the sociolinguistic field, renders persons or activities (or sociolinguistic phenomena) invisible” (ibid.).
In what follows I describe some of the ways in which the tension between regional and national identities is played out. To provide a context for these performances of identity, I first describe the transformations evident in contemporary Mérida. As these examples show, in some instances it is more or less evident that some negotiation of meanings is taking place during the performance of difference. In other cases, the radicalization of the regionalnational divide makes negotiation or dialogue seem difficult (if not outright impossible) to achieve.
“We Should Fence the State”: Alien Invasions and Gastropolitics in Yucatán
When we returned to Mexico in 1993 and established our residence in the state of Chiapas, my wife and I began traveling twice a year to the Yucatán peninsula to spend vacations with friends and relatives. It did not take us long to realize that many things had changed since we had moved to Canada in 1986. In those seven years, the city of Mérida had grown beyond recognition. There were many new residential neighborhoods, and the service sector had expanded dramatically. Our friends took us to see the new shopping malls, department stores, and hypermarkets. New cooking ingredients were available for the local connoisseur: French, US, and Mexican markets multiplied the supply and variety of foodstuffs and drinks imported from Asia, Europe, North and South America, and different regions of Mexico. Mérida looked, especially in contrast to highland Chiapas, like a consumer's paradise. Our friends informed us that the city had become the destination for large numbers of central Mexicans who were demanding different sorts of goods and that, during the previous decade or so, the overall level of urban income had risen, leading to the expansion of the regional market for international foods and drinks. During the same period, a number of transnational and national fast-food franchises had opened in the city, and in some neighborhoods the demographic dominance of non-Yucatecans was turning local food into a rare commodity, in contrast to the increased availability of Mexican foodstuffs. Yucatecans in those neighborhoods lamented that at night they found it easier to come across vendors of sopes, huaraches,32 and Mexican tamales than the traditional Yucatecan food stands selling panuchos, salbutes, Yucatecan tamales, and turkey tortas.
Even more upsetting, some friends told us that they were finding a gradual transformation with regard to the ingredients and preparation of local foods. In particular, they found it aggravating that many recipes had been changed and that dishes were being prepared with cream, cheese, and hot chili peppers, all of which are foreign to Yucatecan gastronomy. At that time, when some restaurateurs were attempting to please their clients by adding non-traditional ingredients to Yucatecan dishes, and even if they were trying not to modify the recipes radically, many Yucatecans suggested that it was disrespectful to cook local foods in ways different from the established ‘tradition'.33 Also, in contrast to the soft manners of Yucatecans, the demands of incoming Mexicans were (and are) often perceived as aggressive and inconsiderate, and I often heard complaints about the way in which, on account of the Mexicans, ‘good' Yucatecan food was disappearing from the city. There was a growing sentiment among Meridans that their own city was becoming alien to them, especially when something so quotidian as the preparation and availability of food had been changed to suit the taste of newcomers from other Mexican regions. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this resentment, born not only from the experience of changes in the urban foodscape but also from the perception of changes in other spheres of public life as well, was one of the reasons behind the proliferation of regionalist icons, such as Yucatecan flags and shirts printed with the legends “Republic of Yucatán” and “Proudly Yucatecan.” The inflow of migrants from different Mexican regions, but chiefly from the central Mexican highlands, revived in Yucatecans a sense of social and cultural distinctiveness that, they believed, set them apart from Mexicans in general. The migrants were perceived as threatening the integrity of regional Yucatecan society, culture, and identity, and very often this perception has led to forms of antagonism directed against immigrants from other Mexican regions, who have been characterized as the source of all current evils in peninsular life.
In 2006, Mérida had, according to some unofficial estimates, close to one million inhabitants—a rapid growth from 250,000 in the 1980s. The economic boom on the peninsula, which had been furthered by the development of the Cancún tourism resort during the second half of the 1970s, contributed to Yucatán's demographic growth, attracting immigrants from different parts of the Mexican republic who spilled over from Cancún into other large peninsular cities, particularly Mérida. The latest official census puts the total inhabitants in the state of Yucatán at 1,818,948, with 781,146 (42.9 percent) residing in Mérida. According to this census, during the first five years of this century, the state received 37,000 immigrants from other Mexican states (INEGI 2006). Although the census does not detail the immigrants' distribution within Yucatán or their place of origin, Meridans fear that their city is receiving the bulk of immigrants, mainly from the central Mexican highlands and Mexico City.
The growth of tourism in the region has translated into increasing demands (both quantitative and qualitative) on service providers. Until recent times, the peninsula of Yucatán had been relatively isolated from tourism flows. It was only in 1961 that the Mérida airport began to receive international flights filled with US tourists, who were attracted by the state's archaeological sites (Woodman 1966). During the late 1970s, the state government, seeking to profit from the success of Cancún, promoted the Yucatecan coast as an alternative to the overcrowded beaches of the state of Quintana Roo. By the end of the 1990s, the government of the state of Yucatán, forced to admit that the beaches on the Yucatecan north (the Gulf of Mexico waters) were not as attractive as those in the Maya Riviera tourism district, shifted the focus of its promotional campaigns. Instead of beaches, the emphasis was placed upon cultural resources. The multiple archaeological sites, several colonial towns, and existing hotel infrastructure were used to encourage cultural and academic tourism (Fernández Repetto 2010). Hotels in Mérida were promoted as sites to host international and national academic conferences, as well as political and economic meetings. At the beginning of this century, Yucatán was receiving about 1.5 million tourists annually, 31 percent of whom were foreign (SECTUR n.d.: 51).
Other processes have contributed to the growth of population in Mérida. In 1985, shortly before we left the state of Yucatán, a massive earthquake had shocked Mexico City's population. Terrified by the massive destruction, many central Mexicans began searching for alternative residence in other Mexican states. Certain that this was not the last of such events, and as a solution to the overcrowding of Mexico City, the Mexican government launched a decentralization campaign. Some industrial firms received tax incentives to relocate their plants to other Mexican regions, and bureaucrats were offered salary incentives to work in other Mexican states. Many Mexicans selected the city of Mérida in the north of the state of Yucatán as their new place of residence. A small city in the 1980s, it was the home of a population reputed for its hospitality and warmth. The city began to grow, partly as a result of this migratory movement triggered by geological phenomena and government policies, and partly as a result of rural-urban migration within the state of Yucatán, which was the outcome, in turn, of the application of new policies that discouraged agricultural work and ended the local production of henequen fibers. Rural Yucatecans began to migrate to Mérida, to Cancún, and abroad in search of work opportunities (Adler 2004; Re Cruz 1996). The growth in numbers of immigrants from other Mexican regions triggered local resentment, as many Yucatecans began to look on their presence as a threat to local culture and values. It was common to hear in conversations that it was imperative to restrict the immigration of Mexicans into the state of Yucatán.
In their everyday experience, Yucatecans have to face immigrants from different parts of the country whom they perceive to behave differently from themselves. Some Yucatecans complain that Mexicans are terribly aggressive and arrogant, that they routinely despise local ways of doing things, and that they seek to impose their own customs and practices in an attempt to displace local ones. In an apparently restrained but insidious language usage, I have found that it is common for central Mexicans to refer to the states as ‘the provinces',
