Resumo

CORDOBA Y ORDONEZ, Juan  e  GARCIA DE FUENTES, Ana. Tourism, globalization and the environment in the Mexican Caribbean Coast. Invest. Geog [online]. 2003, n.52, pp.117-136. ISSN 2448-7279.

The terms globalization and tourism tend to be regarded as synonyms in the Mexican Caribbean, an area which shifted from a virtually uninhabited borderline territory to a tourism center receiving over six million visitors per year. Territorial occupation patterns derived from tourism -identified during field work through a physiognomic analysis-were used to investigate some of the implications of the complex relationship between tourism and development, the latter including not only economic but human factors, as well as with the natural and cultural environment characterized by both a great diversity and a great fragility.

Palavras-chave : Tourism; development; human development; globalization; sustainability; territorial occupation patterns.