Since the 1920’s there have been short attempts to establish tourism as an economic activity in Mexico. This development, on the second half of the XX century, concurred with the passing of policies and instruments for the conservation and protection of built heritage, along with the search and consolidation of a national identity that would be confused with State nationalism.Based on the Island of Mexcaltitán, the following work will reflect on this from a hermeneutic historicist point of view. This shows, on one hand, that the two National Heritage awarded to it, as well as its mythic origin past, are improbable attributes and only understood since the conception of an institutional voluntarism; and in the other hand, given its morphological characteristics and picturesqueness, which along to an idyllic provincial Mexico, becomes a profitable worldwide touristic product. These elements would convert them into an excellent support of a collective memory’s façade built from a national, hegemonic, and nationalist imaginary and, for the same reasons, a target for the State aesthetic discourse.