Since its founding in 1970, millions of tourists have frequented Cancún. Subsequent resort towns have profited from Cancún's popularity. Even the height of the COVID-19 pandemic failed to disrupt the construction of Tren Maya, a federal megaproject designed to connect large swaths of the Mexican southeast. Amid these old and ongoing developments, anthropologist Matilde Córdoba Azcárate offers us a refreshing ethnography of tourism. Unlike previous studies of tourism and the Yucatán Peninsula, which have often juxtaposed Cancún and the countryside, Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power, and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán examines the region's local and global dynamics in tandem. As Córdoba Azcárate argues, tourism is an inescapable reality. Despite its social consequences, tourism ensnares locals through its “sacrificial logics” of “predation and provision” (pp. 18, 198). However challenging the labor conditions of the tourism industry may be, they are generally preferable to emigration. Tourism is thus here to stay.Córdoba Azcárate begins her argument with Cancún, the epicenter of Mexico's tourist economy. She describes this global city as a system of “enclosures within enclosures,” noting that Cancún's expansion largely occurred through disaster capitalism (p. 40). After Hurricane Gilbert struck Cancún in 1988, hoteliers used public resources to rebuild privatized spaces. Similarly, the proliferation of all-inclusive resorts and high-rise condos in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma made it increasingly difficult for hospitality workers to afford local housing. Yet, as one informant explains, “the fear of a lack of community [elsewhere] put us off as much as wanting to leave the city immediately after the hurricane” (p. 59).In the absence of affordable housing or reliable unions, many workers have struggled to forge solidarity. Such is the case in Celestún, a sprawling fishing village located five hours west of Cancún. In 2000, the federal government declared the area a legally protected biosphere. While this quadrupled Celestún's bottom line, it pitted locals against each other. As one observer mused, Celestún became the “Afghanistan of the Maya coast” (p. 71). The opacity of Mexico's environmental laws led many villagers to compete with each other—sometimes violently—for priority access to tourists. Though outsiders will gladly pay to see Celestún's pink flamingos, most guides retain only 20 percent of their earnings. Meanwhile, Celestún's “ecotours” produce over five tons of daily waste.By contrast, the Hacienda Temozón Sur in Yucatán's former henequen zone is almost transparent in the servility of its marketing. Owned by some of Mexico's wealthiest investors, Temozón traffics in “luxury indigenous tourism” (p. 109). The euphemism speaks for itself. Temozón operated as a henequen plantation as late as 1987. Today it recruits its Maya workforce through its owners' private foundation; it practically holds them hostage whenever high-profile guests like George W. Bush arrive, and it has commodified sacred healing rituals traditionally performed by Maya women. Despite Temozón's dubious business model, Córdoba Azcárate resists the urge to pass moral judgment. Instead, she argues that the preservation of Indigenous cultural practices within such spaces represents the “triumph of utilitarianism brought about by tourism” (p. 141).Finally, Córdoba Azcárate turns to Tekit. This inland town demonstrates that even seemingly isolated spaces are susceptible to tourism. Despite its relative obscurity, Tekit emerged in the 1980s as the Yucatán Peninsula's leading producer of guayaberas. When the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement later undermined Mexico's textile industry, Yucatecan elites rebranded the peninsula's political economy. They invented a new form of sightseeing—“history, heritage, handicrafts, and habitat”—complete with stops to previously uncharted places like Tekit (quoted in p. 158). Yet local workers remain wary. As one of them asks rhetorically, “What will happen when guayabera work stops coming, as labor for the haciendas once stopped?” (p. 180).Together, these four enclaves—Cancún, Celestún, Temozón, and Tekit—constitute a powerful statement about the evolving realities of tourism in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. While the industry is exploitive and extractive, it is also enduring. As Córdoba Azcárate reminds us, the Yucatán Peninsula has historically appeared to outsiders as both “a world apart” and “a world ‘to escape to’” (p. 23). Despite Mexico's 2018 election of a center-left president with close ties to the region, such stereotypes have only gained currency with the construction of Tren Maya, which many Maya communities condemn. Perhaps it is telling that Tekit figures on the train's itinerary.Stuck with Tourism is both timely and salient. While some readers may question Córdoba Azcárate's optimism that tourists have more power than the Mexican state to reform the industry, her approach is compelling. It reflects over a decade of ethnographic research in multiple sites across the Yucatán Peninsula while drawing on additional insights from history and similar disciplines to reassess the local, regional, national, and transnational dimensions of late capitalism. The book's theoretically informed but empirically supported and widely accessible thesis also makes it ideal reading for undergraduates and the general public. For as Córdoba Azcárate concludes, it may very well be up to consumers to repoliticize tourism.