Methodological approach to address the effects of tourism on cultural heritage. Magical towns of Sinaloa and Sonora, Mexico

Abstract

Nowdays, cultural heritage has become a product of the consumer society. This product is wished, looked for and found by the masses of tourists when they travel to cultural cities and sites worldwide -occasionally they just find a simulation of what was promised- , UNESCO has defined cultural heritage as the continuity and identity of the people, but now this conception is diluted. Therefore, we structured the follow research question: How has the tourism transformed “the places” of the native people in the Magical Towns of Mexico?

As a methological approach to answer the previous question about the Cultural Heritage focused in the magical towns of Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico, We start from the premise that the space is not just a physical container of the human activities, but that a mutual interaction between space and user exists. Hence we pick up on authors like Eduard Soja (1997) with his contribution about the third space and Daniel Hiernaux (2004, 2008, 2014), both of whom develop and update the approaches of Henry Lefebvre (1974). This methodological approach represents an effort to integrate the three dimensions of the space: what is conceived, what is perceived and the spaces of representation. As a pilot study, we analize the village of El Rosario, Sinaloa, which is part of the touristic program called "Magical Towns" of Mexico.