This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney Library]

On: 18 May 2015, At: 07:57

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag20

Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space

in Mexico
a b
Rebecca Maria Torres & Janet D. Momsen
a
Department of Geography , East Carolina University , Davis
b
Department of Human & Community Development , University of California , Davis
Published online: 29 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: Rebecca Maria Torres & Janet D. Momsen (2005) Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in
Mexico, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95:2, 314-335, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00462.x

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00462.x

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the
Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for
any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of
the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist
Space in Mexico
Rebecca Maria Torres* and Janet D. Momsen**
*Department of Geography, East Carolina University
**Department of Human & Community Development, University of California, Davis

With Cancun, the site of the 2003 World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, being presented as a met-
aphor for the inequities purported to emerge from globalization, this is an opportune time to examine the resort
and its surrounding region as a product of transnational forces. Locals refer to Cancun as Gringolandia, a term
that reflects the circus-like spectacle of the overbuilt resort, embedded in a region deeply divided by uneven
development and the ensuing inequitable power relations. The principal objective of this article is to understand
how transnational forces have reshaped local realities and power structures in the Yucatan to construct and
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015

reproduce Gringolandia as a new tourist space. We commence with an historical overview of the planning,
inception, and subsequent evolution of the physical and socioeconomic spatial divisions manifest in the resort
today. We then analyze the two forces that have played perhaps the greatest role in constructing Gringolandia:
the transnational economic structure of the resort and the consumption- and production-led migratory flows to
Cancun. Detailed understanding of the construction of Gringolandia, and its regional influence, holds valuable
lessons for future tourist resort planning and development in lesser-developed countries. Key Words: Cancun,
Mexico, migration, tourism, transnationalism, globalization

This city, or at least its heavily trafficked hotel zonea
mirage, as Castejon calls itis neither Mexico nor even
an extension of the United States. It is a place that floats
suspended in its own unique physical, psychological and
commercial spacea sort of globologoland.
(Cooper 2003)
The worlds gaze came to rest upon the tropical resort
enclave of Cancun during the September 2003 World
Trade Organization (WTO) fifth ministerial meetings.
The divide between poor and wealthy nations deepened
as negotiations collapsed with the failure of leaders to
reach consensus on a series of issues, most notably, ag-
ricultural subsidies and trade. The irony of conducting
the meetings in Cancun was not lost on the activists and
reporters who flocked to the resort. Many saw Cancun as
a metaphor for the gross inequities manifest in the global
economic system, a globologoland. Food First co-
director, Anuradha Mittal (8 September 2003), com-
mented, The development it [WTO] promises is what
the Cancun hotel strip offers to the local people
commodification of nature, and of labor . . . where the
American tourist need not even convert currency and
can feel right at home. Reporter Marc Cooper (2003)
observed, If the goals of an expanded WTO are ever
achieved, the world will be full of Cancuns.
The extravagance and overbuilt nature of Cancun has
transformed it into a circuslike spectacle referred to as
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(2), 2005, pp. 314335 r 2005 by Association of American Geographers
Initial submission, April 2002; revised submissions, April 2004 & September 2004; final acceptance, October 2004
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.
Gringolandia by locals. This term not only reflects the
Disneyesque quality of the spectacle that is large-scale
mass tourism in Cancun (Torres 2002a), but it also im-
plies the invasion and expropriation of Mexican space by
an American place (Torres and Momsen forthcoming a).
The reality, however, is far more complex. Cancun has
become a simulacruman artificial reproduction and
representation of the Yucatan physical environment
and Maya heritage manifest in a constructed physical
and cultural landscapeand the result is Gringolandia, a
dynamic hybrid-space in which elements of Mexican,
American, and artificial Maya culture have been re-
constituted for tourist consumption.
Recognizing the often problematic and multiple
meanings ascribed to the term space, we define it for
the purposes of our examination of Gringolandia to be a
phenomenon constituted by social relations. Our un-
derstanding and use of space is grounded in Masseys
(1994, 4) contention that the spatial can be seen as
constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations
across all spatial scales, from the global reach of finance
and telecommunications, through the geography of the
tentacles of national political power, to the social rela-
tions within the town, the settlement, the household
and the workplace. Gringolandia is fabricated of dy-
namic and multiple social relations and interactions
conducted by a diversity of actors. These social relations
are based on tourism-related transnational forces oper-
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico 315

ating at multiple scales, including at that of the state of

Quintana Roo, the physical morphology of the Cancun
resort, and the migrant household level. We focus on the
two major forces that have played the greatest role
in constructing Gringolandia: the government-driven
mode of planning and economic development of the
resort, which has created the economic landscape of
Cancun today, and the consumption- and production-
led migratory flows to Cancun. Our view of how trans-
nationalism has played out in Cancun is multiscalar, and
includes: multinational tourism franchise agreements,
international tourist flows, national government devel-
opment strategies, domestic elite tourism industry in-
vestment, and migration-related livelihood strategies at
the household level. We link tourism development and
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015

