Romanticizing the Stone: Cultural Tourism in 1930s Guatemala

Modern cultural tourism, tourist travel predicated on the cultural identities and practices of native peoples, has become an powerful global industry and often constitutes a significant percentage of the GDP of developing nations. Particularly in Guatemala, with its rich Mayan cultural heritage and countless stunning archaeological sites, proponents of cultural tourism aim to capitalize on existing national cultural and natural resources. The nature and purpose of cultural tourism, which includes ethno- and archaeo- tourism, has been discussed extensively in the field of cultural anthropology, such as it works that examine the anthropology of tourism. Additionally, cultural tourism has been considered in the field of international development and touted as an economic development strategy. However, the historical development of cultural tourism and its long-term economic repercussions for indigenous communities has received far less attention. My paper addresses the issue of both the local and national repercussions of the shift to cultural tourism in for the purposes of economic development in 1930s Guatemala. Specifically, I analyze historical tourist travels within Guatemala in order to show that tourists readily took advantage of newly developed national infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and hotels, but their travels took them to increasingly remote and underdeveloped Mayan communities and archaeological sites. Popular tourist circuits took travelers through picturesque Indian villages, which remained purposefully underdeveloped to preserve their timeless appearances. I argue that the promotion of Mayan people and their cultural sites as tourist attractions created a paradoxical situation that promoted national economic development while creating local underdevelopment. In conclusion, by closely examining the roots of cultural tourism in Guatemala today, this paper calls into question the potential of cultural tourism as a means for economic development and its role in the chronic underdevelopment of native communities in Guatemala.