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Selling Mexico: Race, Gender, and American Influence in Cancún, 1970-2000

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Selling Mexico: Race, Gender, and American Influence in Cancún, 1970-2000 © Copyright by Tracy A. Butler May, 2016 SELLING MEXICO: RACE, GENDER, AND AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN CANCÚN, 1970-2000 _______________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By Tracy A. Butler May, 2016 ii SELLING MEXICO: RACE, GENDER, AND AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN CANCÚN, 1970-2000 _________________________ Tracy A. Butler APPROVED: _________________________ Thomas F. O’Brien Ph.D. Committee Chair _________________________ John Mason Hart, Ph.D. _________________________ Susan Kellogg, Ph.D. _________________________ Jason Ruiz, Ph.D. American Studies, University of Notre Dame _________________________ Steven G. Craig, Ph.D. Interim Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of Economics iii SELLING MEXICO: RACE, GENDER, AND AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN CANCÚN, 1970-2000 _______________ An Abstract of a Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By Tracy A. Butler May, 2016 iv ABSTRACT Selling Mexico highlights the importance of Cancún, Mexico‘s top international tourism resort, in modern Mexican history. It promotes a deeper understanding of Mexico‘s social, economic, and cultural history in the late twentieth century. In particular, this study focuses on the rise of mass middle-class tourism American tourism to Mexico between 1970 and 2000. It closely examines Cancún‘s central role in buttressing Mexico to its status as a regional tourism pioneer in the latter half of the twentieth century. More broadly, it also illuminates Mexico‘s leadership in tourism among countries in the Global South. First, it focuses on early tourism projects in Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also highlights the changes in relations between Americans and Mexicans, in part as a result of the Good Neighbor Policy, during this period. The increased friendliness between Americans and Mexicans was important in Mexico‘s ability to garner more tourism from the U.S. during this period. As a result, Mexico became more dependent than before on American tourism and tailored its hospitality holdings to American tourists‘ market demands. This study also examines the role of ideologies in Mexico‘s state-led tourism development, including Pan Americanism, internationalism and nationalism. It studies Pan Americanism and internationalism in tourism promotions abroad and at home. It also looks at the state's attempts to foster pride in national patrimony in order to promote a unified national identity and encourage more Mexican nationals to travel throughout their nation. This coincided with the government‘s development of the ―social tourism‖ v sector in the 1970s. In this way, Selling Mexico expands the historical record on the state‘s post-revolutionary nation-building projects and promotes a re-examination of tourism in relation to nationalism and Mexico‘s cultural history in the latter half of the twentieth century. In addition, this study analyzes state-led tourism planning and its historical relationship to the development of Cancún. In that same vein, it illuminates the state‘s motivations for tourism development, interpreting it as a strategy to promote economic development as well as a method to quell leftist resistance movements which were surging in the Mexican countryside during the 1960s and 1970s. It also contextualizes mass tourism during the Jet Age. In addition, Selling Mexico analyzes the intersecting relationship between capitalism, race, class, and gender in tourism. It promotes a critical analysis of these connections by examining the impact of indigenous communal ejido land expropriations, city planning, beach privatization, hiring practices, and tourism promotions on the development of Cancún. Selling Mexico interprets Cancún as a cultural borderland. It closely studies the convergence of foreign and domestic people, culture, and capital in Cancún. It looks at Cancún‘s identity as a transnational ―no-place,‖ where culture and ―authenticity‖ take on new meanings in the age of globalization and free trade. It also interrogates the tensions between Mexican ownership and international enterprise, arguing that in the era of neoliberalism, they are often unified due to the growing presence of large and ever- expanding international partnerships and conglomerates. Finally, it examines the state‘s control of its international image abroad. In an industry susceptible to perceptions of public safety, image was considered to be essential to vi expanding tourism. Therefore, it carefully examines how the state dealt with international