transnationalism, thus providing an extension of trans-

national theoretical perspectives. We draw on our more
than ten years of collective study findings, observations,
and experiences conducting research on issues rela-
ted to tourism development in the Yucatan (Torres
2002a; Momsen 2003; Torres and Momsen 2004).
Throughout our fieldwork, we have had the opportunity
to interview, survey, and observe tourists, tourism in-
dustry entrepreneurs, hotel and restaurant administra-
tors, local farmers, ejido1 comisariados (directors of
communal landowning structures), village people, and
urban immigrants and have watched the physical growth
of Cancun for more than two decades. While all ele-
ments of our collective research experience inform the
analysis, in this article, we draw on selected qualitative
and quantitative data collected during our studies in the
region.
The Construction of Cancun: From the
Quintana Roo Empty Quarter to
Gringolandia
For centuries, Quintana Roo was a space of exile,
imprisonment, isolation, and refuge. Quintana Roo has
been referred to as the empty quarter (Torres Mal-
donado 1997), a double periphery (Pi-Sunyer and
Brooke Thomas 1997), or the periphery-of-the-pe-
riphery (Torres Maldonado 1997). The isolated barrier
island of Cancun, situated in the northeastern corner of
the Yucatan Peninsula (see Figure 1), in what would
become in 1974 the state of Quintana Roo, was selected
by the Mexican government as the site for the nations
first master-planned resort or Tourist Integral Center.
The Cancun experiment took on national importance
as it represented the cornerstone of a new externally
oriented, state-driven, economic development strategy
Figure 1. Map of Quintana Roo and relevant places.
of planned tourism development (PTD) (Cothran and
Cothran 1998; Clancy 1999, 2001). Since establishment
of the Cancun resort in the 1970s, Quintana Roo has
evolved from the production space of Maya peasant
subsistence farmers into Gringolandia, a transnational
consumption space for millions of visitors from across the
globe, as well as a production space for hundreds of
thousands of immigrant workers. This abrupt transition
from the empty quarter to a Fordist mass tourism
resort (Torres 2002a) serving the pleasure periphery of
the first world, has inserted the region into the global
capitalist sphere (Torres Maldonado 1997) in a new re-
lationship of dependency.
At its inception in the 1970s, Cancun was seen as an
expensive, exclusive, and exotic playground of the rich
and famous. Since the 1980s, seduced by the success of
the resort, tourism authorities have failed to enforce the
environmental and social carrying capacity limits estab-
lished in the original master plans (Enriquez Savignac
1972; FONATUR 1982). Consequently, Cancun has
grown rapidly, receiving almost two million stay-over
visitors in 2002, with an additional 1.9 million in Co-
zumel and the Rivera Maya and over two million cruise
ship passengers (Caribbean Tourism Organization
[CTO] 2004). Cancun is now Mexicos leading resort
(Cothran and Cothran 1998) and exhibits all the classic
signs of an overbuilt mass tourism destination: loss of
 316 Torres and Momsen
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
Figure 2. The heart of Gringolandia: The 14-km-long island of
Cancun is one of the most intensively developed tourist strips in the
world. This north-facing view of the northeastern tip of the island
shows the Caribbean to the right and ahead, and the Nichupte
Lagoon complex to the left. In the foreground are a few of the many
pyramid-shaped megahotels that house thousands of tourists.
exclusivity, excess room capacity, heavy discounting, and
reduced per capita tourist expenditures. In its transfor-
mation into Gringolandia, Cancun has become a disso-
nant collage of pyramid-shaped hotels (see Figure 2), jet
ski jungle tours in the lagoon mangroves, Maya waiters
dressed in authentic Mexican garb, restaurant-caged
tigers, and the aptly named Crococun crocodile park,
among an almost endless list of subscribed spectacles
all neatly packaged expressly for the American mass
tourist collective gaze (Urry 1990).
Physical Manifestations of Gringolandia:
The Morphology of the Cancun Resort
Edensor points out that the production of tourist
space should not be conceived as being only represen-
tational. He warns that overemphasis on discourse and
representation can miss the fact that much of the
conceptualization is embodied in the sense that it is
structured by physical experience (Palmer and Jan-
kowiak 1996, 253, as quoted in Edensor 1998, 61). This
observation suggests that a closer examination of the
physical spatial morphology of Cancun can reveal, in a
very tangible sense, the uneven development and ineq-
uitable power relations underlying Gringolandia. Fer-
nando Mart (1985), in his journalistic account of the
development of Cancun as a resort, Cancun, Fantasa de
Banqueros, divides Cancun into three faces or geo-
graphical spaces: (1) the tourist zone comprising the
hotel strip on the island of Cancun (section #7 in Figure 3
Map); (2) the FONATUR (National Tourism Promotion
Figure 3. Physical morphology of
Gringolandia: Map of social and spa-
tial divisions of Cancun resort and
city [Source: Base map elaborated by
Ricardo Macario V. of CIQROO,
published in Arnaiz and Dachary
(1992). Chloropleth adaptation de-
veloped by author.]
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
Fund)-planned service city for local government and
workers (section #2 in Figure 3); and what Mart terms
the lost city, the Colonia Puerto Juarez shanty town,2
which spontaneously developed with the arrival of
impoverished immigrant populations seeking work
(sections #4 and #5). Prior to its acquisition by
FONATUR, private smallholder coconut farmers occu-
pied the island of Cancun. The area of the planned
downtown was pieced together from lands owned by
the federal government, local ejidos, and a few private
landowners through purchase or expropriation.
Cancun was carefully planned by FONATUR to
segregate tourist space from the living space of local
residents, the intention being to avoid the Acapulco
pattern where ghettoes and their waste flows intermingle
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
with beachside resort hotels. Hiernaux-Nicolas (1999)
contends that Cancun was an expression of Taylorist
principles, with a total separation between labor and
recreation, workers and tourists, and production and
consumption. There are huge disparities between the
core tourist zone (the island), the tourist downtown,
the nontourist downtown, and, at the outermost edge, the
Franja Ejidal, where the newest, poorest arrivals settle
(see Figure 4). There is a continuum ranging from ex-
treme luxury to abject poverty and a complete absence
of basic services. Lower-income Mexicans move across
Figure 4. The other face of Cancun: The Franja Ejidal houses
thousands of peopleoften with the most recent immigrants living
in impoverished and squalid conditions such as this tar-paper shack.
Despite government efforts to keep up infrastructure construction,
much of the Franja Ejidal remains without paved roads, running
water, sewerage, and electricity (or with only informal hook-ups to
grid). Many tourism-industry workers, critical to the construction,
production, and reproduction of Gringolandia live in the Franja
Ejidal on the periphery of the resort.
317
these spatial divides to provide labor to support the
tourism industry, returning to the impoverished periph-
ery to live. Local expatriates and Mexican elites operate
in the core tourist zone and the tourist and nontourist
downtown, rarely ever seeing the periphery. Tourists
remain in the core hotel zone, and to a lesser degree, the
tourist downtown area. They almost never venture into
the nontourist downtown or the marginal regions of
Cancun.
According to N. Smith (1984), geographical differ-
entiation is a product of the spatial centralization of
capital. Such differentiation is clearly evident in the
concentration of capital, investment, infrastructure, and
resources in the fourteen-kilometer-long island of Can-
cun (Figure 2; Figure 3, section #7). There is no finer
representation of the classic tourist bubble. It has the
very best facilities, amenities, and infrastructure and is
the heart and lifeblood of Gringolandia. Many visitors
to Cancun never leave this bubble, remaining oblivious to
the extreme poverty that lies only a few miles away on
the mainland (see Figure 4). The island is linked to the
mainland at both its northern and southern extremities,
but it remains separated from the local residential areas
to ensure privacy and exclusivity for tourists. Beach
access for local residents is also highly restricted (Pi-
Sunyer and Thomas 1997; Hiernaux-Nicolas 1999). Marc
Cooper (2003) reported, Ive worked here twenty-two
years, and never once have I been able to bring my kids
to this beach, complains Sonia, a middle-aged single
mother of two who serves drinks and snacks to sun-
bathers at a four-star ocean front hotel (Cooper 2003).
For most of Cancuns residents, the tourist zone on the
island of Cancun is an exclusive place of conspicuous
tourist consumption to be experienced only from a bus
window, a kitchen, an unkempt hotel room, or through
the prism of some other subservient role. For those local
residents not involved in tourism-related work, the
tourist bubble is vivid in the geographical imagination,
a luxurious, inaccessible place providing sustenance to
the city, a skyline in the distance across the water (see
Figure 5).
Neil Smith (1984, 155), in his seminal work Uneven
Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space,
could have been writing about Cancun when he ob-
served, Uneven development is social inequality bla-
zoned into the geographical landscape, and it is
simultaneously the exploitation of that unevenness for
certain socially determined ends. In Cancun, uneven
development, inequitable power relations, and the con-
trol of space by the powerful are manifest in the physical
morphology of the resort. While most discussions of
Cancuns spatial hierarchies concentrate on the three
 318 Torres and Momsen
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
Figure 5. Childs vision of Gringolandia: This drawing produced by
a Cancun second grader reveals the clear spatial division between
the tourist zone bubble (separated by water) and the Franja Ejidal
shanty town where he lives (small figure playing soccer in fore-
ground). The plane bringing tourists to Cancun is centrally placed
and dominates the drawing.
regions (Arnaiz and Dachary 1992; Dachary and Arnaiz
1998; Torres and Momsen forthcoming b)the tourist
zone, the planned FONATUR downtown, and the
marginal Colonia Puerto JuarezFigure 3 presents
the more complex reality of today as these regions have
evolved with Cancuns maturation. With tourists seeking
alternatives to the crowded beach, tourist space has, for
example, now extended beyond the island to what was
originally the planned FONATUR local resident down-
town (section #2).
The extraordinary growth experienced by the Cancun
tourism industry has created a requirement for more
upper-middle-class residential areas to accommodate
those who can afford better housing but are unable to
pay the astronomical property prices of the hotel zone.
Consequently, there has been significant growth of af-
fluent, well-appointed residential neighborhoods near to
downtown and with easy access to the hotel zone, but
maintaining discrete separation from the shanty towns
(section #3). Section #6 represents an area of adjacent
rural space once belonging to the Ejido Bonfil, which has
now been expropriated to accommodate expansion of
urban space, specifically, new shopping areas and upscale
residential developments. Section #9 also represents
rural space that is under increasing pressure from the
urban sphere. This land, which still belongs to the Ejido
Bonfil, was conceived in the master plan as an agricul-
tural zone from which to supply the food needs of the
tourist pole. Today, the ejido is involved in few produc-
tive activities of any kind, its members having long since
become addicted to the easy money realized from un-
authorized sale of residential plots of land to members of
the Cancun elite who seek second homes. Such illegal
sales of land remain controversial and unresolved,
leaving the ultimate fate of this space contentious.
Sections #9 and #6 are both examples of the recon-
figuration of rural production space to urban consump-
tion space for the core elites, a critical element of the
larger regional process of rural restructuring.
The concentration of capital in Cancun as a center of
tourism production has served as a catalyst for the rural-
to-urban exodus of impoverished populations in search
of improved income earning opportunities. This mass
migration has resulted in the explosive and chaotic
growth of urban squatter settlements on the Cancun
periphery (section #5). Marx could have been describ-
ing this process in Cancun when he said, [T]he greater
the centralization of the means of production, the
greater is the corresponding heaping together of the la-
borers, within a given space, that therefore the swifter
the capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the
dwellings of the working people (Marx 1967, in N.
Smith 1984, 134). The Cancun master plan originally
included a ten-kilometer by one-kilometer fringe to
house immigrants working in construction and low-end
service jobs (section #4). This area and the new fringe
beyond grew rapidly into a series of unplanned and un-
controlled squatter settlements that framed the entire
resort across its northern perimeter (section #5). The
poverty begins at Avenida Lopez Portillo, the original
boundary between the federal lands controlled by FO-
NATUR (in section #4) and those of the Ejido Isla
Mujeres (section #5). The contrast is stark, with a
neatly planned, grid-patterned city to the south of Lopez
Portillo degenerating into an unattractive, disorganized
chaotic, dirty, and very evidently poor collection of
spontaneous settlements to the north. In 1982 the
Quintana Roo state government, under Pedro Joaqun
Coldwell, initiated a program, Nuevos Horizontes, to
formalize land tenure and improve basic infrastructure
and services for the fringe, then known as Colonia
Puerto Juarez (Mart 1985; Haydt de Almeida 1994).
The local housing authority, Instituto de Vivienda de
Quintana Roo (INVIQROO), now sells lots already oc-
cupied by squatters back to them at affordable prices.
The ejido fringe, or Franja Ejidal, has continued to ex-
pand gradually through expropriation of Isla Mujeres
ejido land. This program has succeeded in converting the
earliest shantytown immediately adjacent to Avenida
Lopes Portillo into a lower-middle-class neighborhood
(section #4). The migratory flows to Cancun neverthe-
less continued and even accelerated with Mexicos early
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
1990s economic crises and the consequent reduction in
farm subsidies, credit, and assistance programs adding to
the rapidly growing Franja Ejidal squatter population
(section #5), the majority of whom are forced to live in
