Borderscapes and tourismscapes: The place of postcards in Mexican border town tourism

Abstract

Since the early 1900s, Mexico’s northern border towns became important tourism destinations, receiving more foreign tourists than any other areas of Mexico. Historically, postcards followed the development of tourism in the borderlands, depicting unique border-oriented tourismscapes and life in general, and establishing an iconic image of the border as a rowdy, promiscuous and decadent location where Americans could spend their holidays abroad and participate in tourisms of vice. Until the 2000s, tourism in the US-Mexico border zone was overwhelmingly leisure oriented, and the proliferation of postcards illustrated that fact. Today, there are few postcards left and the ones that do remain are less focused on the border itself, as they once were; instead, they focus on the broader community with less emphasis on the borderline. Changes in border tourism from leisure pursuits to medical tourism and alcohol consumption, growing security concerns, and the proliferation of mobile phones and social media have almost entirely eliminated postcard use as a souvenir and marker of regional tourism identity in the US-Mexico borderlands.