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I took
a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew
the moment had arrived
I knew
the waiting had begun
And
headed straight... into the
shinning sun.
In the 1970s Mexico's
ambitious tourism planners decided to outdo Acapulco with a brand new,
world-class resort in the Yucatán Peninsula. The place they chose was a
deserted sand spit offshore from the little fishing village of Puerto
Juárez. Its name was Cancún.
In the last two decades
Cancún has grown from a tiny jungle village into one of the world's
best-known holiday resorts. The Mexican government sunk vast sums into
landscaping and infrastructure, yielding straight, well-paved roads,
drinkable tap water and great swaths of sandy beach.
Cancún is in the
enticing state of Quintana Roo, home to the country's Caribbean beaches,
impressive Mayan ruins and sizzling nightlife. Quintana Roo was little
more than a forgotten backwater for most of the 19th century. So
insignificant was this jungly, sparsely inhabited region in the minds of
Mexican authorities that it didn't even have an official name until
1902.
When, in 1902, it was
finally given a name and territory status, it was named after army
general Andres Quintana Roo, although he'd never served in the
territory. In the late 1960s Isla Cancún was a sliver of sand visited
only by local fisher folk and a few gringo adventurers. When the Mexican
government decided to develop a resort on the island, the channels
separating it from the mainland coast were bridged. Next, a town sprang
up (where Ciudad Cancún now stands) to house Isla Cancún's construction
workers and their families.
A well-paved street
bordered by wide sidewalks was run down the center of the island. Many
hectares of mangroves and scrub brush were ripped out, scores of gardens
were planted, and 'a very towered land,' as one 16th-century Spanish
historian described this coast, acquired even more towers as multistory
resorts went up.
When Cancún opened in
1974, the carefully developed island - commonly referred to as Cancún,
Isla Cancún or the Zona Hotelera - was promoted as a tropical paradise.
In short order it began attracting snowbirds from Canada and wealthy
beach bums from the USA, Europe and elsewhere. Remarkably, Quintana Roo
didn't become a state until that same year. And it likely wouldn't have
received statehood even then, except that the government and developers
ambitiously planning Cancún agreed that the new resort town would be
difficult to promote if it were situated in a region apparently unworthy
of statehood.
Despite its
inauspicious beginnings, Cancún has become one of the brightest spots on
the international sun-seeker map, although many argue that
overdevelopment and the resultant environmental pressures have spoiled
the place. Its star shone most brightly in 2003 with the release of a
movie, The Real Cancún, featuring the antics of the beach bunny
crowd, and the hosting of a round of World Trade Organisation talks,
which featured the no-customary demonstrations and ended in bitter
acrimony when representatives from third world member states refused to
play ball.
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