Gender and Race in Mexico: Analysis of Cultural Tourism and Social Empowerment in Chiapas
Overview
This paper analyzes Florence E. Babb's work on gender and race in cultural tourism across Latin America, with particular focus on Mexico's Chiapas state. It examines how tourism has shifted women's status from discrimination to cultural ambassadors while simultaneously reproducing racial hierarchies by privileging indigenous women over other ethnic groups.
What this essay covers
- Historical context of gender discrimination in Mexico from colonial times through the 1970s UN conference on women
- Analysis of how cultural tourism has reexamined gender and race, creating new economic opportunities for women through artisan groups
- Discussion of tourism's paradoxical role in promoting gender equality while reinforcing racial discrimination and indigenous exoticization
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Gender and Race in Mexico
Article: Florence E. Babb’s “Theorizing Gender, Race, and Cultural Tourism in Latin America A View from Peru and Mexico”
Florence Babb explores gender and race in cultural tourism in Mexico and Peru but focuses on Mexico's Chiapas state. Her argument focuses on the shift of status quo from women's discrimination to a new role of cultural tourism ambassadors. She also explores the role race plays in promoting local tourism in Mexico.[1] Women faced discrimination since the colonial times until the late 1990s when it reduced. The first UN conference on women held in Mexico in 1975 marked the turning point to America's gender and ethnicity in the 1970s. Gender and ethnic discrimination were profound during this era, but it soon ended after the Europeans introduced a different form of discrimination based on urban and rural life.[2] Babb acknowledges the relationship between race and gender and global campaign by feminists. Social analysts, as well as theorists, have also recognized the same. However, a gap still exists in the documentation of such historical revolutions, further indicating the gender discrimination in an unconscious manner. The tourism sector has provided a platform where gender, race, and indigeneity are reexamined. Women have been made a special asset for cultural capital, disputing women's notion of being a social liability.[3] In Chiapas in Mexico, women have beaten the odds and formed artisan groups that have empowered them.