increasingly dense and squalid conditions (Pi-Sunyer,
Brooke Thomas, and Daltabuit 1999; Torres and Skilli-
corn 2004) (see Figures 3 and 4). This lost city remains
home to a large proportion of Cancuns low-paid, un-
skilled laborers and recent immigrants.
Gringolandia not only affects the resort city itself, but
it also reaches beyond to affect, in some fashion, every
aspect of life in the Yucatan Peninsula. The region is
highly dependent upon tourism, which accounts for
approximately 7580 percent of the gross domestic
product (GDP) of the state of Quintana Roo (Arnaiz
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
and Dachary 1992; Castro Sarinana 1995; Cothran and
Cothran 1998). However, planned tourism development
has failed to create effective backward linkages to other
economic sectors such as agriculture and industry (Tor-
res Maldonado 1997; Torres 2003). The overbuilt nature
of the resort, combined with a population explosion in
the Franja Ejidal, has also taken a severe toll on Can-
cuns fragile environment (Dachary and Arnaiz 1985;
Merino, Sorensen, and Gutierrez 1993; Skillicorn 1997;
Kandelaars 2000). Additionally, various detrimental so-
cial impacts resulting from resort development and as-
sociated immigration of workers have been recorded
(Momsen 2003).
Transnationalism, Geography, and Tourism
Transnational Perspectives and Geographical
Extensions
In its broadest form, transnationalism refers to mul-
tiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions
across the borders of nation-states (Vertovec 1999,
447). The concept of transnationalism was first used in
the economics literature to refer to movement of capital,
commodity chains, and the impact of transnational
corporations (TNCs). It was then extended to interna-
tional migration flows and their role in increasing cross-
border linkages through return visits and remittances. In
this article, we focus on the role of TNCs in ownership of
tourist facilities and on individual migrants involved in
the production and consumption of Cancun.
Transnationalism not only reshapes local realities, but
local factors also mediate transnational practices, al-
though the latter has been the focus of far less research
(Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt 1999). For example, the
frequency of inexpensive flights to Cancun from major
U.S. cities (most only one to four hours away) has helped
319
to produce and reproduce Gringolandia as a transna-
tional space. As time and spatial barriers are reduced,
societies are increasingly interconnected, with the glo-
bal and local blending in a context of continuing,
routine, daily social practices (Georges 1992; Jones 1992;
Rodrguez 1995). The widening of social relations and
the development of networks, or social fields, bridging
nation states results in the creation of globalized hybrid
social and cultural spaces (Featherstone 1990; Gupta and
Ferguson 1992; Landolt, Autler, and Baires 1999).
Within this hybrid reconstituted social space, migrants
reconstruct their national, racial, ethnic, and political
identities as an adaptation to their fluid, bi- or multi-
national existence. Transnational migrants assume mul-
tiple identities as they negotiate their position between
and within nation states (Kearney 1991; Glick Schiller,
Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992; Glick Schiller and
Fouron 1999). Mexican migrants to Cancun, although
not technically transnational migrants, have to adapt to
the new hybrid cultural space, and they play a key role in
the construction and (re)production of Gringolandia.
P. Jackson, Crang, and Dwyer (2004, 1) note that
many early transnational studies have under-played the
transformation of space, arguing that space is constitutive
of transnationalism in all different forms. They put forth
an expansive notion of transnational space, which,
throughout this article, we ascribe to in furthering our
understanding of Gringolandia:
Our use of the term encompasses all of those engaged in
transnational cultures, whether as producers or consumers.
It includes not just the material geographies of labour migra-
tion or the trading in transnational goods and services but
also the symbolic and imaginary geographies through which we
attempt to make sense of our increasingly transnational
world. Transnational space is, we argue, complex, multi-
dimensional and multiply-inhabited (cf. Crang et al. 2003).
People from various backgrounds enter its spaces with a
whole range of investments and from various positionalities.
They may occupy its spaces momentarily (during the con-
sumption of a meal, for example) or for a lifetime (as
members of ethnically-defined transnational communities).
They may have residual affinities to the transnational
identities of earlier migrant generations or emergent identi-
ties as a result of their own current transnational experi-
ences. Focusing on the spaces of transnationality, rather than
just identifiable transnational communities distinguished
from other (and often still normative) national communities,
opens up ways of exploring this multiplicity of transnational
experiences and relations.
(P. Jackson, Crang, and Dwyer 2004)
Bearing this notion in mind, our examination of the
construction of Gringolandia and the role of transna-
 320 Torres and Momsen
tional forces in reshaping local realities and power
structures is a geographical project that seeks to con-
tribute to a deeper understanding of the geographies of
the transnational spaces of tourist places.
P. Jackson, Crang, and Dwyer argue for an expanded
notion of transnationality that is not restricted to
the geographies of transnational migrant communities
themselves. They suggest that, increasing numbers
of people participate in transnational space, irrespective of
their own migrant histories or ethnic identities (2004, 2).
They also (2004, 13) argue for the development of
more encompassing notions of transnationality including
those who are not themselves transnational migrants.
This expansive vision of transnationality is consistent
with our understanding of Gringolandia, a space occu-
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
pied by transnational tourists and expatriate settlers, but
which includes production-led domestic migrant laborers
drawn to the tourist pole whose families often remain
behind in their rural villages of origin. The daily lives and
social practices of these national migrants are inextri-
cably bound to, and form part of, Cancuns transnational
social fields. These migrants play a critical role in the
construction, production, and reproduction of Gringo-
landia as transnational space.
Transnational Perspectives and Tourism
Tourism has been identified as a transnational phe-
nomenon (Appadurai 1990; Kearney 1995; Appadurai
1996; Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt 1999), but there
have been relatively few applications of transnational
perspectives on the nature of tourism. Coles, Duval, and
Hall (2005) argue, The reality, however, is that very
little tourism literature has explored the tourist in the
context of transnational behavior. They observe, At
the same time, it should be noted that many studies of
migration, transnationalism, and diasporas either fail to
take into account, or offer only passing mention of, the
degree to which travel and temporary mobility is an in-
tegral part of linking social spaces, locales, stations and
networks. Hall and Williams (2002, 277) note that
much recent migration research fails to acknowledge
the significant role of tourism in contemporary migration
processes. There is, nevertheless, a growing recognition
that an intrinsically transnational tourism industry is
both the outcome and the source of increasing global-
ization. Appadurai (1996) in his treatise on modernity
and globalization acknowledges that tourists and the
tourism industry are part of the transnational landscape.
He also recognizes that there is still little known about
the special translocalities they produce:
The ethnography of these tourist locations is just beginning
to be written in detail, but what little we do know suggests
that many such locations create complex conditions for the
production and reproduction of locality, in which ties of
marriage, work, business, and leisure weave together vari-
ous circulating populations with kinds of locales to create
neighborhoods that belong in one sense to particular na-
tion-states, but that are from another point of view what we
might call translocalities.
(Appadurai 1996, 192)
Clearly the actors, institutions, agencies, structures, and
processes associated with tourism are transnational in
nature.
Despite the relative lack of inclusion of tourism in
transnational studies, and the scarcity of tourism research
conceptualized from transnational perspectives, increas-
ingly, there are tourism geographers calling for greater
integration between tourism and transnationalism. Coles,
Duval, and Hall (2005) suggest, A transnational frame-
work of analysis within tourism would allow for the rec-
ognition of interconnected social networks and the
resulting movement between and among multiple locali-
ties. Duval suggests that transnational perspectives have
the potential to elucidate the cultural meanings of tourist
flows, particularly issues of multistranded identities, con-
cepts of home, of building diasporic networks in the
context of travel to second homes, and return visits of
emigrants to their home places (Duval 2003, 2004a, b, c).
Applying P. Jackson, Crang, and Dwyers (2004) more
expansive notion of transnationalism to tourism also
permits us to consider interconnections and social net-
works and relations not only between hosts and guests
within tourist poles, but also extends our analysis to in-
clude those multiple actors and places that are intimately
linked to, affected by, and playing a critical role in the
construction and (re)production of transnational tourist
spaces.
According to Duval (2004a, 51), For the study of
tourism, transnationalism provides an insight into pat-
terns of touristic movement, meanings and the linkages
within and between broad social networks, but it also
considers notions of the local and the global beyond
static notions of host and guest. Coles, Duval, and Hall
(2005) note that tourism has been largely absent from
the geography discipline-based push toward under-
standing mobilities in globalized environments. Williams
and Hall (2002) observe that there have been very few
attempts to disentangle the changing relationships be-
tween tourism and migration that are inherent in the
life course of many individuals. Hall and Williams (2002)
emphasize placing mobilities, particularly temporary
mobilities, as the nexus of tourism and migration rela-
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
tionships. To capture the complex and multidimensional
nature of temporary mobility and circulation, they pro-
pose the loose distinction between consumption and
production-led mobilities. They focus primarily on five
forms of tourism-informed mobility, including pro-
duction-led labor migration, entrepreneurial migration,
return (labor) migration, and consumption-led, eco-
nomically active migration, and retirement migration.
Conceptualizing Gringolandia
This article suggests that tourist resorts may be con-
ceptualized as transnational spaces. Within that con-
text, the tourism industry business structure serves as
a transnational economic landscape, hosting tourists as
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
short-term migrants and labor migrants as integral actors
in the construction, production, and reproduction of
tourist spaces. Global tourism becomes, in effect, a
transnational force restructuring local realities.
Cancuns Transnational Social Fields
Compression of space and time related to increasing
globalization has reduced geographical barriers and in-
creased international tourism as well as other forms of
temporary and permanent migration. Societies are in-
creasingly interconnected, with the global and local
blending to reshape local realities. Figure 6 is a visual
representation of the continual flow of people, goods,
capital, services, information, and ideas across interna-
tional and national urban and rural borders that makes
Cancun a truly transnational hybrid space. The actors
within these fluid social fields move about in this dy-
Figure 6. Conceptualizing Gringolandia as transnational space:
Cancuns social fields.
321
namic and continually changing system of connections
and interrelationships.
Three interconnected spheres comprise Cancuns
transnational social fields: the international sphere, the
urban Mexican sphere, and the Quintana Roo rural
periphery (see Figure 6). While portrayed in this graphic
as separate spheres, in reality, the individuals, informa-
tion, and resources in these spheres constantly interact
at different scales with all spheres to construct Gringo-
landia. The international or global sphere exerts
influence in constructing Gringolandia by the continu-
ous circular flow of tourists, foreign second home owners
and retirees, Mexican elites with strong ties to the U.S.,
foreign professionals and entrepreneurs, and expatriate
tourism-industry workers. Through this sphere move
foreign direct investment, franchise and management
contracts, and products. Conversely, profits are extracted
from the resort through expatriation, management and
franchise agreements, and foreign exchange leakages
associated with product imports.
The Mexican Urban Sphere consists of back-and-
forth flows of immigrants from other parts of Mexico
working in tourism-industry-related employment, rang-
ing from unskilled to senior management positions, and
domestic tourists and Mexican elites with second homes
and businesses. Significant inputs are domestic invest-
ment, imported agricultural products, and other goods
and services. The bulk of food products in Cancun, for
example, are brought in from the Mexico City Central de
Abastos, which concentrates production from the entire
country (Torres 2003). Profits and taxes are extracted
from the resort, contributing primarily to the Mexican
urban sphere, predominantly Mexico City and Mon-
terrey.
The third and most subordinate sphere, the Quin-
tana Roo rural periphery, has a circular flow of tem-
porary migrants and permanent settlers who maintain
ties with both Cancun and their cities, towns, or villages
of origin. The most marginalized populations of Quin-
tana Roo supply low-end temporary labor to the Cancun
growth pole/corecirculating back and forth between
the city and their villages. Typically, these temporary
laborers fill the lower-paying, seasonal jobs because they
have neither the training nor education for the more
senior positions occupied by urbanites from other Mex-
ican states. The Quintana Roo periphery, to a lesser
degree, supplies the tourist center with agricultural
products. This supply is limited to low volumes of a few
products that are provided on an irregular, highly sea-
sonal basis (Torres 2003). The most significant value
extracted from the resort by the Quintana Roo rural
periphery consists of remittances channeled back to the
 322 Torres and Momsen

