Yucatán in an Era of Globalization (review)

This collection of meticulously researched essays is a fitting tribute to the late Edward H. Moseley’s contributions to Yucatecan studies. This work, co-edited with Moseley’s long-time colleague Eric N. Baklanoff, captures their devotion to trans-Caribbean scholarly collaboration between the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mérida, Yucatán. In the 1970s, Moseley and other faculty at the University of Alabama participated in a cross-disciplinary exchange that gave rise to a Latin American Studies Program field seminar in 1973. The scholars featured in this collection are part of that dynamic nexus of scholarly exchange spearheaded and maintained by Moseley and his colleagues at the University of Alabama for decades. One of the earliest products of this program was a notable collection of essays entitled Yucatán: A World Apart edited by Moseley and Edward D. Terry (1980).

The current collection of essays adds a new dimension to that pioneering work. It seeks to provided “cutting edge” perspectives on Yucatán’s contemporary global economy (p. ix). As testimony to Moseley and his colleagues’ commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship, the collection includes essays by historians, sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, and economists. In the process it honors the work and memories of other scholars who have made significant contributions to Yucatecan studies. It offers tributes to the scholarly contributions of the late Irving L. Webber and Dr. Alfredo Barrera Vásquez. The collection also includes an essay co-authored by the late Mexican architect and urbanist William A. Martin González.

Focusing on the aftermath of Mexico’s 1982 debt crisis and its impact on the Yucatán peninsula, the editors have organized the work around four themes defining Yucatán’s economy since the financial collapse: the decline of monocrop economy, economic diversification, the Yucatán-Quintana Roo nexus, and Mérida’s emergence as a strategic city. Along these lines, essays included in the volume explore the impact of globalization in Yucatán by way of the henequen boom of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, development of the port city of Progreso, the emergence of a class of modern business elites with ties to the old henequen oligopoly, the creation of the “other maquiladora frontier” in Yucatán, and three micro-studies of Maya villages as they confront challenges ushered in by the rise of Cancún as a mega-tourist center.

The work builds on well-developed premises advanced by several distinguished Yucatecanists, most notably Allen Wells, Gilbert Joseph, Terry Rugeley, Ben Fallaw, and Sterling Evans. These scholars link Yucatán’s unique positioning within the Mexican republic as part of a complex network of pressures and negotiations emanating from within and without the region. In the process, the Yucatan peninsula has provided a particularly interesting place to situate case studies linking micro-level economies and politics to broad themes of modernity, nation-building, and globalization. In that spirit, Baklanoff’s introduction provides a succinct snapshot of nineteenth and twentieth-century economic trends in Yucatán. Weaving in information about tourism and foreign fascination with ancient Maya sites, Baklanoff moves deftly between historical precursors and contemporary outcomes. Moseley and Helen Delpar’s co-authored first chapter continues to lay the historical foundation for the reader with a broad sweep of Yucatán’s past that moves rapidly from the pre-conquest Maya civilization all the way to the 1924 assassination of governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Some specialists may cringe at the amount of information that must necessarily be glossed over in such a broad but brief historical survey. However, the moments the authors highlighted in Yucatán’s rich history are well chosen and the essay succeeds in providing a solid foundation for the seven essays that follow.

Those essays provide the reader with focused and distinct views of Yucatecan society. The strength of Michael Yoder...