reports of drug trafficking, natural disasters, violence, and kidnapping in Mexico. As an in-depth study of Cancún, Selling Mexico uses tourism to more closely examine the intersections between race, class, gender, capitalism, culture, and international relations. vii Acknowledgements Page There are many people and institutions I would like to thank for their contributions to the completion of this project. First, this dissertation could not have been accomplished without the sacrifices and support of my family. I thank my parents for supporting me throughout my many years of study, believing in me, and instilling in me from a young age the personal qualities of determination and self-discipline. I owe my sisters special thanks for being my cheerleaders, encouraging me to challenge myself and follow my dreams. I especially appreciate the sacrifices made by husband and my son throughout the research and writing process. I owe a big thanks to the History Department at the University of Houston for their financial support of this project through the Murray Miller Dissertation Research Grants. Also, I want to thank the University of Houston Women‘s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Friends of Women‘s Studies, from whom I won several research travel grants. In addition, I thank the Clements Center for Southwest Studies and DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University for their financial support of this project. I also thank the many archivists at the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City), the Hemeroteca at Universidad Nacional Autónoma (UNAM, Mexico City), the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin), the Pan American World Airways Collection (University of Miami), the DeGolyer Library (Southern Methodist University), the Cancún Municipal Archive, the Universidad del Caribe Library (Cancún), the Universidad la Salle Library (Cancún), and Mark Young at the Hilton Hospitality Industry Archive (University of Houston) for their help in locating sources. Finally, I most appreciate the many rounds of feedback provided by my advisor, Dr. Thomas F. O‘Brien, as well as some input from committee members Dr. Susan Kellogg, Dr. John Mason Hart, and Dr. Jason Ruiz. I also thank other faculty members including Dr. Natalia Milanesio, Dr. Philip Howard, Dr. Kristin Wintersteen, and Dr. José Hernández, as well as my many colleagues in Latin American History, who helped immensely in providing feedback during the early stages of writing this dissertation. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction xi Chapter 1: Good Neighbors? U.S. Tourism in Mexico and Culture as Imperialism 1 Chapter 2: Tourism Nation 68 Chapter 3: Mexico Rising: State-Led Tourism and the Jet Age 145 Chapter 4: Race, Gender and the Commodification of Culture in Cancún 219 Chapter 5: The Construction of a ―No-Place:‖ Cancún as a Cultural Borderland 280 Conclusion 351 References 360 ix x Dedication Page This study is dedicated to the Mexican ejidatarios whose land was expropriated by the state for the purposes of tourism development. xi Introduction In the northeast tip of Mexico‘s Yucatán Peninsula lies Cancún, Mexico‘s most successful international tourism resort. Today, Cancún is incredibly important for Mexico‘s international tourism sector, as it produces one-third of Mexico‘s overall GDP garnered from tourism. In addition, it provides employment for eighty percent of its residents.1 Cancún is the realization of a government plan hatched in the 1970s to bring economic development to some of Mexico‘s most impoverished regions by constructing a series of five carefully designed tourism resorts from the ground up.2 Selling Mexico provides a useful framework for understanding how the government‘s role in tourism changed during this period in comparison to the past. In that same vein, it also examines the effects of those changes for state-led tourism as an economic development strategy in Cancún and Mexico as a whole. In addition, it looks at Mexico‘s role as a tourism pioneer in Latin America, and how Cancún‘s success buttressed its emerging reputation as a regional leader. Most other studies of tourism in Mexico focus on periods of time which precede the height of mass tourism around the world.3 Thus, an in-depth study of Cancún offers a 1 Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, ―Tourism Development, Architectures of Escape and the Passive Beloved in Contemporary Yucatán,‖ in Moral Encounters in Tourism (Current Developments in the Geographies of Leisure and Tourism), edited by Mary Mostafanezhad and Kevin Hannam, (Ashgate: 2014), 61. 2 Cancún is one of five planned tourism resorts which began in the 1970s. The others include Ixtapa- Zihuatanejo (Guerrero), Loreto (Baja California del Sur), Los
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