Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity (review)

Globalization and tourism are on anthropologists' radar for good reason. Increasing global interconnectedness is changing, sometimes profoundly, the way we view ourselves and others. Little's book follows in the tradition of Graburn's 1976 volume on world ethnic and tourist art, but focuses on the Kaqchikel Maya who sell crafts (típica) in the marketplaces of Antigua, Guatemala. The author's fluency in Spanish and Kaqchikel, and his experiences in Guatemala as a tourist, tour guide, anthropologist, and co-director of a summer Kaqchikel language and culture program, give him multiple perspectives on his research topic.

Theoretically, Little looks at how Maya cultural identity is constructed though self-identification; ascription, meaning classification as Indians by the state and other Guatemalans; and social interactions with other Mayas and many of the 500,000 tourists who visit Guatemala annually. He emphasizes social relations not only with tourists, but within the Mayas' overlapping communities of birth (Kaqchikel hometowns) and work (Antigua), engaging in multi-sited fieldwork to analyze the forces at play in the creation and modification of the slippery entity we call ethnic identity. Little is correct in emphasizing the degree to which indigenous communities are no longer bounded entities because of the extent to which their inhabitants are mobile, and part of larger national and transnational geopolitical systems.

Several aspects of the book stand out. Little's chapter on maps of Antigua is inspired. He examines how maps undermine tourists' expectations by containing the logos of multinational corporations. Such advertising places Antigua in a transnational matrix, thereby deconstructing the myth of the city as a colonial time capsule. This concept of the town and people as "colonial" freezes and museumizes the Maya as relics of an earlier era, and erases those Maya who do not fit this stereotype (for example, contemporary Maya scholars in Antigua). Little's emphasis on gender, which is frequently interpreted to mean "females" and often ignored or under-emphasized by male anthropologists, is also commendable. Because Maya women predominate as vendors of traditional crafts, the marketplace itself becomes gendered as a female space. In an elegant analysis, Little explains how the increasing economic power of women has altered gender roles within households, with males sometimes giving up economic and personal autonomy and helping with traditionally female household tasks.

One criticism is called for, that by no means outweighs the considerable value of this book. The phrase "tourist gaze" should be retired. It has lost its analytical usefulness, if it ever had any. Humans everywhere look, "gaze," and sometimes stare at others; we commonly call it "people watching." We watch one another, and visitors to the United States watch us. It is disingenuous to criticize tourists for wanting to look at or photograph the Antigua vendors when the Maya attempt to attract tourists with female típica vendors in traditional dress. In a sense, traditional dress is used as a form of advertising, and the Maya realize that women are more successful than males wearing Euro-Americanized clothing. Otavalos in Ecuador, Taquileans in Peru, and other indigenous people, like the Maya, know that their dress signals their status not only as indígenas, but as vendors of crafts, and use this strategically to attract customers. This does not excuse rude behavior by tourists anywhere, but asks for finer distinctions among tourists' behavior in works such as this.

This detailed and well-written book begs to be read in conjunction with recent books on ethnic arts and tourism in the San Blas islands, Panama; Otavalo, Ecuador; and Isla Taquile, Peru, and is an important addition to the literature on ethnic arts in Latin America, tourism, cultural identity, social change, and globalization.