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Roads to Prosperity and Ruin: Infrastructure and the Making of Neoliberal Yucatán

Roads to Prosperity and Ruin: Infrastructure and the Making of Neoliberal Yucatán - Paperback

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Roads to Prosperity and Ruin: Infrastructure and the Making of Neoliberal Yucatán

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Availability:In StockContributor:Fernando Armstrong-FumeroPublish date:10/28/2025Pages:246
Language:EnglishPublisher:University of North Carolina PressISBN-13:9781469691213ISBN-10:1469691213UPC:9781469691213Book Category:Social Science, Political ScienceBook Subcategory:Anthropology, Cultural & Ethnic Studies, History & TheoryBook Topic:Caribbean & Latin American StudiesSize:9.21 x 6.14 x 0.56 inchesWeight:0.7804Product ID:SCG6ADYX92

In 2022, journalists announced the impending economic death of a small Mexican town. Pisté, gateway to the famed Chichén Itzá archaeological site, would be circumvented by the Tren Maya commuter rail megaproject and, consequently, deprived of the promise of steady tourist traffic. Instead of ruminating with frustration, locals set to work on negotiations with the state and federal governments. Generations of experience taught them that pragmatic engagement with mainstream political parties was essential in turning into opportunity projects with the potential to kill the local economy.

Fernando Armstrong-Fumero situates the Tren Maya in a long history of roadbuilding and economic development on the Yucatán Peninsula beginning in the 1930s. Drawing together archival research and decades of ethnographic work, Armstrong-Fumero develops the concept of negative infrastructure to show how infrastructural and industrial investments configure rural economic futures as well as how communities seek to mitigate the harms from projects designed to benefit other regions or interests. The push and pull of development reveals the strategies residents use to influence political change through municipal elections and informal protest. Recognizing their life-changing potential, rural Maya Yucatecans recast infrastructural projects as new possibilities for inclusion, agency, and resistance as participants in formal state and economic structures.

Language:EnglishPublisher:University of North Carolina PressISBN-13:9781469691213ISBN-10:1469691213UPC:9781469691213Book Category:Social Science, Political ScienceBook Subcategory:Anthropology, Cultural & Ethnic Studies, History & TheoryBook Topic:Caribbean & Latin American StudiesSize:9.21 x 6.14 x 0.56 inchesWeight:0.7804Product ID:SCG6ADYX92
Fernando Armstrong-Fumero is associate professor of anthropology at Smith College.
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press

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