ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how tourism is sought, legitimised, and implemented by expanding upon the articulation of different social relations that contest the management of lives and territory in Mezcala. Following Mexican Independence, elites adopted the ideas of 'progress', 'modernisation' and 'development', and governors reinforced them as synonyms of foreign capital, economic growth and novel practices to propel urbanisation, industrialisation and the tourist industry. The chapter explains the land conflicts framed by the property market and tourist industry demands, through the associated ideas of 'development', 'modernisation' and 'progress'. By means of advertising, the government used children to justify their intervention towards 'progress', and consequently, their actions favouring tourism; but more importantly, they did so in order to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the government kept on working in the Island using inadequate methods, materials and guidelines, and benefiting from co-opted comuneros.
