Mateo Salas

Biography

Mateo is Fourth year PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. 

About my Research

My research examines how ecotourism and real estate development drives land dispossession in coastal Ecuador. While marketed as sustainable development that benefits local communities, tourism expansion often follows predictable patterns: strategic land purchases that block access routes, privatization of public beaches, environmental degradation of protected areas, and the transformation of landowners into low-wage service workers.

Through ethnographic fieldwork in indigenous coastal communities, I document how foreign investors and national elites acquire communal territories during moments of economic vulnerability. Community members describe selling ancestral lands for medical emergencies, then watching hotels rise where their families once fished. Former agricultural producers now earn $2-3 hourly in tourism jobs while foreign-owned businesses capture most tourism revenue.

My work traces specific mechanisms of accumulation: the formation of parallel governance structures to fragment existing territories, the contamination of mangrove ecosystems vital for subsistence fishing, and the erosion of reciprocal economic systems that sustained communities for generations. Young people increasingly migrate to cities, seeing no future in territories dominated by foreign capital.

This research challenges dominant narratives about sustainable tourism by centering the experiences of displaced communities. It examines how tourism development intersects with climate change, colonial imaginaries, and systematic land grabbing. Rather than accepting tourism as inevitable progress, I advocate for community-controlled models that prioritize local land tenure, environmental protection, and economic autonomy.

My current fieldwork also follows legal cases at national and international courts where communities seek to reclaim privatized beaches and restore public access. These outcomes will shape whether coastal communities can maintain territorial control or face accelerating dispossession under tourism expansion.