villages through permanent settlers sending money to
their families or temporary laborers circulating between
Cancun and their villages (Momsen 2003).
Together, these three spheres, through continuous
flows, interrelations, and exchanges of people, capital,
goods, services, and ideas across time and space, com-
prise the transnational social fields that construct
Cancun as a unique, globalized, transnational space,
developed expressly for mass tourist consumption, but
now having evolved to become the production and
consumption space for multiple and segmented groups
of both international and domestic migrants. Through
the routine daily practice of tourism production and
consumption in the resort, the local and global which the needs of capital, of the state, and other forms
continually negotiate relations of economic, social, and
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
93). Relphs analysis extends beyond the properties of
places to include the attitudes of people. He suggests
there is a disappearing sense of place or an inauthentic
attitude to place (p. 83), which is frequently evident in
tourists who often care more about collecting places
rather than truly experiencing them.
With respect to representation of tourist spaces and
places, Edensor (1998, 7), comments that they are di-
versely represented, with contesting notions about what
they mean being articulated by different groups of peo-
ple. Oakes (forthcoming) argues, Representations of
space are necessarily ideological, and are mobilized in the
service of power, for they conceive an idealized space in
of social power, are met. Our analysis in this article

political power. The boundaries between and within focuses primarily on conceptualizing Gringolandia
these spheres are fluid and often blurred as individuals through an encompassing notion of transnational social
may shift their practices over time. For example, the space. Transnational perspectives, taking into account
temporary tourist who returns to buy a second home may their multiple ever-changing social relations stretched
eventually settle to become an entrepreneur, forging among different human agents over distant places, are
links to the Mexican urban sphere, and even the useful in understanding the construction, production,
Quintana Roo rural periphery. This conceptualization of and reproduction of Cancun as Gringolandia. This vision
Cancuns transnational social fields provides the back- of Gringolandia allows the inclusion of marginalized
drop for the remaining analysis of tourism in the region spaces such as the Franja Ejidal and even abandoned
from a transnational perspective. rural villagesthe backdrop of the quotidian practices of
local people who often play a critical role in producing
Cancun as Transnational Space and reproducing tourisminto our conceptualization of
Gringolandia as a transnational space.
A radical transformation of space and place through Lury (1997) suggests the creation of a new in-be-
tourism development has had a profound effect on the tween tourist space of artifacts and flows in which the
Quintana Roo empty quarter. Despite its approxi- lines are blurred between traveling, dwelling, and other
mately half a million residents,3 143 hotels and almost social behavior (Oakes 1998), and production and
two million stay-over visitors annually (Ayuntamiento consumption (Hall and Williams 2002). In Cancun, this
Benito Juarez 2002; CTO 2004) Cancun remains, for blurring is particularly the case, with increased timeshare
some critics, metaphorically empty space. Authors sales,4 repeat visits,5 retirees, and expatriates. Cancun,
such as Perez Taylor (1996) and Hiernaux-Nicolas which from its inception was planned as a consumption
(1999) suggest that mass-tourist, high-rise development space for international tourists, constitutes this in-be-
has transformed Cancun into a cultural vacuum, a non- tween transnational tourism space. It was not a city
place (Auge 1995), or no-place, that is a space in which a tourism industry evolved gradually through
without history, identity, or any possibility of being ap- early stages of exploration and involvement, as with
propriated by social groups (Hiernaux-Nicolas 1999, Butlers (1980) tourism resort life cycle model. On the
131). Relphs (1976) treatise on placelessness, which contrary, it was an instant resort built from the
reflects upon the loss of diversity, significance, and emptiness for the specific purpose of tourism production
meaning of landscapes, is consistent with the above and consumption. According to Torres Maldonado
characterizations of Cancun. Relph points to mass cul- (1997), Cancun is a post-industrial tourist place that
ture and tourism as factors contributing to the geography has succeeded in reinserting the peripheral empty
of placelessness. He states that tourism is an homoge- quarter into global capitalist space.
nizing influence and its effects everywhere seem to be A sustained flow of tourists, large numbers of Amer-
the samethe destruction of the local and regional ican expatriate settlers, and strong American business
landscape that very often initiated the tourism, and its influences have transformed Cancun into a truly trans-
replacement by conventional tourist architecture and national city. A significant population of Mexican elites
synthetic landscapes and pseudo-places (Relph 1976, in Cancun who mimic American consumption patterns
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
and behavior reinforces this sense of American influ-
ence. Cancun is neither Mexican nor American. With its
large U.S. expatriate community, foreign tourists, and
Mexican immigrants, Cancun has become Gringolandia.
As Gringolandia, it has evolved into a unique, transna-
tional hybrid-space incorporating elements of American
and Mexican life, along with artificial representations of
Mayan culture reconstituted for mass consumption (see
Figure 7). Many of Cancuns synthetic elements are
based on idealized artificial reproductions of pre-
Hispanic Mayan imagery and culture (Pi-Sunyer, Brooke
Thomas, and Daltabuit 1999) packaged for collective
consumption (Urry 1990) by tourists. In this sense,
Cancun could be considered an example of an other-
directed architecture (J. B. Jackson 1970, 6465, cited
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
in Relph 1976, 93) constructed expressly for the outside
gaze of spectators. According to Relph (1976, 93), the
total effect of such architecture is the creation of other-
directed places which suggest almost nothing of the
people living and working in them, but declare them-
selves unequivocally to be Vacation land or Consum-
erland through the use of exotic decoration, gaudy
colours, grotesque adornments, and the indiscriminate
borrowing of styles and names from the most popular
places of the world. Cancun, or Gringolandia, is argu-
ably a product of Disneyfication of the Yucatan envi-
ronment and pre-Hispanic Mayan heritage. According
to Relph (1976, 95), the products of Disneyfication
are absurd, synthetic places made up of a surrealistic com-
bination of history, myth, reality and fantasy that have
little relationship with particular geographical setting.
Relphs vivid description of this Disneyfied con-
sumerland accurately describes the feel of the Cancun
Figure 7. The spectacle of Gringolandia: Actors in pre-Hispanic
Maya costumes make a living posing for photographs with tourists
in exchange for tips.
323
tourist strip and the popular Xcaret eco-archeological
nature theme park further south. The local environment
has also been commoditized, reproduced, and packaged
for global mass tourist consumption. This process is ev-
ident in the numerous examples of the environment
being reinvented as a spectacle (Urry 1990). In par-
ticular, Cancuns hotel zone fits with Edensors (1998)
notion of enclavic space, which is typical of a carefully
planned, managed, and segregated tourist bubble.
Role of Transnational Forces in the
Construction of Gringolandia
The remainder of this article will focus on an analysis
of the two major transnational forces that have played an
important role in the construction of Gringolandia. We
shall first examine Cancun as a transnational econom-
ic landscape, the product of both state-led domestic
investment and development combined with foreign
influence and control through capital investment,
franchises, and management contracts. The second
transnational force we shall examine is the migratory
flow of international tourists and expatriates, outside
Mexican elites, and rural peasants to Cancun as a center
of capital concentration, and, therefore, perceived eco-
nomic opportunity.
Cancuns Transnational Economic Landscape
Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt (1999), in their dis-
cussion of transnationalism as an emergent research
field, suggest that tourism development is a type of
economic transnationalism. In this section, we seek to
understand how the transnational economic structure of
Cancuns tourism industry has contributed to the con-
struction of Gringolandia as a transnational space, fo-
cusing primarily on the hotel tourism industry subsector
and, to a lesser extent, on the restaurant sector. Both
foreign and Mexican capital, in addition to strong state
intervention in planning, policy, and investment, created
the international resort. FONATUR (National Tourism
Promotion Fund), the Mexican tourism development
authority, was the driving force in conceiving, planning,
constructing, financing, and, to some extent, investing in
Cancun (including direct equity participation).
Because of the flexibility and fluidity of capital per-
mitted by increased globalization, the Cancun scenario is
complex. The naive, reflexive assumption frequently
quoted by critics of the resortthat it was built, and is
dominated by, foreign capital, is widely believed. A 1997
survey of sixty Cancun hotels (50 percent sample)6 re-
 324 Torres and Momsen

