ABSTRACT
Using evidence from Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), this chapter suggests how geospatial knowledge production and securitization can contribute to tourism-enabled land and resource grabbing. After a brief history of what is now the MBR, the chapter considers the competing livelihoods and political economic interests that currently shape discussions over the Reserve’s future. These include significant interests in nature- and archaeology-based tourism expansion led by advocates seeking to create the “Mirador Basin” wilderness preserve. A tourism-focused re-zoning of the Reserve would re-shape current land use and management practices in favor of foreign- and elite-aligned goals. The chapter explains how geospatial technologies have been fundamental to tourism interests by identifying and demarcating the Basin as a tourism space and defining threats to those spaces, justifying intervention. This evidence type provides part of the basis for ongoing land grabbing, including through the introduction of legislation in the United States that aims to securitize the Mirador Basin for geopolitical and political economic interests. However, despite a relative lack of economic and political power, Reserve communities have successfully resisted these land grabs, in part through their own geospatial knowledge production and related advocacy, suggesting that tourism-enabled land grabbing is not a foregone conclusion.
