تغییرات در قد، وزن و وضعیت تغذیه با توسعه اقتصادی مبتنی بر گردشگری در یوکاتان

Over the past 40 years, tourism-based economic development has transformed social and economic conditions in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. We address how these changes have influenced anthropometric indicators of growth and nutritional status in Yalcoba, a Mayan farming community involved in the circular migration of labor in the tourist economy. Data are presented on stature and weight for children measured in 1938 in the Yucatan Peninsula and from 1987 to 1998 in the Mayan community of Yalcoba. In addition, stature, weight and BMI are presented for adults in Yalcoba based on clinic records. Childhood stature varied little between 1938 and 1987. Between 1987 and 1998 average male child statures increased by 2.6 cm and female child statures increased by 2.7 cm. Yet, 65% of children were short for their ages. Between 1987 and 1998, average child weight increased by 1.8 kg. Child BMIs were similar to US reference values and 13% were considered to be above average for weight. Forty percent of adult males and 64% of females were overweight or obese. The anthropometric data from Yalcoba suggest a pattern of stunted children growing into overweight adults. This pattern is found elsewhere in the Yucatan and in much of the developing world where populations have experienced a nutrition transition toward western diets and reduced physical activity levels.

Throughout Latin America and much of the developing world, nations are turning to tourism as a path to economic development for generating much needed foreign income and investment. International tourism to Central America expanded dramatically between 1987 and 1991, with growth rates of 11.5% and 16.8%, respectively (Stonich, 1998). Mexico is a leader in Latin American tourism and the Yucatan Peninsula is one of the most important tourism destinations in Mexico. For example, Cancun, the center of tourism-based development, grew from a small fishing village of about 400 inhabitants in the early 1970s to a population of over 400,000 people in the 1990s (Daltabuit and Leatherman, 1998 and Pi-Sunyer and Thomas, 1997). Mayan communities have become directly involved in the tourist economy as a source of inexpensive labor for construction and service jobs at tourism centers and as sites of ecotourism and archaeotourism. These changes in regional and local economies have affected the diet, nutrition and health of Mayan populations.

The results for child and adult changes in height in Yalcoba between 1938, 1987 and 1998 are consistent with results reported by Gurri (1997) for the maize zone of the Yucatan peninsula. Gurri found similar stature increases for boys and girls up to ages 16–18 and no differences in adult height in the 1980s and 1990s compared to 1938. In agreement with Gurri et al. (2001), we interpret our findings as an indication of improved well-being for rural Mayans that were a by-product of regional economic development during the previous 20 years. However, results reported here are similar to those in impoverished Mayan Guatemalan children (Bogin et al., 2002) and illustrate relatively small increases in stature compared to Mayan urban children of Merida (Siniarska and Wolanski, 1999) and the US (Bogin et al., 2002). The stature increase at age 10 of approximately 2.6 cm between 1987 and 1998 in Yalcoba were less than one-half the increase among Mayan children in the US compared to their early 1990s Guatemalan counterparts (5.5 cm, Bogin and Loucky, 1997), and less than one-quarter of the height increase observed in current Mayan-American samples (11.5 cm, Bogin et al., 2002). Similarly, Siniarska and Wolanski (1999) find Mayan boys in Merida to be an average of 10 cm taller than those measured in 1938 by Steggerda (1941). They note that rural boys in the Yucatan Peninsula were shorter than urban boys, and that boys from the maize region were among the shortest in the Yucatan. Thus, while stature increased slightly in the 1990s, stunting levels indicate that chronic, mild-to-moderate malnutrition remained high. This may especially be the case for households with neither sufficient milpa production nor wage income to meet basic needs (Leatherman and Goodman, 2005).