Unspoiled? Watch out. American and other foreign vacationers already spend roughly $2 billion a year in Cancun. That’s a third of Mexico’s income from tourism, its third largest industry. This fall Mexico’s Congress is expected to legalize casino gambling nationwide, and developers who think roulette wheels could spin as much as $250 million a year and 20,000 new jobs for Cancun are making massive plans for the corridor. Gambling would initiate a ““new, upscale phase’’ in tourism, says billionaire Enrique Molina, who owns Cancun’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. But many locals are bracing for overbuilding, corruption and organized crime. In a recent poll, more than half of Cancun’s residents rejected casinos. ““We want to believe these plans mean modernization,’’ says Jos Luis Soto, whose family owns a resort on the corridor. ““But they could easily ruin the paradise people come here for.''
Parts of Cancun may feel like America, but this is still Mexico – cocaine’s gateway north. Because casinos handle so much cash, they could become laundromats for drug money. Gambling backers argue that most casinos would be joint ventures with well-regulated U.S. companies, and thus would remain clean. But according to Mexican government documents and press reports, some prominent Cancun investors, including Molina, have been investigated for ties to drug trafficking. (Molina and others in question deny any ties.)
The battle for the beaches is also heating up. Small bungalow resort owners on the corridor, many of them American and European, say the Mexican big shots want to squeeze them out. ““Ten years ago Mexican businessmen dismissed all that property as if it were swampland,’’ says a Mexico tourism analyst. ““Now they decide they want it.’’ U.S. baby boomers Dan Vallejo and Susan Bohlken bought their beach of dreams 10 years ago for $2 a square meter. Now it’s worth $80 a square meter, but developers are offering only $15. Suddenly, the couple says, they have faced legal hassles like immigration-status reviews and building-permit delays. ““It’s like open season on us because they need beaches for casinos and marinas,’’ Vallejo says. One foreign lodge owner says a Mexican developer warned him last year to sell out – ““or we’ll take it from you.''
Who actually owns the beaches also is in dispute. Impoverished coconut farmers and fishermen, mostly of Mayan descent, have begun filing legal claims for stretches of shorefront property. They insist the Mexican government promised it to them years ago as part of its land reforms. One peasant group occupied Soto’s resort last fall and held guests hostage for a day. Many Cancun Corridor property owners say they suspect that if the campesinos win title to the land, they’ll just sell it at bargain prices to developers. The locals deny such plans.
The odds favor the big shots. Aside from its appeal to U.S. tourists, Cancun is king today because, as in Acapulco before it, powerful politicians have planted their spoils of office there. The family of the now disgraced former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari is said to have massive concealed investments on the Cancun Corridor. (The family declines to comment.) Despite all the money pouring into the area, Cancun’s waiters and chambermaids earn little more than the $3 daily mini- mum wage, and most locals lack decent roads and plumbing. That’s another rea- son many are betting that the ““new’’ Cancun would look a lot like the same old Mexico.
