THE MAYA OF COBÁ: MANAGING TOURISM IN A LOCAL EJIDO

• Author conducts study of an ejido-based Maya town managing tourism.
• The ejido helps provides a sense of local agency within tourist context.
• Divisions within the ejido have resulted in different degrees of success.
• Ejido operates within a context of various power structures.

This article discusses how Maya tourist workers in Cobá, Mexico attempt to manage tourism by carrying the values of ejido (communally-owned land) membership into the workplace. Centered on kin ties within the community, the power of the ejido allows local citizens to assume a sense of ideological and physical control over the globalized market economy. At the same time, class and religious discrepancies, along with differential access to tourism within the ejido have resulted in new complexities surrounding management over this industry. This study reveals how the Maya try to assume political, economic, and cultural agency within the context of ejido relations, even as they exist within the dynamics of community differences and broader power structures in the contemporary era.