Cancun's Transnational Economic Landscape ordinate to domestic overall, a disproportionate share of

Nationality of Cancun Hotel Ownership (N=60) the hotel industry value pertains to foreign TNCs and
entrepreneurs.
Foreign influence in the Cancun hotel industry is
exerted more through franchise relationships and man-
86.7% agement contracts rather than through direct equity
participation. Franchise chains are often associated with
1.7% foreign transnational corporations. Typically, larger and
1.7% more luxurious hotels subscribe to franchise agreements
1.7%
that impose rigidity, efficiency, quality control, and
3.3%
5.0% standardization in the tourist product. Fifty percent of
Cancun hotels surveyed in the Torres (2000) study,
Mexican (52) Combined (3) representing 71 percent of all study sample hotel rooms,
Spanish (2) Japanese (1) have a franchise agreement, and 50 percent of those
Dominican (DR) (1) Other Foreign (1) franchises are foreign. Study data confirm that higher-
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015

end hotels tend to be part of franchises, with 93 percent

Figure 8. Nationality of Cancun hotel ownership (Source: Field-
work, Hotel survey 1997; Torres 2000).
vealed that 87 percent of all hotels surveyed were
Mexican owned7 (see Figure 8), with the vast majority of
that ownership concentrated in the hands of companies
or families from Mexico City, Monterrey, and Merida
(particularly wealthy Mexican-Lebanese families). Other
nationalities owning hotels in Cancun are American,
Spanish, Dominican Republican, and Japanese. The
ownership patterns with respect to nationality are close
to, but not completely consistent with, estimates of
Cancun hotel industry investment provided to Torres
Maldonado (1997) by Cancun entrepreneurs and
FONATUR employees. According to Torres Maldonado,
international investors represent 2535 percent, na-
tional investors 5570 percent and local investors 515
percent. Torres Maldonado notes that international in-
vestment is concentrated in the hotel zone and in the
expensive, middle-to-upper-class hotels. Data presented
by Torres (2000) confirm that foreign ownership is
highest among the GT (Gran Turismo)8 and five-star
hotels. This indicates that while foreign equity is sub-
of all GT and 72 percent of all five-star Cancun hotels
surveyed subscribing to a franchise relationship (see
Table 1). Similarly, the level of foreign franchise partic-
ipation is greatest in the top-flight hotels. Fifty percent of
all GT hotels and 22 percent of all five-star hotels sur-
veyed were foreign franchises. Overall, however, only 25
percent (fifteen total) of all hotels surveyed held foreign
franchises. Given the American flavor of the resort, the
assumption one makes when visiting Cancun, or Grin-
golandia, is that it is completely dominated by American
chains. This is not the case. Mexican chains, surprisingly,
dominate Cancuns hotel industry, with 25 percent (fif-
teen) of all hotels surveyed being Mexican franchises
representing 50 percent of all franchise hotels surveyed
(Figure 9). There is, however, a strong American influ-
ence in the tourism industry exerted through the rela-
tively high presence of American franchise chains (30
percent of all franchise hotels surveyed) (Figure 9). This
influence is reinforced by American managers, tourists,
and expatriate settlers hired to work in upper-manage-
ment positions and in the local recreation industry.
Tourism industry TNCs were granted preferential fi-
nancial treatment by the Mexican government that is

Table 1. Cancuns Transnational Economic Landscape: Structure of Cancun Hotel Ownership by Class
# Foreign % Foreign # Foreign % Foreign
Hotel # Franchise % Franchise Franchise Franchise Ownership Ownership
Class # Hotels Hotels by Class Hotels by Class Hotels by Class Hotels by Class Hotels by Class Hotels by Class

GT 16 13 92.9% 8 50.0% 3 18.75%

5-star 18 13 72.2% 4 22.22% 3 16.66%
4-star 14 3 20.0% 2 14.28% 1 7.14%
3-star 7 1 14.3% 1 14.28% 1 14.28%
2-star 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
1-star 3 0 0 0 0 0 0
Total 60 30 50.0% 15 25.0% 8 13.33%
Source: Fieldwork, Hotel Survey 1997.
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
Cancun's Transnational Economic Landscape
Nationality of Cancun Hotel Franchises (N = 60)
Mexican
50.0%
15
1
1
Dominican (DR)
3.3%
9 4
Japanese
3.3%
USA Spanish
30.0% 13.3%
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
Figure 9. Nationality of Cancun hotel franchises (Source: Field-
work, Hotel survey 1997; Torres 2000).
not afforded to foreign investors in other economic
sectors. A unique trust mechanism (Cothran and
Cothran 1998; Clancy 1999) was developed specifically
to allow circumvention of Mexican foreign investment
laws prohibiting the ownership of coastal lands by for-
eigners. To entice investment, the government also of-
fered soft loans, discounted land prices, infrastructure,
and assistance with project design (Enriquez Savignac
1972; Mart 1985). During early resort development, the
state even built, owned, and operated its own hotel
chain to attract international tourists (Mart 1985;
Clancy 1999). Mexicos commitment to neoliberal eco-
nomic policies in the 1980s and 1990s reinforced tourism
development as part of the states economic develop-
ment agenda. The Mexican government also directly
solicited foreign investment from prominent tourism
TNCs with offers of favorable franchise agreements.
During the 1980s, the government offered swaps in
which private investors were allowed to purchase na-
tional debt that could subsequently be converted into
discounted tourism development investments. Some
observers have suggested that the swap mechanism
was the primary impetus behind the 1980s Cancun hotel
construction boom, which has resulted in excess room
capacity and heavy discounting in order to maintain
occupancy rates (Constandse Madrazo 1995; Paz Paredes
1995; Torres Maldonado 1997).
The Mexican government also recognized that the
special nature of the tourism industry required the in-
volvement of large, well-recognized franchise chains that
tourists could trust. Franchises were needed to imple-
ment the quality controls necessary to attract wealthy
domestic and international tourists (Paz Paredes 1995;
325
Torres Maldonado 1997; Clancy 1999). This need for
franchises, as well as the government policies outlined
above, opened the floodgates to TNC control over
Cancuns tourism industry, particularly at the more lux-
urious end of the spectrum. Ultimately, franchises and
management contracts have proven more attractive to
TNCs than has direct equity capital investment in local
hotels because they represent a mechanism by which
TNCs are able to extract significant value at much lower
risk than can be achieved with direct investment capital
(Britton 1982). Additionally, this mechanism allows
TNCs greater flexibility, fluidity, and the ability to pull
out quickly, if necessary.
Following hotels, restaurants represent the second
most important tourism industry subsector in Cancun.
According to CANIRAC (National Chamber of Res-
taurant and Food Industry) there are more than 600
restaurants in Cancun (Interview with Cancun CANI-
RAC Director 1997). Torres Maldonado (1997) divides
restaurants into three types: multinational restaurant
chains, national and regional restaurants, and local
restaurants. Multinational restaurants include all of
those contained within the international hotel chains, in
addition to international franchises such as McDonalds,
KFC, Dominos, Pizza Hut, and others. As with hotels,
national, regional, and local restaurants outnumber in-
ternational franchise chains, but these chains represent a
disproportionate share of the value invested in and ex-
tracted from the restaurant sector. While there is some
foreign equity participation, restaurant ownership mir-
rors that of hotels, with the vast majority being Mexican,
even in the case of international franchises.
Cancuns economic landscape is complex, with con-
trol shared among the following key players: the Mexican
state (through FONATUR), international entrepreneurs
and franchises, domestic and foreign tour operators, and
Mexican entrepreneurs and franchises. Immigrants from
other Mexican states and abroad occupy managerial
positions. Finally, the Quintana Roo rural periphery
enters this landscape to provide essential low-paid labor.
Rural workers migrate permanently and on a temporary
basis to work in construction, food service, cleaning,
domestic work, and room service. This group extracts
the least value and fewest benefits from the resort, but it
is their backs upon which the resort has been built and
by whom it is sustained.
Analysis of the economic structure of Cancuns in-
dustry reveals the important role transnational forces
have played in constructing Gringolandia. It is note-
worthy that tourism industry control and foreign influ-
ence is exerted more through franchise and management
contracts than direct ownership, which is dominated by
 326 Torres and Momsen

national capital. While this mode of consumption gives
the resort an American feel, the Cancun tourism
business is owned by Mexican interests. The advantage
of such an arrangement to the TNCs is that they are able
to extract value through management and franchise
agreements without needing to invest capital. This
economic structure is a good example of how the in-
creased flexibility and fluidity of the global economic
system enables new forms of control and influence be-
yond direct ownership of enterprises. Gringolandia, with
its Wal-marts, Sams Club, Blockbusters, Office Depot,
Ace Hardware, McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Huts, Dominos,
Papa Johns, Subway, Fridays, Hardrock Cafe, Outback
Steakhouse, Rain Forest Cafe, All Star Cafe, Sheratons,
Hyatts, Hiltons, Holiday Inns, Best Westerns, and so on,
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
reshape local realities in the most isolated places on
earth.
Transnational Consumption-Led Migration and
Domestic Production-Led Migration
Much current transnational research focuses on mi-
gration and immigrant communities because the move-
ment of people across the globe is arguably the most
powerful transnational force in forging circuits through
which people, capital, ideas, cultural practices, and labor
spread between and interconnect distinct nation states.
Migratory forces have played a critical role in con-
structing Gringolandia as transnational space and, thus,
reshaping all facets of life across the Yucatan Peninsula.

