Roads to Prosperity and Ruin

Name: Roads to Prosperity and Ruin
Brand: The University of North Carolina Press
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

By Fernando Armstrong-Fumero

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Description

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.

Product details

Binding:: Paperback
Number of Pages:: 248
Release Date:: 2025-10-28
Publication Date:: 2025-10-28
Publisher:: The University of North Carolina Press
Languages:: Original: English
ISBN10:: 1469691213
ISBN13:: 9781469691213
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:: [email protected]
Weight:: 428 g
Height:: 15.6 cm
Width:: 23.4 cm
Thickness:: 1.5 cm

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