Theorizing Gender, Race, and Cultural Tourism in Latin America A View from Peru and Mexico

Theorizations of gender and race in Latin America have led to wide-ranging views concerning women and men in subaltern groups, whether indigenous or Afro-descendant, rural or urban. Views are similarly wide-ranging when theorizing turns to the implications of tourism development for subaltern peoples in the region. Just as it is customary to emphasize the historically subordinate status of women and racial minorities in Latin America, so too it is customary to show that tourism in the neoliberal era has particularly harsh consequences for these marginalized social sectors. At a time of indigenous mobilization, increasing migration, and urbanization, we must recognize the complex and often surprising ways in which gender, race, and tourism intertwine. Ethnographic cases from Andean Peru and Chiapas, Mexico, suggest that indigenous women play more or less prominent roles in tourism depending on several factors, with women who are active in the wider society holding more substantial positions in community-based cultural tourism.