An 'archaeology' of Chichen Itza: Discourse, power and resistance in a Maya tourist site

This is a study in the invention of Maya culture and of the Maya as a civilization. Within the history of Mexican politics and Yucatec regionalism, the interplay between local Maya society, tourism and anthropology has invented the Maya and embodied that invention in the ancient city of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. Through the archeological restoration of the ruins and the development of a tourist complex at Chichen and the nearby Maya town of Piste, a museum of Maya civilization was created. This tourist attraction is analyzed as an apparatus of power that regulates the localized practices of tourism as well as the discursive production of knowledge about the Maya that occurs in and is linked to Chichen Itza.;The second part describes the local tourist apparatus in terms of power relations and strategies. The focus is on the politics of tourism, specifically the struggles and everyday resistance of handicraft vendors to the imposition of social control by state agencies, including the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The politics and ethics of my own ethnographic practices are discussed as they reveal the strategies of power and knowledge that compose the tourist apparatus.;The dissertation turns from a traditional anthropological study of a culture, towards an inquiry of anthropology, specifically its historical role in the invention of a culture and the ethical dilemmas of doing ethnography.;The first part explores the political, economic and cultural processes that have incorporated Chichen and Piste into the state apparatus and the emergent tourist region of Yucatan. The focus is on the production of knowledge about the Maya and how such knowledge is enmeshed in fields of power. It is argued that a Museum of Maya Civilization is constituted through texts "written" in language, material artifacts, charter tours, and everyday touristic activities.