Ethnic travellers, exotic gestures, and sporadic encounters: The Mayan tours in los altos de chiapas

Abstract

This work reflects on the tourist/host interaction in ethnic tours promoted in the region Altos Tsotsil-Tseltal Chiapas, Mexico. Tourist agencies promote different encounters between tourists and the indigenous population where the former are expected to meet expectations of an exotic Other and the latter to conform with the imaginaries that circulate about them. By contrast, my interest here lies in analysing a tourist area in a constant state of construction, observing the indigenous role in three different places: an Indian market in San Cristobal de Las Casas, a church in San Juan Chamula and a Zinacantan weavers' house, where the social roles of visitor and host are defined in the interaction. The study indicates that such areas of tourist interaction are places where tourist imaginaries are reproduced and which, at the same time, become spaces of conquest and legitimation by the host population.