About

Project Background

In December 2023, portions of the 1,525 kilometer high-speed train project, the Maya Train, began operating, connecting key tourist sites in the Mexican states of Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Campeche, and Chiapas; this project will ultimately attract up to three million tourists. Understanding how mega-development projects like the Maya Train will transform Indigenous social relations and cultural heritage is urgent because Indigenous communities do not often have a voice among the government organizations organizing and advocating for megadevelopment projects. Indigenous communities worldwide are grappling with similar challenges. 

Indigenous Mobilities, Tourism, and Racial Capitalism will take a humanities-based approach to responding to these challenges. The humanities can serve as a powerful advocate for providing Indigenous communities with equitable access to resources and be a creative tool in generating solutions for the potential pitfalls and social dilemmas caused by the imposition of development projects.

A principal goal of this interdisciplinary institute will be to center Indigenous experiences with tourism economies and racial capitalism, a move that is essential for understanding the lived experience of contemporary Indigenous communities and that aligns with decolonial approaches advocated by Indigenous scholars. Through an inclusive collaborative approach that foregrounds Indigenous ways of knowing, storytelling, language revitalization, the arts, and digital humanities, participants will critically engage with the humanistic dimensions of tourism and consider the social, cultural, political, and ecological ramifications of this type of development model.

Indigenous Mobilities, Tourism, and Racial Capitalism is a Global Humanities Institute sponsored by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes and the Mellon Foundation.

Guiding Questions

  • What are the pressing concerns that Indigenous communities have regarding tourism and mega-development projects?
  • How has this played out in different local contexts and on the land itself?
  • What are strategies for centering Indigenous experiences and demands in the face of megadevelopment?
  • How can a humanities-centered approach help address these crises and imagine new futures?
  • Is it possible to construct futures in which Indigeneity, non-human relations, tourism, and mega-development goals align?

Leadership

  • Lead PI: Bianet Castellanos, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of American Studies and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota
  • Yadira Cabarello, Program Manager of the Conflucenter at the University of Arizona
  • Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, Associate Professor of Communication and Co-Director of the Nature, Space, Politics group at University of California San Diego and member of the Seminario Permanente Turismo, globalización y sociedades locales at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán
  • Javier Duran, Professor of Latin-American and Border Studies and founding director of the Conflucenter, University of Arizona
  • Samuel Jouault, Full professor of the Unit of Social Projects at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatan and associate of the Center of Mexican and Centroamerican Studies
  • Kylie Message-Jones, Professor of Public Humanities and Director of the Humanities Research Centre at Australian National University
  • Yujie Zhu, Associate Professor at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies and an Associate Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at Australian National University 

Partners

Collaborators