Thread: Life in Cancun, Mexico: The side tourists never see

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs. ... 90326/1023

July 9, 2006

Life in Cancun, Mexico: The side tourists never see

By Chris Hawley
The Arizona Republic

CANCUN, MEXICO — The Cancun seen by 4.6 million tourists a year is a place of brilliant turquoise waters and white sand, tropical breezes and icy margaritas, glittering hotels and immaculate streets.

But there's another Cancun just beyond Kilometer Zero, the place that marks the end of the vaunted Hotel Zone that makes Cancun one of the world's biggest tourist destinations.

Beyond Kilometer Zero, things are not so idyllic.

It's a city of 500,000 struggling with the social ills of a frontier boomtown: crime and poverty, drugs and gangs, political unrest and a child porn ring whose alleged leader is now in jail in Arizona.

"If the tourists knew where we live, they'd understand what Cancun is really like," said Maria Eternidad Jimenez Orinano, standing in the door of her scrap-metal home.

Cancun wasn't supposed to be this way. When the Mexican government carved this resort out of the jungle in 1974 - the nearest town, Puerto Juarez, had only 117 residents - it was seen as a grand new invention in urban planning. But while Cancun the resort has been a runaway success - as well as a major source of cash for Mexico and the model for new resorts from Tunisia to Thailand - Cancun the city has problems. And sociologists and urban planners are beginning to take note.

"Cancun is suffering very serious urban problems, along with a kind of polarization and social asymmetry," said Eduardo Torres Maldonado, author of a book about the development of Quintana Roo. "We have people who live in the poorest circumstances working in luxury hotels."

Foreigners love this Disney version of Mexico where you can pay in dollars, speak in English and drink the water. The Cancun model led to the creation of four other resorts in Mexico: Ixtapa; Huatulco; Loreto and Los Cabos, which includes Cabo San Lucas.

But Cancun remains the king, raking in more than $3 billion a year and accounting for one-third of Mexico's tourism revenue, a major source of income for the government.

Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen in the dusty neighborhood known as Superblock 103, former hotel cook Carlos Omar Villanueva reminisced about the days when jobs were easy to get.

"When I came to Cancun in 1983, I didn't even know how to read. I just showed them my birth certificate and they gave me a job," he said. "Now they want you to have a high school diploma, maybe even know some English. It's not so easy."

Hotel housekeepers earn about 50 pesos a day, or about $5, not including tips. A worker at a McDonald's in the Hotel Zone typically earns $8 a day. But a gallon of milk in downtown Cancun costs $3.60, and a loaf of bread is $1.40.

Still, the hope of a job, any job, has attracted hordes of immigrants to Cancun. The most recent arrivals settle in shanties on the outskirts of town. The city also has a history of serious drug trafficking. In 2001, federal agents arrested the former governor of Quintana Roo state, Mario Villanueva, in Cancun. The United States is seeking his extradition on charges he protected more than 200 tons of cocaine shipments during the 1990s.

City officials, meanwhile, say police are poorly equipped to patrol the ever-expanding city. Until this year, Cancun's police force only had 41 operating patrol cars, Mayor Francisco Antonio Alor Quezada said.

Cancun is vulnerable to bad publicity because it has no other industries other than tourism, said Michael Clancy, author of Exporting Paradise, a book about planned tourism in Mexico. About half of Cancun's hotels are Mexican-owned, a 2000 study found, so much of the profits have stayed in the country. But those profits mainly end up in the rich suburbs of Mexico City, not in the pockets of local Maya.

"Mexico was kind of a pioneer," Clancy said. "But one of the criticisms of tourism in the global south is that it creates this sort of dualism: The money is there, but who is it benefiting? That's the question."

Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen in the dusty neighborhood known as Superblock 103, former hotel cook Carlos Omar Villanueva reminisced about the days when jobs were easy to get.

"When I came to Cancun in 1983, I didn't even know how to read. I just showed them my birth certificate and they gave me a job," he said. "Now they want you to have a high school diploma, maybe even know some English. It's not so easy."

Boo freakin' hoo. Isn't it funny that the Mexicans can't even learn English when it's a matter of survival, but they demand that we know Spanish and provide Spanish-language services in our own country?

As for education, how damned lazy or stupid do you have to be to not be able to acquire a high school diploma, again, particularly when doing so is the difference between working and not working? I know plenty of Americans who are getting their advanced degrees as adults while working full time. Are you going to tell me that a Mexican does not have the same ability to go out and get some text books and take an equivalency exam? When will these numbskulls come to understand that a person is worth what he is worth based upon his capabilities? If you can't read, you're never going to be anything but a bottom-feeder. If you don't have a high school education, you're never going to be more than a minimum wage employee. If you don't have a higher education you will never have the things that most Americans have and take for granted. We Americans had better not get too complacent either, because the state of public education is such that the Bachelor's degree is the modern equivalent of a high school diploma.

CrocketsGhost wrote:

If you don't have a high school education, you're never going to be more than a minimum wage employee. If you don't have a higher education you will never have the things that most Americans have and take for granted. We Americans had better not get too complacent either, because the state of public education is such that the Bachelor's degree is the modern equivalent of a high school diploma.

That's why they come here, the bleeding hearts will help them. The sanctuary cities get extra' federal monies', it doesn't matter if they have education or not. Then, once they have been living here cleaning our toilets and mowing our lawns (my bad), they can demand their rights and earn citizenship. We should all embrace that right?

Originally Posted by IndianaJones

CrocketsGhost wrote:

If you don't have a high school education, you're never going to be more than a minimum wage employee. If you don't have a higher education you will never have the things that most Americans have and take for granted. We Americans had better not get too complacent either, because the state of public education is such that the Bachelor's degree is the modern equivalent of a high school diploma.

That's why they come here, the bleeding hearts will help them. The sanctuary cities get extra' federal monies', it doesn't matter if they have education or not. Then, once they have been living here cleaning our toilets and mowing our lawns (my bad), they can demand their rights and earn citizenship. We should all embrace that right?

Right? I am aware of no right to citizenship except for those native to this nation.