I have always tried to keep an open mind. This applies to many different aspects of my life including work, academics, politics, and friendships. Finally, this study aboard experience allowed me to expand this mindset to traveling and being a tourist. Going to Mexico was the first time I left the country since I got here so I definitely had some culture shock during the first week. Something that stood out the most to me was how often people talked to each other. From a causal good morning or good afternoon from a stranger to full-blown conversations with servers at restaurants I found it to be very different from America. This may just be my experience but typically I do not say good morning to strangers on the street and while I have polite conversation with a cashier at a store I am definitely not telling them where I am from and what college I attend. Ultimately, this change was different but also refreshing. In the short time I spent in Merida, I found myself wishing that this sense of community was also in America. As I have been reminiscing about my time in Mexico I realized that even though there may be many differences between Merida and Pennsylvania, I never took that as an opportunity to cast judgement.
When I first read the description of Yucatan made by John Lloyd Stephens in “Incidents of Travel in Yucatán” I was upset. I remember my group discussing how his recount was meant to be an objective view of his second experience in Yucatan but instead he let his subjective judgments change the narrative. It was frustrating reading about how some random white man comes into a different culture, judges its customs and its people then gets recognition for the “rediscovery of the Maya civilization.” After getting to hear from all the guest lecturers and tour guides, it’s clear to me that while traveling is a privilege it is also a responsibility of those who can afford to do so or else narratives like Stephens’ will continue to exist. Except, I do not mean traveling in the sense of a vacation, but rather traveling with the perspective of learning and sharing what one learns. I understand that the average tourist is not as severe as those we saw in Cannibal Tours but if the only thing separating them from us is performative pictures with local children, then that is not good enough.
I feel like it is so easy to say that it is important to learn about the histories of the places we visit but after this trip I truly understand the significance behind that statement. My experience in Merida was incredibly enriching because of the stories I heard from Christi Uicab, Francisco Fernández, Marian Rodriguez, and every tour guide we had. They helped me understand how tourism has deeply affected their home which in return helped me understand that no matter how hard we try we can never be good tourists. Even though we were technically students learning about colonialism we only learned about the history of the natives through performances put on by locals catered just for us. I truly recognized this when we visited the chocolate factory and sat in on a rain ritual. The entire thing felt so performative and wrong but at the same time how else would those places stay open if not for us? M. Bianet Castellanos mentions in Return to Servitude that indigenous people played a foundational role in the development of tourism (Castellanos, XVIII). Maybe this is the answer for learning about cultural histories and also supporting native groups, or maybe this is just an ingenious survival tactic by indigenous groups. Who knows, to be honest? All I can be certain of after this trip is that even though we may never achieve the feat of being a “good tourist” as long as we continue to understand the significance of those who came before us and how our current state continues to make an impact, we are different from the tourists in Cannibal Tours. After all, it is the effort that counts.
