Framing Maya culture: Tourism, representation and the case of Quetzaltenango

Abstract

This article examines the representation of Maya culture in travel and tourism literature. It compares and contrasts framings in historical, promotional and online tourist media. Two main tropes are identified that have been central to this literature since the mid-nineteenth century, culminating in a current practice described here as Maya cultural tourism. In Guatemala, promotional texts replicate earlier tropes to portray Maya culture as a primary source of attraction. What these dominant commercial framings consistently ignore, however, are Maya contributions to global tourism narratives and exchanges. To address this gap, the second part of the article focuses on the ways in which local actors use online media to present themselves to tourists in the case of Quetzaltenango. This serves to illuminate key differences in how tourism marketers and local actors package Maya culture for global consumption. It is concluded that overcoming a preoccupation with the same tired tropes involves paying closer attention to cultural narratives emerging in cyberspace that acknowledge Maya agency in their relations with tourists and portray these exchanges in a more nuanced and robust manner.