Nurturing Convivencia: Maya Living and Healing in Cancún, Mexico

In the tourist city of Cancún, Mexico, settler tactics promote a narrative of a city of immigrants. These tactics erase Maya migrants’ efforts to uphold Indigenous self-determination and the practice of convivencia. For Maya migrants, living well together in Cancún entails devising place-making strategies that help them forge a sense of belonging and cultivate reciprocal relations in urban spaces. Maya migrants are not just creating livable spaces, but they are also asserting their rights to the city, a process that I refer to as “Indigenous urbanisms.” As a Maya ethic of sociality and care based on caring for each other, convivencia helps Maya migrants experience the metropole as a space of reciprocity, survival, and healing, especially during pandemic times.