is a direct product of transnational business forces fa-
cilitated by increasing globalization.
While constructing Gringolandia as a hybrid space,
the interaction between the various forces and actors
embedded in Cancuns transnational social fields (Figure
6) has also created inequalities that have become im-
printed on the landscape. In the case of economic forces
and actors, the collaboration by foreign and domestic
investors with the all-powerful FONATUR has, for in-
stance, constructed a highly inequitable economic and
physical landscape in which the wealthy tourist bubble
remains the targeted beneficiary of capital, infrastruc-
ture, and services, while the workers shantytown con-
tinues to struggle with squalid conditions and poverty.
Aside from the increased employment opportunities for
certain segments of the local population, the majority of
wealth generated by Gringolandia accrues to domestic
and transnational corporations, Mexican and foreign
entrepreneurial elites, and the Mexican government.
This wealth translates into the political and economic
power that shapes daily life and social interactions in
Gringolandia at every level and between all actors, in-
cluding workers, tourists, employers, entrepreneurs,
managers, and government officials. Asymmetrical
geometries of power (Mitchell 1997; McEwan 2004),
evident in Cancuns transnational economic landscape,
can also be traced to deeply entrenched regional his-
torical inequities based on race and class and rooted in
colonialism. Gringolandias uneven landscape of power is
also, in part, a reflection of the unequal and uneven
nature of tourism development on a global scale manifest
in the domination of the third-world tourism industry by
first-world TNCs and entrepreneurs and monopolization
of travel flows by first-world tourists (Mowforth and
Munt 1998). Construction of Gringolandia in a remote
region of the Yucatan Peninsula illustrates the immense
power of the capitalist forces of international tourism to
We consider the construction of Gringolandia as trans-
national space to be a function of social relations in-
volving multiple actors, many of whom, although not
themselves transnational migrants, play a critical role in
creating, producing, reproducing, and consuming Grin-
golandia. The multiple and continually shifting mobili-
ties of different actors, and their intersections, have
played a key role in constructing Gringolandia as an
ever-shifting and dynamic transnational space. There-
fore, to understand the construction and (re)production
of Gringolandia, it is imperative to understand the var-
ious mobilities of key actors in the equation. Following
Hall and Williamss (2002) typology of tourism-migra-
tion mobilities, we distinguish between consumption-led
mobility and production-led mobility, each defined by the
primary motivation for travel. Consumption-led mobility
may include short-term tourists, long-stay tourists, hol-
iday second home owners, retirees, and repeat visitors,
among others. Production-led mobility responds to op-
portunities associated with tourism growth and includes
circular migration of seasonal workers (temporary
migration), permanent migration of domestic and in-
ternational employees, and migration of entrepreneurs,
among others. While there has been considerable re-
search on consumption-led migration, until recent-
ly, production-led migration has not received much at-
tention, although it is arguably of equal importance in
reshaping local realities and constructing transnational
space. Hall and Williams (2002, 10) contend, In prac-
tice, the origins and composition of these labor migration
flows are likely to be highly differentiated, responding to
the existence and re-casting of social and spatial divi-
sions of labor.
Two principal types of migration must be examined in
order to understand how Gringolandia has come to be
the transnational space it is today. First, we argue that
tourists to the Yucatan Peninsula should be considered
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
consumption-led transnational migrants to the region.
The second type of migration important to our analysis is
that of local and nonlocal Mexicans to the tourist poles
in search of work. We believe that while this migration is
domestic, it is appropriately viewed through the lens of
transnationalism because Cancun is itself a global hybrid
space. It also enables us to understand how transnational
forces, and their product, Gringolandia, have set in
motion a process of rural restructuring that has changed
every facet of life in even the most remote Maya villages
of the peninsula. We do not attempt to represent the full
complexity of migration streams that are, in fact, highly
segmented and multifaceted. We highlight production-
led migration, in particular, as we believe this important
dimension of tourism and migration has been under-
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
represented in earlier tourism, migration, and develop-
ment studies.
Consumption-Led Migration and the Construction of
Gringolandia. According to Coles, Duval, and Hall
(2005), An approach toward tourism as a form of tem-
porary mobility is perhaps useful for understanding how
communities, particularly global communities, are for-
mulated, re-tasked, re-imaged, re-positioned, and ulti-
mately (re)packaged. We agree that conceptualizing
tourists as temporary short-term migrants is critical to
understanding the construction of tourist places such as
Gringolandia. Thus far, this notion has either not been
embraced by scholars of transnationalism or mentioned
only in passing. Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt (1999,
219) confine transnational processes to occupations
and activities that require regular and sustained social
contacts over time across national borders for their im-
plementation. While this limitation may appear to ex-
clude tourism as a transnational process, we contend
that, given the continuous, regular, sustained influx of
tourists into Cancun, tourism can be considered a form
of transnational migration. Furthermore, tourists, as a
whole, represent a constant influx that exerts a very
powerful effect on Cancun and surrounding Quintana
Roo towns and villages. Americans, in particular, dom-
inate the Cancun tourism landscape, comprising nearly
75.3 percent of hotel guests in 2002 (CTO 2004). The
largest segment of these tourists is made up of vacation-
ing middle-class families seeking an economical sun and
sand experience (Torres 2002a). American dominance
of tourist flows to Cancun contributes to the strong U.S.
influence in the Gringolandia construct.
Cancun tourists behave almost as short-term migrants
because they exhibit high rates of return. One tourist
survey revealed that 40 percent are return visitors and
90 percent planned to return in the future (Torres
327
2002a). The explosive growth of the timeshare industry
in Cancun also reinforces the pattern of regularity seen
in tourist visits. Many tourists own a week in a par-
ticular resort and return on an annual basis. Also, the
large expatriate community in Cancun, many of whom
came initially as tourists, certainly qualify as transna-
tional migrants. According to Cancuns U.S. Consular
Officer, there are approximately 4,500 U.S. citizens re-
siding in the Cancun area, which includes the Riviera
Maya, Playa del Carmen, Isla Mujeres and all points
south, including Akumal and Tulum (personal commu-
nication, Lynnette Belt, U.S. Consular Agent in Cancun,
27 January 2004, via e-mail).9
The increasing number of American retirees choosing
Cancun as their final destination also supports the no-
tion that visitors to Cancun are increasingly forging
permanent links. There is a long tradition in Mexico and
the Caribbean of retirees and second-home owners
(Henshall Momsen 1977; Truly 2002) who eventually
settle on a permanent basis. Often, these communities
form enclaves, interacting little with locals but never-
theless exerting an influence on localities through their
patterns of consumption, expenditures, and behavior. In
the Cancun context, these retirees are typically per-
ceived more as an extension of tourism rather than as
permanent immigrants. Cancun in this sense is a case of
transnationalism turned on its headAmericans settling
in Mexico as transnational migrants. Through these
various forms of short-term migration (repeat and return
visits, second homes, retirement), tourists establish so-
cial, economic, and political ties that create linkages
between their home places and Gringolandia. In so do-
ing, they have a profound impact on the construction of
Gringolandia through their consumption, entrepreneur-
ial activities, social interactions, and exchange of infor-
mation and ideas with locals.
Tourists leave behind not only dollars but also,
through their continuous flow, the demonstration effect,
and a variety of direct and indirect and temporally and
spatially patterned interactions with residents, they re-
structure host destination societies. Given the large
presence of American tourists in particular, this influ-
ence is manifest in a process of Americanization of
consumption, dress, culture, language, and moral values.
Consumption of American products and, in a broader
sense, culture has become a status symbol for local res-
idents. For example, the Cancun downtown McDonalds
is doing a booming business, teeming not only with
tourists but also with middle-class Mexican families.
McDonalds, the American archetype of cheap fast food,
has become a special place of entertainment for middle-
and upper-class families who take pride in being able to
 328 Torres and Momsen

buy their children a cajita feliz (costing more than a
multicourse meal at a local family restaurant) and give
them access to a playland that is better equipped than
any local public playground.
Tourists also have a profound effect upon local
economies through their consumption patterns. For ex-
ample, tourist consumption helps define tourism industry
demand for food that dictates, in part, opportunities for
developing linkages with local agriculture (Torres 2002b,
2003). Tourists also take back with them to their
countries of origin, memories, cultural artifacts, and, in
some cases, new consumption patterns. In Cancun,
tourist consumption is dominated by American tastes
and habits. While Americans are familiar with Tex-
Mex foods, tourism literature suggests that, in general,
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
transnational migration contexts where the migrants are
drawn to the host country for economic opportunities
and are in fact dependent upon host country residents
for employment. Unlike tourists who wield the economic
power, transnational migrants in other contexts are often
the marginalized other, struggling to improve their
economic status in the host nation. In the case of tourist
resorts, local residents are placed in a position subser-
vient to the tourist transnational migrants they serve
and depend upon. In turn, the migrants (tourists) come
to consume local places, services, and products. Tourism,
therefore, represents a unique and powerful form of
transnational migration, one that operates differently
than typical migration, but exerts, nevertheless, equal or
greater impact on host country destinations and people.

