The Establishment of the Mexican Archaeological Heritage as a Tourism Resource in the Second Half of the XIX Century

Abstract

The objective is to understand the process by which archaeological heritage, before being intervened for consumption, became a fundamental tourist resource to build the image of Mexico as a travel destination. This occurs in the exploration stage of the Tourism Area Life Cycle, in the second half of the 19th century, through the reinforcement of the formal values and the visitor experience and its social construction as distinguishing values and capacity visitor attraction; and participants internal and external actors from the development of discursive strategies and actions that will be analyzed, through the kind of nationalism fostered in that period, the public actions related to the development of archeology and accounts of North American travelers, in order to identify the distinguishing observed qualities in the heritage and with different scope that position it as a tourist resource and justified its transformation into a tourist attraction.