de su infraestructura histórica. La presente crisis económica, la deuda pública, las medidas de austeridad, sumado a las pérdidas significativas luego del paso del Huracán María, continúan contribuyendo a la explotación y mal manejo del patrimonio cultural de la histórica ciudad en nombre del desarrollo económico. Como los recursos naturales, el patrimonio cultural es un recurso finito, irremplazable y necesario para el carácter urbano y la sensibilidad de las sociedades. Al utilizar el Viejo San Juan como caso de estudio, este articulo presenta una mirada crítica de como los enfoques en el turismo, y la utilización del patrimonio construido como un recurso exclusivo de desarrollo económico tanto en el pasado como en el presente, ponen en riesgo el patrimonio cultural de la ciudad amenazando su carácter social, sentido de lugar e integridad del espacio urbano. Examinando las problemáticas actuales que enfrenta la ciudad y considerando soluciones alternativas, este escrito es una invitación a cuestionar los discursos establecidos que han privilegiado el desarrollo económico a expensas del silenciamiento sobre las implicaciones sociales y sus impactos en el patrimonio urbano. Este escrito es una propuesta para romper con las nociones impuestas y pensar en maneras alternativas de reconstruir nuestras comunidades, conservando nuestro patrimonio. Abstract Since several important economic projects in the 1950s, the govern¬ment of Puerto Rico has seen El Viejo San Juan as a significant asset for economic development and tourism. This traditional model has led to raising urban issues, such as mass tourism, gentrification, displacement, and rapid deterioration of the historic infrastructure, are amongst the most pressing problems that face the old city today. The islands’ economic depression, massive public debt, the austerity measures, and the significant financial losses after the devastation of Hurricane Maria continue to contribute to the exploitation and mismanagement of the historic city’s cultural heritage in the name of economic development. As with natural resources, cultural heritage is a finite resource, irreplaceable and necessary for the urban character and sensibility of societies. In examining Viejo San Juan as an example, this case study will look critically at how past and current approaches to tourism and using the built heritage as a resource only for economic development, poses a risk to cultural heritage threatening its social character, sense of place and the integrity of in an urban space. By examining current issues and considering alternative solutions, there is an invitation to question and challenge established discourses privileging economic development that silence the social implications and adverse impacts on the urban heritage. This essay is a proposition to go against the prevalent notions and think for alternative ways to rebuild our communities, preserving our heritage.
INTRODUCTION It is well-known that the Federal Government of the United States played and is still playing a considerable part in the heritagization of its territories and tourism development; therefore, this process was essentially based on Euro-American culture. Since the XXth c. and especially since the application of NAGPRA law (1990), a transition is noticeable between the times where American heritage emanated from a vision and a European governance, became at the time a worldwide model, and a more recent period where this management shows signs of evolution, the same way it changed in school history curriculums (Brun 2015), toward a management integrating more noticeable multicultural aspects, allowing native populations culturally affiliated to those heritage to influence the way these sites are presented to the public. Are we experiencing a new process of heritagization through the birth of new heritage values? This heritage construction extends beyond the heritage scenes of these National Parks and is affected by many other factors, ideological, historical, political, economic, memorial, but especially identity. Thus, each participant involved in this heritage construction as an actor or "supposed" actant (native), contributes to change the gaze upon the descendants of those sites, through this process of heritage. This study proposes to investigate whether these recent cultural changes, which seem to affect the Native American heritage of New Mexico and Colorado and by inference the culture transmitted by the National Park teams, can be detected in the “one day” visitors’ approach; however, this belief seems mainly sustained by tourism stakeholders - private actors with their own multiculturalism in New Mexico and visitor centers from cities adjacent to the parks, eager to feed the imaginary of tourists. In order to give an answer to this topic, I will summarize in the first and second parts the national and the local heritage processes since the creation of the National Park Service, as well as tourism development process on these territories during the same period, both responsible for establishing strong and persistent geographic imaginary; finally, a third chapter, exposing the results of my field research (PhD thesis), will analyze the meeting with the tourists from these parks and how they appropriate this heritage and Native American history to which it is linked. Through the examples of the National Parks of Chaco Culture, Aztec Ruins (New Mexico) & Mesa Verde (Colorado) will be exposed territorial dynamics since the origin of tourism in the south-west and how their accessibility and appropriation remain essential features in the imaginary of today's tourist.
Interrogating the Cultural Production of Mexico
2020
As part of a deconstruction of national identity, Jennifer Jolly, in her Creating Patzcuaro, Creating Mexico: Art, Tourism, and Nation Building under Lazaro Cardenas, analyzes the tourist town of Patzcuaro in the west-central Mexican state of Michoacan as a microcosm of cultural power in which tourism, art, history, and ethnicity were woven together under the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas del Rio (1934–40).