Americans, more entrenched and reticent in their con-
sumption patterns than many other nationalities, tend to
reject local foods (Belisle 1983, 1984a, b). According
to tourists surveyed by Torres (2002b), 26 percent of all
meals consumed by tourists were American cuisine. Not
surprisingly, consumption of American food was even
higher among American tourists, who consumed ap-
proximately one-third American meals. With high levels
of demand for American food, the potential to offer local
products and indigenous dishes is constrained. This di-
minished opportunity to offer local products, in turn,
limits the creation of backward linkages to local agri-
culture (Torres 2002b, 2003).
Aside from nationality, another factor influencing
consumption patterns is the type of tourist. Edensor
(1998) contends that it is essential that tourism be un-
derstood as varieties of practices rather than types of
people. Torres (2002b) classifies Yucatan visitors as
mass or alternative, based on their consumption of tourists more lurid desires through prostitution and drug
tourist places, and the nature of tourist practices in such
places. According to this categorization, 77 percent of
Yucatan Peninsula visitors are mass visitors. Study results
revealed that mass tourists consumed significantly less
local food than other travelers. This finding suggests that
mass tourist consumption practices in Cancun have in-
hibited the creation of linkages between tourism and
the regions local agriculture, a result that supports the
findings of other studies in which mass tourists are
considered to be more reluctant to experiment with local
dishes than are off-beat travelers (Sharkey and Momsen
1995; Momsen 1998; Telfer and Wall 2000).
Unlike other transnational migration circumstances,
the touristthe short-term transnational migrantis
usually more economically and socially empowered than
are local residents. The relationship between tourists and
local residents is typically unequal and based on de-
pendency. This circumstance contrasts starkly with other
Conceiving tourists as transnational migrants offers sig-
nificant potential for enhancing comprehension of the
tourists role in reshaping the local realities of tourist poles.
In conclusion, consumption-led migration of tourists
has played a profound role in constructing Gringolandia
as hybrid space characterized by uneven geometries of
power. Tourists are empowered by the relative strength of
the dollar and the extreme differences in wealth between
themselves and local residents. Tourists, often of middle-
class origin, enjoy luxury accommodations (through
heavily discounted packages) and are served by Mexican
workers in a manner that many have never before ex-
perienced. The middle-class American factory worker
is converted, if only for a short while, into a person of
relative wealth and prestige who commands respect and
attention. The extreme differences in wealth and power
between tourists and local workers also leave Mexicans
vulnerable to the subordinate position of catering to
dealing.
Many expatriate settlers come initially to Cancun as
tourists and become intoxicated by the instant elevation
in status they achieve, not to mention the lure of the
beaches, American amenities, and resort life style. Be-
cause of their nationality and ability to speak English,
these expatriates are able quickly to gain employment in
positions such as realtor, time-share dealer, activity in-
structor, and small business manager that place them
in direct contact with tourists. Other expatriates are
brought in by high-end transnational and Mexican
franchises to occupy upper-level management positions.
A third category of expatriates chooses a binational ex-
istence by purchasing timeshares and second homes,
thus acquiring their own piece of paradise. Traveling
regularly between their Cancun and their U.S. homes,
they gradually reconstruct hybridized identities as snow
birds or adventurous retirees. The interaction be-
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
tween tourists, Mexican and expatriate elites, and
workers creates new wants, needs, aspirations, and de-
sires among local residents. Gringolandia residents are
constantly surrounded by the conspicuous consumption
and apparent affluence of tourists, enticed by the rise of
new shopping centers and megastores, and bombarded
with advertisements for the latest consumer goods. The
effect has been a restructuring of consumption patterns
oriented toward imported goods and luxury items (par-
ticularly American). The valorization of the American
and foreign over the indigenous or Mexican ele- percent), Veracruz (8 percent) and Tabasco (7 percent)
vates foreigners, cosmopolitan elite Mexicans, and im-
ports (from outside the region) and further exacerbates
the uneven geometry of power inherent in Gringolandia.
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
Production-Led Migration and the Construction of
Gringolandia. The second type of migration that has
played a critical role in the construction of Gringolandia is
that of the domestic production-led migration of Mexi-
cans from outside the region and local rural people from
Quintana Roo and the greater Yucatan Peninsula. Can-
cun not only belongs to the imagined world (Appadurai
1996) of tourists, it also inhabits the imagination of im-
migrants seeking improved livelihoods and living condi-
tions and, in the case of many young people, the
excitement of an urban place. Tourism-driven migration
is arguably the greatest impact Gringolandia has had on
Quintana Roos rural landscape. Transnational perspec-
tives are useful in conceptualizing internal rural-to-urban
processes of migration occurring between Cancun and the
Quintana Roo rural periphery. While migration in this
case is domestic, it shares several characteristics with
transnational migration as it involves the flow of impov-
erished Maya peasants to the urban Cancun tourist pole
where foreign economic interests and the Mexican elite
dominate social and cultural structures. The ethnic, cul-
tural, economic, and physical differences between the re-
ality of a Maya village and that of Gringolandia are as
great or even greater than those between the nation states
of Mexico and the U.S. As with Mexican migrants to the
U.S., rural immigrants establish fluid social fields that link
their villages to Cancun through a circular flow of family
members, money, material goods, and cultural norms.
Through these rural-urban networks, they are able to en-
hance their income-earning abilities and survival strate-
gies. In many cases, migrant families are able to achieve
upward mobility within their villages through their ties to
Cancun; however, such ties harm rural productivity
through the loss of family farm labor to the tourist poles
(Dufresne 1995; Re Cruz 1996; Torres 2003).
While Cancuns developers planned for immigration
of workers to support the tourism industry, population
329
growth in the state of Quintana Roo and Cancun itself
has far exceeded expectations. The state experienced
dramatic population growth, increasing from 88,150 in-
habitants in 1970, before the resorts development, to an
estimated 874,963 in 2000 (see Figure 10) (INEGI
2000). According to the 2000 Mexican census, 70 per-
cent of Benito Juarez Municipality residents, of whom 95
percent live in Cancun, are immigrants from outside the
state. Over a quarter of those immigrants are from the
neighboring state of Yucatan, followed by Mexico City (9
(Ayuntamiento Benito Juarez 2002). While Cancun and
other major tourist poles (Cozumel, Isla Mujeres and
Playa del Carmen) have attracted significant numbers of
migrants from other regions of Mexico, ironically, these
resorts have served further to decimate the already
thinly populated rural areas of Quintana Roo (Arnaiz
and Dachary 1992). In addition to people who migrate
and settle permanently, a large number of temporary
laborers float between the tourist pole and their villages
(Momsen 2002, 2003). The mass exodus of poor rural
people from Quintana Roo in search of improved in-
come-earning opportunities has resulted in an explosive
growth of urban squatter settlements on the outskirts of
Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and other tourism
centers (Bosselman 1978; Hiernaux-Nicolas 1989; Car-
din Perez 1995). Squatter settlements are growing more
rapidly than infrastructure and service development,
resulting in a fringe of urban poverty at the periphery of
all of these resorts. In a 1997 survey of Cancun Franja
Ejidal households, Torres (2000) found that less then 1
percent had sewered toilets and none had access to
piped water in the home.
Quintana Roo Population 1910 2000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
X
0
1930 1970 2000
1910 1950 1990
Quintana Roo State Population (INEGI)
Cancun Resort Development (1970)
Figure 10. Dramatic Quintana Roo state population growth after
establishing the Cancun resort.
 330 Torres and Momsen
Explosive tourism-driven urbanization has led to the
reconfiguration of rural production space into urban
space for consumption by Mexican elites and tourists.
Even before recent changes in land reform legislation
permitted privatization, there were numerous reported
cases involving expropriation and sale of both ejido land
(communal land) and small-scale private holdings in
Quintana Roo (Green 1995). Most of what is now the
Franja Ejidal, housing the majority of low-paid, tourism-
industry workers in Cancun, once belonged to the Isla
Mujeres Ejido. First occupied by squatters with nowhere
else to go, the land has been gradually expropriated by
government housing authorities for sale to those same
squatters. Daltabuit and Pi-Sunyer (1990) report the ex-
propriation of large tracts of village farmland in Coba for
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
tourism purposes. While villagers were compensated with
title to forest acreage, the land they received was invari-
ably less productive and less accessible than the land
taken away from them. Rising land values in the vicinity
of tourist poles has fostered a growing number of land-
related conflicts and greatly heightened social tensions.
The most prominent example, mentioned previously,
is that of the Ejido Bonfil, on the outskirts of Cancun
(see Figure 3). Ejidatarios (individuals with usufruct
rights to communal land) have illegally sold large tracts
of land to wealthy Cancun elites for second homes. In
fact, local lore has it that anyone who is anybody in
Cancun has a plot of land in Bonfil. Government offi-
cials have engaged in numerous disputes with the eji-
datarios to stop the illegal sales, but they are hesitant to
prosecute peasants for political reasons (Interview with
Programa Certificacion de Derechos Ejidales y Titulacion de
Solares Urbanos [PROCEDE] official quoted in Torres
2000). The fate of the elite neighborhoods being con-
structed on lands originally designated for agricultural
use in the Cancun MIP (Master Integral Plan) remains
unresolved. As land values skyrocket and the stakes
become higher around Cancun, the consequences (ex-
propriation with minimal compensation) will become
increasingly unfavorable to ejidatarios. There are already
a number of cases involving alleged assassination of eji-
datarios who were defending rights to their Quintana
Roo land holdings (Rudino 1996).10
The effects of tourism and migration on rural immi-
grants and their households have been overwhelming.
Once in Cancun, migrants reconstruct their ethnic, ra-
cial, and political identities to negotiate their positions in
the tourist pole and renegotiate their situation in their
home villages. Evidence suggests that rural immigrants
generally undergo changes in language (replacing Maya
with Spanish), dress, and consumption patterns follow-
ing their arrival in the city (Arnaiz and Dachary 1992;
Pi-Sunyer, Brooke Thomas, and Daltabuit 1999). Ac-
culturation is gradual, as immigrants initially maintain
strong ties to their village, returning regularly to partic-
ipate in seasonal agricultural activities during their first
five to ten years in the city (Arnaiz and Dachary 1992).
The earliest immigrants are typically men who engage in
temporary wage labor in the city while their wives,
children, and other household members remain in the
villages, providing a social safety net (Daltabuit and Pi-
Sunyer 1990; Momsen 2002). This separation alters
family structure, gender relations, labor structures, local
production patterns, and the productivity of migrant
village households. There are an increasing number of de
facto single mothers and female-headed households
(Torres 2000). Other social impacts of tourism include
increased social stratification between tourism industry
beneficiaries and the have-nots, due to extreme wage
differentials and commodification of environmental and
cultural heritage (Daltabuit and Pi-Sunyer 1990; Arnaiz
and Dachary 1992; Momsen 2002, 2003).
The mass exodus to Cancun and other tourist poles has
had profound effects on Quintana Roo agriculture. Agri-
cultural employment has dropped from 54 percent of all
jobs in 1970 (Lopez Portillo 1979) to 11 percent in early
2000 (INEGI 1970; Ayuntamiento Benito Juarez 2002). In
turn, those working in the tertiary sector have continued
to increase proportionately. A growing number of Quin-
tana Roo and neighboring Yucatan farmers find them-
selves trapped between two worlds: working in Cancun
while trying to maintain milpa11 plots in their villages. The
motivation for many farmers to plant is no longer sub-
sistence but rather to maintain a claim on communal ejido
lands that are currently undergoing a process of privati-
zation through the PROCEDE program (Torres 2000).
Inevitably, agricultural production and productivity are
adversely affected by the irregular and erratic farming
practices that are the hallmark of absentee farmers. In
many instances, farming is abandoned altogether. A
growing number of farmers now circulate between Cancun
and their milpa plots in their villages, living as migrants
with one foot in both worlds (Torres 2003). All of these
processes have converged to produce a discernible drop in
total subsistence production in Quintana Roo.
While the Maya of Quintana Roo, circulating be-
tween rural and urban spheres, appear to be experiencing
deterritorialization (Appadurai 1996), in some indige-
nous villages, there are indicators of a struggle for re-
territorialization. This reterritorialization is evident in a
conscious assertion of the rootedness of place (Relph
1976) as well as an overt rejection of Gringlolandia.
Momsen (2002, 2003), in a study of the Quintana Roo
village of San Juan, observed low levels of out-migration
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
despite the villages proximity to major tourist poles such
as Coba, Tulum, and Playa del Carmen. People articu-
lated a preference to remain in the village, which offered
significantly better living conditions than the shanty-
towns on the resort peripheries. The handful of villagers
who worked outside the community only did so on a
temporary basis as a secondary activity to milpa during
periods of low agricultural labor demand.
The village of Tixcacal de La Guardia (Torres 2000),
reputed to be the home of the most conservative Maya,
the descendants of Cruzob who fought the Spanish-
descent Creoles during the regions nineteenth-century
Caste Wars (Reed 1964), also revealed a struggle for
reterritorialization and a rejection of Gringolandia. The
community, which remains an important Maya cere-
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
monial center and retains its military structure from the
Caste Wars, jealously guards its customs, language, tra-
ditions, and autonomy. Uninvited outsiders are not
permitted access to the community, and the ejido has
resisted the PROCEDE program, which distributes
communal property and provides individuals with titles
to once communal land, as is also true in San Juan. The
community exhibits a strong sense of place, rooted in
what villagers describe as the tradicion de los antiguos
(tradition of the ancestors). While neighboring vil-
lages are losing nearly all their youths to Gringolandia,
there is virtually no out-migration from Tixcacal. The
cohesion of Tixcacal, in part, stems from a sense that the
Maya are under threat of elimination by the outside
forces of global capitalism, manifest most evidently in
government-driven tourism development in this region.
Both Tixcacal and San Juan explicitly reject Gringo-
landia, nurturing instead a strong sense of place rooted
in ancestral traditions, although San Juan is a relatively
new ejido. In this manner they also avoid the deterri-
torialization experienced by other Maya communities.
Echoing action also being taken by Australian aborigines
on the other side of the world, this may be a new trend as
the deplorable living conditions experienced by rural
Mayans in Cancun become more widely known and fa-
cilities in Quintana Roos villages continue, gradually, to
improve. In contrast to rural Chiapas, the Zona Maya of
Quintana Roo has been, for the most part, without social
unrest in recent years. It is possible that the availability
of tourism-related employment has served to relieve
economic pressures that might otherwise have caused
conflicts. Recently, however, we discovered that, as
tourism jobs begin to dry up, rural people are beginning
to look mas al norte, forging new migratory circuits to
the United States. This new trend will add yet another
dimension of mobility to the already complex transna-
tional social fields of the region.
331
In summary, we note that our analysis of the way
particular transnational forces interact to create a hybrid
space marked by inequality includes the migration of
production-led laborers who work both to construct and
(re)produce Gringolandia. We employ a more encom-
passing notion of transnationalism (P. Jackson, Crang,
and Dwyer 2004) that includes these workers, who
are not transnational migrants themselves but who are
critical participants in Gringolandias transnational space
and social fields. We challenge the notion that trans-
national analysis should be limited to those who are
transnational migrants, that is, those migrants who cross
the physical borders of nation states. To ignore these
internal migrantsa distinct group whose social prac-
tices and daily lives are deeply embedded in Cancuns
social fields, a group that plays such a key role in
(re)producing Gringolandiawould be to provide an
incomplete picture.
Primarily through their labor and service to the
tourism industry, rural immigrants interact with the
other principal actors of Cancuns social fields including
tourists, Mexican and foreign corporations (as employ-
ers), and Mexican elites and expatriate elites (as super-
visors). While employment has been a major benefit of
tourism development, differences in education, class,
race, and nationality create significant asymmetries as to
who benefits the most from a Cancun job. Those who
acquire the higher-paying, permanent jobs that involve
direct interaction with tourists are the educated, middle-
and upper-class mestizos (particularly lighter skinned) or
expatriates from outside the region. Maya from the re-
gion occupy the lowest rung of the employment hierar-
chy doing the less desirable temporary and seasonal jobs
as construction workers, hotel maids, gardeners, kitchen
workers, and other low-skilled positions.
Nevertheless, Gringolandia, the center of capital and
employment concentration for the entire peninsula,
continues to serve as a magnet for Maya peasants who,
through their migration, reshape economic and social
relations within their households and home villages.
This creates new relations of inequity within rural
communities between those households that receive
remittances and those that do not. The differences in
wealth are glaring, as two-story cement block homes go
up next to former palapas (traditional thatched huts),
serving as visceral trophies of the gains acquired through
migration, visible and omnipresent reminders that prove
irresistible to local youth. In only one generation, many
Maya households have been transformed from predom-
inately rural subsistence farmers to an urban proletariat
who serve the tourism industry and its associated ur-
banization. This shift has reconstituted all aspects of life
 332 Torres and Momsen

