Tourism and Sustainable Development in Protected Areas or Reflections on the “New” Contradictions for Enhance-Paralyze Production in Rural Zones

Abstract

Recently, Mexican rural development policies pursue new objectives: to produce unique economic values such as tourism and, more specifically, ecotourism in protected areas. The conditions upon which the State and other relevant actors lead to increase productivity in protected areas have been little discussed, even less attention has been taken to the complex interplay of general processes which affect tourism production and biodiversity protection. Based on a critical and realistic analysis of ecotourism production in northern Quintana Roo (Mexico), this paper offers a way to understand the conditions on this “novel†pattern of development that favours capital expansion.