Cancun isn't sunny paradise for everyone

Business leaders and politicians of the World Economic Forum (WEF), barely rested from their annual getaway at Davos, mingled with vacationers and protesters in Cancún this week for two days of talks on Mexico's economy. The forum's choice of venue could hardly be more appropriate—and not just because Cancún's 13-mile stretch is Mexico's single most concentrated site of foreign exchange. The famous spring break getaway is also a site of heated debate over international capital, government regulation, and protectionism. Perhaps the disruption caused by the demonstrations will cause a few spring breakers to step back from the beach and look at what Cancún's brand of multinational corporate tourism has meant for the region.

BRIAN CLEARY/NEWSMAKERS Cancun's spring break paradise belies the crushing poverty of its surroundings.

In 1967, Mexican government and business leaders fed data on the characteristics of various beaches into a computer program, which then zeroed in on an isolated Yucatán village as the perfect site for a master-engineered tourist trap. A city was planned, a strip of hotels and shopping centers was designed, multinational developers were contacted, World Bank money was secured, and a loophole was created to get around an inconvenient constitutional law that prohibited foreign ownership of coastal land. The resort that was launched in 1971 has grown to host over 300,000 permanent residents and three million annual visitors, and is responsible for one-third of Mexico's tourism foreign exchange, which in turn makes up the third-largest source of the nation's income.

On the surface Cancún seems like a perfect development (the high incidence of cocaine-money laundering aside): pave the way for foreign investors, build a super-resort in a region of the country known only for its thick jungle and struggling Mayan farm villages, and, like magic, the economy modernizes, thousands of jobs are created, and foreign cash starts to roll in. Sadly, it's not as simple as that. The repercussions of Cancún's development encompass much of what the WEF's protester sidekicks are marching and screaming about.

For one, Cancún's detrimental impact on the environment is becoming obvious. The unmonitored clearing of coastal vegetation has destroyed ecological balances; tourists are beginning to notice the clouding of water by algae, the cancerous reproduction of invasive species, and controversy over the loss of habitat for endangered species. In the early '90s, the Mexican admistration responded by trying to start regulating the "Cancúning" of the Yucatán coast, out of fear that unfettered environmental mutilation would curtail the attractiveness of the area. So far, however, the neo-liberal promotion of corporate impunity and deregulation has meant that conservation laws have hardly inhibited the reckless expansion of resorts.

Developers have shown even less concern about adequate living conditions for the low-paid workers who migrate in to service their hotels. Although the slums that border the resorts are mostly out of view of spring-breakers, they give testimony that while plenty of foreign money and tax incentives have led to the construction of luxury hotels, no money has gone to the construction of affordable housing or infrastructure for the workforce. Meanwhile, even though Cancún has one of the highest costs of living in the country, it belongs to the lowest of Mexico's three minimum wage zones, allowing foreign hotel owners to profit nicely from cheap labor. As a result, the rapidly expanding shantytowns, lacking sewers or garbage collection, contribute to pollution and devastate the quality of life for the workers.

Most insidious has been Cancún's relationship with the rural population. Early on, the government tried to encourage resorts to buy regional produce in order to aid interior development. However, traditional municipal farms were unable to compete with large-scale production, and after the passage of NAFTA, the hotels weren't even buying food from other parts of Mexico—they were importing from the United States. So, even though the Yucatán specializes in citrus production, the typical college vacationer's tequila sunrise is made using Florida oranges. And as agribusiness takes over land and brings in mechanization to make Yucatán farming more efficient, former farmers squeeze into the slums, fighting for the chance to hold that tequila sunrise on a platter.

Presently, the social fragmentation and over-urbanization brought on by "Cancúning" has made the Yucatán ripe for the most exploitative sweatshops in Mexico, which started popping up all over the peninsula during the past decade for such multinationals as Nike, Kraft, and Sara Lee—the kinds of interests represented by the WEF. So it was apt that the WEF leaders enjoyed Cancún's foreign-owned designer hotels and bought tropical drinks alongside vacationing college students. After all, most spring-breakers aren't there with an eye for the complex restructuring and intense poverty brought on by the very globalized corporate tourist industry that makes their vacation packages so cheap. For these privileged students, this former blip on a 1967 computer screen is truly the "paradise" of the WEF's vision for the global economy.

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