including the core essence of Maya ethnic identitynow
being replaced by new hybrid identities as people
transform into Cancunense urbanitesunique, and
distinct from other Mexicans.
Conclusions and Future Research
Directions
With technological innovation continuing to lower
temporal and spatial barriers, there remain few places on
earth that have been untouched by tourism. Global-
ization has facilitated the growth of international tour-
ism, which is expected to reach over one billion annual
international arrivals by the year 2010, generating a total
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
nities, regions, and nations. While there are transna-
tional flows and other factors not transnational in origin
that contribute to producing uneven development and
inequity in the Yucatan, we have focused on the eco-
nomic structure and the production/consumption-led
migrations to Gringolandia because we consider these to
be most significant. Inherent in our analysis is a critique
of the top-down PTD model of tourism development,
the national neoliberal economic development para-
digm, and, at a larger scale, the current processes of
global capitalism. Understanding Cancun as a transna-
tional space provides insights into the power of global
capitalism to expand geographically, to transform and
commodify spaces, and to tighten its grip on all aspects of
life. In doing so, globalization and capitalist development

of $US 1,550 billion in earnings (World Tourism Or-
ganization 2002). Given the inherently transnational
nature of tourism, there are numerous areas in which
transnational perspectives can enhance our under-
standing of the dynamics of the global tourism industry
and of outcomes resulting from interaction between
global tourism and local realities. This potential is par-
ticularly great if scholars caste a wider net, utilizing the
more encompassing notion of transnational migration
put forth by several geographers (Mitchell 2002; P.
Jackson, Crang, and Dwyer 2004; McEwan 2004). With
analyses that extend beyond transnational migrants to
include those individuals and households who are deeply
touched by and who play a critical role in producing and
reproducing transnational spaces, we can improve our
understanding of the intersection between the global
and local and how everyday social practices are recon-
stituted in specific places through transnationalism. For
example, a transnational perspective situates rural mi-
grants within the transnational social field, creating a
greater awareness of how a group that is peripheral,
seemingly far removed and isolated, is highly dependent
upon and yet also helps to sustain the global economy.
The tendrils of transnational forces, particularly global
tourism, are far-reaching and persistent, irresistibly
stretching out to engulf even the most isolated corners of
the world. The expansive and unintended ramifications
of globalizationthe ability to restructure quickly
seemingly remote, unattached areasprovides a cau-
tionary tale for all tourism development initiatives.
Over the course of thirty years, the isolated tropical
forest enclave of Quintana Roo, the empty space, has
been transformed into the tourist Mecca that is Grin-
golandia today. The case of Gringolandia illustrates the
complex web of actors and social relations occurring at
multiple scales that construct transnational spaces that
(re)produce inequalities between local people, commu-
in the Yucatan have exacerbated existing inequalities
and created new uneven geometries of power at multiple
scales. These inequities involve not only power and
economics but are also evident in the subordination of
local cultures, social structures, and environments. By
examining the role of transnational forces in reshaping
local realities in Cancun, it may be possible to avoid the
WTO critics dire warnings of creating a world full
of Cancuns, characterized by asymmetrical geometries of
power, inequitable social relations, and uneven devel-
opment.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support over
the years for our collective Mexican research from the
following sources: an East Carolina University (ECU)
Research/Creative Activity Grant and Thomas Harriot
College of Arts & Sciences Research Award, a UC-
MEXUS Research Award, a National Science Founda-
tion Award (#9627457), a US-Mexico Fulbright Award,
and the University of California (Davis) Humanities and
Jastro Shields Awards. We wish to thank Dr. Karen
Mulcahy for producing the Figure 1 Map of Quintana
Roo for this article. Finally, we are grateful to the anony-
mous referees and Annals of the Association of American
Geographers People, Place, and Region editor Audrey
Kobayashi for their insightful comments on earlier ver-
sions of this manuscript. Nevertheless, any errors,
omissions or inaccuracies remain our own responsibility.
Notes
1. Ejidos are communal lands cultivated by farmers with
usufruct rights.
2. Colonia Puerto Juarez was the informal shantytown settle-
ment that evolved north of Cancun, on the Isla Mujeres
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
ejido that was not part of the planned FONATUR service
city. Colonia Puerto Juarez, was the name informally
adopted to refer to the immigrant squatters colony ex-
tending inland westward from the Puerto Juarez (Port)
north of Cancun.
3. According to the most recent Mexican census, Cancun has
397,191 inhabitants, comprising approximately 45 percent
of Quintana Roos population (Ayuntamiento Benito Juarez
2002). Given the constant influx of new immigrants and
the informal manner in which many live in shantytowns,
it is probable that the census results are well below the
real numbers. Discussions with planners reveal that the real
population of Cancun may be approaching one million
people and comprise 70 percent of the states population.
4. Approximately 20 percent of Cancuns hotelsmany of
which are among the resorts largest and highest-class-rated
hotelsnow offer a timeshare option (Ayuntamiento Be-
nito Juarez 2002).
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
5. A survey of 615 tourists departing from Cancun airport
revealed that 40 percent of all respondents were return
visitors to the Yucatan Peninsula and over 90 percent in-
dicated an intention to return to the regionsuggesting
that repeat visits will continue increasing in the future
(Torres 2002a).
6. For methodological details, see Torres (2000).
7. Some hotels were tentative about providing details regard-
ing ownership, or employees were uncertain of the precise
origin of ownership. Therefore, combined or other for-
eign were responses for a few of the hotels. It is likely that
there is American equity participation in these categories.
Also, in some cases, hotel owners of foreign origin have
changed their nationality to Mexican. Nevertheless, those
individuals typically lead lives similar to other Mexican
elites, i.e., with homes, businesses, and properties in Mexico.
8. Gran Turismo (GT) is the highest class of luxury hotel in
Mexico.
9. Only about 1,500 Americans living in the Cancun area are
registered with the consulate; however, officials estimate
that approximately three times that number actually live in
the area. Many choose not to register with the consulate as
they are either running from the law or their spouses
(personal communication, Lynnette Belt, U.S. Consular
Agent in Cancun, 27 January 2004, via e-mail)
10. In another case, Rudino (1996) reports on a conflict be-
tween ejidatarios and local elites for 298 hectares of land on
the western shore of the Bacalar lagoons, 32 kilometers
northwest of the state capital, Chetumal. Formerly ejido
property, in the 1970s, 60 percent of lakefront property was
taken from its rightful ejido owners. The land was sold to
local business and political elitesincluding both former
and current governors of Quintana Rooand jet setters
to build second homes. The remaining land in dispute is
planned for the development of Las Velas de Bacalar, an
exclusive hotel with a marina and golf course.
11. Milpa refers to the traditional subsistence, shifting-cultiva-
tion farming of primarily corn, beans, and squash practiced
by Maya peasant farmers in the Yucatan Peninsula.
References
Appadurai, A. 1990. Disjuncture and difference in the global
cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society 7:295310.
333
FFF. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of global-
ization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Arnaiz, S. M., and A. Dachary. 1992. Cancun: El enclave
turstico y sus costos. Subtema: Los Impactos Sociales y
Economicos del Turismo [Cancun: The tourist enclave and
its costs. Subtheme: Social and economic impacts of tour-
ism]. Caribbean Studies Association XVII Annual Confer-
ence, Grenada, West Indies.
Auge, M. 1995. Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of
supermodernity. London: Verso.
Ayuntamiento Benito Juarez. 2002. Atlas Municipal Benito Juarez
Cancun [Cancun, Benito Juarez municipal atlas]. Ay-
untamiento Benito Juarez y Archivo Historico de Cancun:
Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Belisle, F. J. 1983. Tourism and food production in the Carib-
bean. Annals of Tourism Research 10:497513.
FFF. 1984a. The significance and structure of hotel food
supply in Jamaica. Geography 1:21933.
FFF. 1984b. Tourism and food imports: The case of
Jamaica. Economic Development and Cultural Change 32:
81942.
Bosselman, F. P. 1978. In the wake of the tourist: Managing special
places in eight countries. Washington, DC: The Conservation
Foundation.
Britton, S. 1982. The political economy of tourism in the third
world. Annals of Tourism Research 9:33158.
Butler, R. W. 1980. The conception of a tourist area cycle of
evolution: Implications for management of resources. Ca-
nadian Geographer 24 (1): 512.
Cardin Perez, C. P. C. 1995. Cancun: Un centro turstico 20
anos despues. Foro: La migracion hacia Cancun [Cancun:
A tourist center after 20 years. Forum on migration to
Cancun]. Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO). 2004. Caribbean Tour-
ism Statistical Report, 20022003. Barbados: CTO.
Castro Sarinana, M. 1995. Foro de analisis: Cancun: El auge y la
crisis [Forum on Cancun: Prosperity and Crisis], Ayuntami-
ento de Benito Juarez. Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Clancy, M. J. 1999. Tourism and development: Evidence from
Mexico. Annals of Tourism Research 26 (1): 120.
FFF. 2001. Exporting paradise: Tourism and development in
Mexico. Amsterdam: Pergamon.
Coles, T., D. T. Duval, and C. M. Hall 2005. Tourism, mobility
and global communities: New approaches to theorising
tourism and tourist spaces. In Global tourism: The next dec-
ade (3rd ed.), ed. W. Theobald, 46381. Oxford, U.K.:
Butterworth Heinemann.
Constandse Madrazo, C. 1995. Foro de analisis: Cancun: El
auge y la crisis. Cancun a un cuarto de siglo de su fundacion
[Forum on Cancun: Prosperity and Crisis: Cancun a quar-
ter of a century after being founded]. Ayuntamiento de
Benito Juarez, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Cooper, M. 2003. Behind globalizations glitz. The Nation, 22
September, http://www.thenation.com (last accessed 19
January 2004).
Cothran, D. A., and C. C. Cothran. 1998. Promise or political
risk for Mexican tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 25 (2):
47797.
Crang, P., C. Dwyer, and P. Jackson. 2003. Transnationalism and
the spaces of commodity culture. Progress in Human Geog-
raphy 27:43856.
Dachary, A., and S. Arnaiz. 1985. Estudios socioeconomicos pre-
liminares de Quintana Roo: Sector turismo [Preliminary socio-
 334 Torres and Momsen
economic studies on Quintana Roo: The tourism sector].
Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico: Centro de Invest-
igaciones de Quintana Roo, A. C.
FFF. 1998. El Caribe Mexicano: Una frontera olvidada [The
Mexican Caribbean: A forgotten frontier]. Libro de Piedra
Editores, S.A. de C.V.: Mexico City.
Daltabuit, M., and O. Pi-Sunyer. 1990. Tourism development in
Quintana Roo, Mexico. Cultural Survival Quarterly 14 (1):
913.
Dufresne, L. 1995. Migration of Maya peasants to Cancun:
Peasantry destructuration and partial urban integration.
Actas latinoamericanas de Varsovia: Migraciones laborales en
America Latina y su impacto en los lugares de origen y destino,
Universidad de Varsovia, Warszawa, 17: 13975.
Duval, D. T. 2003. When hosts become guests: Return visits and
diasporic identities in a Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean
community. Current Issues in Tourism 6 (4): 267308.
FFF. 2004a. Conceptualising return visits: A transnational
perspective. In Tourism, diasporas and space: Travels to prom-
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
ised lands, ed. T. E. Coles and D. T. Timothy, 5061. Lon-
don: Routledge.
FFF. 2004b. Linking return visits and return migration
among Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean migrants in To-
ronto. Global Networks 4 (1): 5167.
FFF. 2004c. Mobile migrants: travel to second homes. In
Tourism mobility and second homes: Between elite landscape
and common ground, ed. C. M. Hall and D. Muller, 8796.
London: Channel V Publications.
Edensor, T. 1998. Tourists at the Taj: Performance and meaning at a
symbolic site. London and New York: Routledge.
Enriquez Savignac, A. 1972. The computer planning of Cancun
island, Mexico: A new resort complex. The Travel Research
Association, Proceedings of Third Annual Conference. Au-
gust 1316, Quebec, Canada.
Featherstone, M. 1990. Global culture: Nationalism, globalizat-
ion and modernity. Theory, Culture and Society 7:114.
FONATUR. 1982. Proyecto de desarrollo turstico [Tourism de-
velopment project]. Unpublished Project Proposal.
Georges, E. 1992. Gender, class, and migration in the Domin-
ican Republic: Womens experiences in a transnational
community. In Towards a transnational perspective on migra-
tion: Race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism reconsidered, ed. N.
Glick Schiller, L. Basch, and C. Blanc-Szanton, 8199.
New York: The New York Academy of Sciences.
Glick Schiller, N., L. Basch, and C. Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Trans-
nationalism: A new analytic framework for understanding
migration. In Towards a transnational perspective on migra-
tion: Race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism reconsidered, ed. N.
GlickSchiller, L. Basch, and C. Blanc-Szanton, 124. New
York: The New York Academy of Sciences.
Glick Schiller, N., and G. E. Fouron. 1999. Terrains of blood and
nation: Haitian transnational social fields. Ethnic and Racial
Studies 22 (2): 34066.
Green, J. 1995. Editor Cancun Tips, Personal communication.
Gupta, A., and J. Ferguson. 1992. Beyond culture: Space,
identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropol-
ogy 7 (1): 623.
Hall, C. M., and A. M. Williams. 2002. Tourism & migration:
New relationships between production & consumption. Do-
rdrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Haydt de Almeida, M. 1994. Amplitud historica, social, economica
y sus perspectivas del turismo en Mexico: CancunTulum Mitchell, K. 1997. Different diasporas and the hype of hybridity.
[Historical, social, economic amplitude and perspectives on
tourism in Mexico: Cancun-Tulum]. Mexico City: Pol-
icromia Impresora.
Henshall Momsen, J. D. 1977. Second homes in the Caribbean.
In Second homes: Curse or blessing, ed. J. T. Coppock, 7584.
Oxford, U.K.: Pergamon Press.
Hiernaux-Nicolas, D. 1989. Teora y praxis del espacio turstico
[Theory and praxis of tourist space]. Mexico City: Un-
iversidad Autonoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco.
FFF. 1999. Cancun bliss. In The tourist city, ed. D. Judd and
S. Fainstein, 12439. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
INEGI. 1970. General census. Aguascalientes, Mexico: Instituto
Nacional de Estadstica, Geografa e Informatica.
FFF. 2000. XII Censo general de poblacion y vivienda [Census
XII general population and housing]. Aguascalientes, Mex-
ico: Instituto Nacional de Estadstica, Geografa e In-
formatica.
Jackson, J. B. 1970. Other directed houses. In Landscapes: Se-
lected writings of J. B. Jackson, ed. E. H. Zube, 5572. Am-
herst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Jackson, P., P. Crang, and C. Dwyer. 2004. Introduction: The
spaces of transnationality. In Transnational spaces, ed. P.
Jackson, P. Crang, and C. Dwyer, 123. London: Routledge.
Jones, D. 1992. Which migrants? Temporary or permanent. In
Towards a transnational perspective on migration: Race, class,
ethnicity, and nationalism reconsidered, ed. N. Glick Schiller,
L. Basch, and C. Blanc-Szanton, 21724. New York: The
New York Academy of Sciences.
Kandelaars, P. 2000. A dynamic simulation study of tourism and
environment in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. In Tour-
ism and the environment: Regional, economic, cultural and pol-
icy issues, ed. H. Briassoulis and J. van der Straaten, 5989.
Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Kearney, M. 1991. Borders and boundaries of state and self at
the end of empire. Journal of Historical Sociology 4 (1): 5274.
FFF. 1995. The local and the global: The anthropology of
globalization and transnationalism. Annual Review of An-
thropology 24:54765.
Landolt, P., L. Autler, and S. Baires. 1999. From hermano lejano
to hermano mayor: The dialectics of Salvadoran transna-
tionalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 290315.
Lopez Portillo. 1979. Estado de Quintana Roo [The State of
Quintana Roo]. Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico: IEPES.
Lury, C. 1997. The objects of travel. In Touring cultures: Trans-
formations of travel and theory, ed. C. Rojek and J. Urry,
7595. London: Routledge.
Mart, F. 1985. Cancun fantasa de banqueros: La construccion de
una ciudad turstica a partir de cero [Cancun the bankers
fantasy: The construction of a tourist city from zero]. Mex-
ico City: UNO.
Massey, D. 1994. Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
McEwan, C. 2004. Transnationalism. In Companion to cultural
geography, ed. N. C. Johnson, R. Schein, and J. Duncan,
499512. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.
Merino, M., J. Sorensen, and D. Gutierrez. 1993. The fate of the
Nichupte lagoon system in the planning of Cancun, Mexico
as an international tourism center. In The management of
coastal lagoons and enclosed bays, ed. J. Sorensen, F. Gable,
and F. Bandarin, 11939. New York: American Society of
Civil Engineers.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15:53353.
 Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico
FFF. 2002. Cultural geographies of transnationality. In The
handbook of cultural geography, ed. K. Anderson, M. Do-
mosh, S. Pile, and N. Thrift, 7487. London: Sage Publi-
cations.
Mittal, A. 2003. September 8, 2003Daily reports from Cancun.
Food First Daily Reports from the WTO in Cancun No. 2, 8
September, http://www.foodfirst.com (last accessed 19 Jan-
uary 2004).
Momsen, J. H. 1998. Caribbean tourism and agriculture: New
linkages in the global era? In Globalization and neoliberalism:
The Caribbean context, ed. T. Klak, 11533. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
FFF. 2002. NGOs, gender and indigenous grassroots devel-
opment. Journal of Development Studies 14:85967.
FFF. 2003. Participatory development and indigenous com-
munities in the Mexican Caribbean. In Participatory and
communicative planning in the Caribbean, ed. J. Pugh and
R. Potter, 15572. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate.
Mowforth, M., and I. Munt. 1998. Tourism and sustainability:
Downloaded by [University of Sydney Library] at 07:57 18 May 2015
New tourism in the Third World. London: Routledge.
Oakes, T. 1998. Tourism and modernity in China. London: Rout-
ledge.
FFF. Forthcoming. Tourism and the modern subject: Placing
the encounter between tourist and other. In Seductions of
place, ed. C. Cartier and A. Lew. London: Routledge.
Palmer, G., and W. Jankowiak. 1996. Performance and imagi-
nation: Toward an anthropology of the spectacular and the
mundane. Cultural Anthropology 11 (2): 22558.
Paz Paredes. 1995. Tendencias mundiales del turismo: La zona
del Caribe. Foro de Analisis: Cancun: El Auge y La Crisis
[World trends in tourism: The Caribbean zone. Forum on
Cancun: Prosperity and crisis]. Ayuntamiento de Benito
Juarez, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Perez Taylor, R. 1996. Entre la tradicion y la modernidad [Between
tradition and modernity]. Mexico City: Universidad Nac-
ional Autonoma de Mexico.
Pi-Sunyer, O., and R. Brooke Thomas. 1997. Tourism, environ-
mentalism, and cultural survival in Quintana Roo. In Life
and death matters: Human rights and the environment at the
end of the millennium, ed. B. R. Johnson, 187212. Walnut
Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Pi-Sunyer, O., R. Brooke Thomas, and M. Daltabuit. 1999.
Tourism and Maya society in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Occasional Paper No. 17, Center for Latin American &
Caribbean Studies, Storrs, CT.
Portes, A., L. E. Guarnizo, and P. Landolt. 1999. The study of
transnationalism: Pitfalls and promise of an emergent re-
search field. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 21737.
Re Cruz, A. 1996. The two milpas of Chan Kom: A study of so-
cioeconomic and political transformations in a Maya commu-
nity. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Reed, N. 1964. The caste war of Yucatan. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Relph, E. 1976. Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.
Rodrguez, N. P. 1995. The real New World Order: The glo-
balization of racial and ethnic relations in the late twenti-
eth century. In The bubbling cauldron: Race, ethnicity and
urban crisis, ed. P. M. Smith and J. R. Feagin, 21125. Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Correspondence: Department of Geography, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, e-mail: torresr@mail.ecu.edu (Torres); Depart-
ment of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, e-mail: jdmomsen@ucdavis.edu (Momsen).
335
Rudino, L. E. 1996. Defender las 298 hectareas de Bacalar, pi-
den ejidatarios [Ejidatarios request defense of the 298 hec-
tares in Bacalar]. El Financiero, 15 May 1996.
Sharkey, D. A., and J. Momsen. 1995. Tourism in Dominica,
West Indies: Problems and prospects. Caribbean Geography
6 (1): 4051.
Skillicorn, P. 1997. Cancun water & wastewater circumstance.
Briefing summary presented to the Ritz Carlton Hotel,
Cancun.
Smith, N. 1984. Uneven development: Nature, capital and the
production of space. New York: Blackwell.
Telfer, D. J., and G. G. Wall. 2000. Strengthening backward
economic linkages: Local food purchasing by three Indo-
nesian hotels. Tourism Geographies 2 (4): 42147.
Torres, R. 2000. Linkages between tourism and agriculture in
Quintana Roo, Mexico, PhD diss., University of California
at Davis.
FFF. 2002a. Cancuns tourism development from a Fordist
spectrum of analysis. Tourist Studies 2 (1): 87116.
FFF. 2002b. Toward a better understanding of tourism and
agriculture linkages in the Yucatan: Tourist food consump-
tion and preferences. Tourism Geographies, 4 (3): 282306.
FFF. 2003. Linkages between tourism and agriculture in
Mexico. Annals of Tourism Research 30 (3): 54666.
Torres, R., and J. Momsen. 2004. Challenges and potential for
linking tourism and agriculture to achieve pro-Poor tourism
objectives. Progress in Development Studies, 4 (4): 294318.
FFF. Forthcoming a. Gringolandia: The construction of
transnational tourism space in Mexico. In Adventures in
Mexico: Discovering a new American perspective, 1945pre-
sent, ed. N. Bloom. Jaguar Series on Latin America. Lan-
ham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
FFF. Forthcoming b. Planned tourism development in Quin-
tana Roo, Mexico: Engine for regional development or pre-
scription for inequitable growth? Current Issues in Tourism.
Torres, R., and P. Skillicorn. 2004. Montezumas revenge: How
sanitation concerns may injure Mexicos tourist industry.
Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 45
(2): 13244.
Torres Maldonado, E. J. 1997. From tropical hell to tourist par-
adise: State intervention and tourist entrepreneurship in
Mexican Caribbean. PhD diss., The University of Texas at
Austin.
Truly, D. 2002. International retirement migration and tourism
along the Lake Chapala Riviera: developing a matrix of retire-
ment migration behavior. Tourism Geographies 4 (3): 26181.
Urry, J. 1990. The tourist gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary
societies. London: Sage Publications.
Vertovec, S. 1999. Conceiving and researching transnational-
ism. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 44777.
Williams, A. M., and C. M. Hall. 2002. Tourism, migration, cir-
culation and mobility: The contingencies of time and place.
In Tourism and migration: New relationships between produc-
tion and consumption, ed. C. M. Hall and A. M. Williams,
152. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
World Tourism Organization. 2002. About WTO. http://
www.world-tourism.org/aboutwto/aboutwto.html (last ac-
cessed 30 March 2002).