Heritage Preservation, Community Development and Sustainability: Tihosuco, Mexico and the Caste War of the Yucatan

Summary

International tourism is a powerful economic force in Mexico today but usually provides little help to indigenous communities except through a long process of economic trickle-down. In addition, many of the ancient sites, the focus of this tourism, are controlled by the nation-state with indigenous peoples often having little say about development or use of the economic benefits. Our recent project in Tihosuco, Quintana Roo is a collaboration between the town of Tihosuco, the Tihosuco Ejido, the local Museo de la Guerra de Castas, and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center. This project focuses upon the local heritage of the rebellion of the mid-19th century called the Caste War of the Yucatan – one of the most successful indigenous rebellions in the Americas. This project is focused upon the following: 1) the local identification of a Maya heritage and identity – tied to the Caste War; 2) the documentation and preservation of this heritage both in the jungle surrounding Tihosuco and in the town itself; 3) the identification and preservation of a series of additional important features including language, historical photographs, oral histories, and other things; and, 4) the gradual development of a sustainable tourism program, run by the local community.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Sustaining Heritage: New Directions for Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage