Gringolandia

CHAPTER

THREE

"Gringolandia: Cancun and the American Tourist" Rebecca Torres and Janet Henshall

Cancun has constructed as a Caribbean resort offering sun, sea, in an artificial reproduction of the Yucatan physical environment and gion's Mayan heritage. This simulacrum consists of pyramid,shaped stuccoed with fake Mayan hieroglyphics, Jet Ski "jungle" tours in the mangroves, Mayan waiters dressed in "authentic" Mexican garb, jaguars on display outside tourist restaurants. This artificial cultural is packaged expressly for the American mass,tourist gaze and (Urry 1990), and is embedded in shopping malls dominated by food outlets and the Widespread use of Spanglish (Boxill and 2002). The result is "GringolandiaH-a transnational hybrid,space ing elements of Mexican, American, and Mayan culture. This lan.QSc:al be playful and fashionable, but it is also inauthentic and unequal. A generation ago, Quintana Roo was one of the most inaccessible of Mexico. It was a frontier zone largely inhabited by marginalized people who lived by subsistence cultivation, chicle collecting, gling. The tropical forest enclave of Quintana Roo, a space of refuge "rebellious Maya/ ' seemed excluded from the growing economic, political relations that increasingly bound the United States and Through flows of investment, trade and early travelers, political' tion, and the growth of expatriate artist communities and intelle daves, the United States and Mexico had become increasingly nected during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With the exception of early~twentieth.century logwood and chicle extraction

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ties to the trade, Quintana Roo remained largely outside (Konrad 1991). was not entirely new to the Yucatan region at the time of Canctin's as a resort in the early 1970s. Before Cancun, the most important on the peninsula was the beautiful colonial city of Merida, with 5 rooms and seventy thousand inten1ational visitors in 1970 1972; Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo [FONATUR] "cradle of Quintana Roo tourism was the tropical IsLand of which began attracting adventurous tourists seeking exotic locales in twentieth century (Amaiz Burne and Dachary 1992; Dachary and 1996; Marti 1985), By 1970, Cozumel had 307 rooms and was at~ prC)Xllmately 36,300 foreign tourists each year to its wor1d~renowned tournaments, tropical reefs, and Mayan ruins. Isla Mujeres, a small, near Cancun and site of a minor Mexican naval air base, had its tourism industry dating back to the early 19508 (Amaiz Burne 1992). By 1970 Isla Mujeres, with 139 rooms, was attracting a to, foreign tourists each year. The limited growth of tourism in all of was due primarily to a lack of modem infrastructure, room capac~ communications, and transportation. Only the most intrepid travelers would venture to these remote destinations-a far cry typically pampered Cancun mass tourist. t of large,scale tourism development in Cancun during the early the relative isolation of the region. Thirty years later, Cancun has . 's largest tourist destination and receives over 3 million visitors majority of whom are American. The region has become a place consumption, and retirement for American tourists and ex, :neJcs--an estimated 4,500, according to the U.S. Consulate (Belt Roo has been "redefined as a tropical paradise, a land of beaches and pristine forest" (Pi~Sunyer and Brooke Thomas 1997, :f l\fleJl:1CC!ln Caribbean," or more recently, the «Riviera Maya." resort of Cancun itself was built as an exclusive enclave sepa, town, and efforts to keep the worlds of the visitor and the na, tinue. Resort planners were careful to segregate tourist space space of local residents, the intention being to avoid Aca, in which ghettoes and their waste~flows intermingle with Ott hotels, resulting in a loss of exclusivity for the resort. How~ venture outside the Zona Hotelera, or tourist zone, and be, in a search for new forms of entertainment, shielding these the poverty of the local people becomes more challenging. Paz 13), a Secretar[a de Turismo (SECTUR) official, notes that "it ll

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Rebecca Torres and Janet Henshall Momsen

was easier to take a group to a Caribbean island [anell place Club Med without them seeing the misery and social problems." Cancun has been radically transformed over the past fifteen years strictly "sun and sand" tourism bubble into a postindustrial, urban space offering a Hkaleidoscope" of activities (Hiemaux~Nicolas 1999; Maldonado 1997). One pronounced consequence of Cancun's transtortn: into a postindustrial urban tourism center catering to mass tourists has major increase in the number of middle-class American families that in Cancun. There have been numerous attempts to develop family changing t tourist attractions and facilities in Cancun to cater to file. One local fast-food chain owner observed, "In CancUn, more than 5 ago we realized that we were experiencing a change from an exclusive a mass-tourist destination catering mostly to North Americans" (Charles 47). One clear example of this trend is Mexico Magico, a mega-proj cluding a carnival~like amusement park in the hotel zone, that proved to miserable failure. The remaining vestiges of the park on the laproon--c::.l.I: rides shaped liked huge Mexican sombreros and chili peppers-are an and a testimony to bad taste and a poorly conceived idea. Sadly, a the Nichupte lagoon had filled in to complete this project. The can franchise "Wet 'n Wild" water amusement park also opened in (during 1997) and is reportedly struggling to remain viable. Other ented attractions, a go-cart track and an equestrian center, both of located near the airport, are also marginally profitable. .tv1any of today's tourists, attracted by the cheapness of Cancun, package holidays and spend very little money. American of American high-school and college students-have become the a intensive marketing campaigns designed to fill empty rooms at . rates during the low-season months. The issue of marketing to "bl~eaJk:ers' become highly contentious and a source of growing tension between residents and the local businesses that profit by the presence of the "b ers." "Spring breakers from the United States who crave Cancun's beaches and laidback atmosphere grudgingly accept that the paradise pens to be in Mexico" (Adams 2001). This type of tourism is already ing the problems of environmental degradation and devaluation of tractions of the resort (Arnaiz Burne and Dachary 1992; Dachary and Burne 1996). Unfortunately, for many Americans Cancun has become onymous with spring break. In summer 2003, the creators of MTV's The World series released what was touted to be the first reality movie, The Cancun, which documented sixteen American college spring breakers their week of debauchery in Cancun. The movie follows a long line of

Gringolandia

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61

break "Gone Wild" videos and annual MTV specials that have promote Cancun as among the top destinations for A~erican ~o:­ ,UUJ;:;LLl,O. This dubious distinction undoubtedly fills rooms In Cancun s hotels during the slower spring and summer months, but it has away many discriminating and higher~paying tourists. Local,S have of the spring breakers' antics, which one year included stealIng the Mexican flag that flies over the tourist-zone strip.

· f or Quintana Roo: DeSIgn

~cG' rlngolan d'la"

Quintana Roo has a space of exile, imprisonment, isola~ refuge, due in part to the region's marginalized tropical-forest e~~ in the larger Mexican national context. The isolated 1SCancun, situated in the northeastern corner of the Yucatan Peninsula would become the state of Quintana Roo in 1974, was selected by the nation's first master~plan~ed re~ort, or government as the site for Integral Center." The Cancun experiment took on natlOnallmpor~ it represented the cornerstone of a new, externally oriented, economic development strategy: planned tourism development and C. Cothran 1998; Clancy 1999, 2001). has long been a major source of foreign exchange for Mexico, and the Federal Program for Tourist Development, which had been fothe Pacific coast and central Mexico, was extended to the Yucatan . This was a deliberate attempt to tap into the lucrative market for vacations and to bring economic growth to a depressed, periph1'_A,~i"•.,., of the state. It was felt that the area had great potential for for four reasons: it had the same climatic and coastal resources as island resorts; it had archeological sites; there was an abundant of cheap labor; and it was closer to the southern and south-eastern States than any other Caribbean resort except the Bahamas (Lee Cancun was established specifically as a growth pole for the poor and populated territory of Quintana Roo on the Yucat~n Peninsu~a. Ulll.'-CU,lC1. Roo became a state of Mexico in 1974, and Its populatlon grew between 1970 and 1996. The village of Cancun, which had inhabitants in the 1960s, has become one of the world's leading destinations, attracting over 3 million tourists in 2000, of whom 58 were from the United States (Caribbean Tourism Organization 2002). hotel guests in Cancun in 2000,78 percent came from the United (Caribbean Tourism Organization 2002), underlining the resort's nick~ of "Gringolandia." The hotel area of Cancun remains quite separate

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Rebecca Torres and Janet Henshall Momsen

Gringolandia

from the town of Cancun. In the hotel sector are manicured golf gardens, despite local water shortages. Beaches are populated by by touts with many ways of extracting additionaL tourist dollars. cun's over 120 tourist hotels were built with a supposedly Mexican the Las Vegas or Disneyland "virtual reality" (MacCannell1999) is now overwhelming. Bartlett (1998, 52) aptly captures the feel of like spectacle of this overbuilt Cancun, or "Gringolandian :

Mass tourism has only encouraged the spread of American fast and American~style clubs and bars. On the far periphery of the town live the poor, often rural UUI,~Uj;::l