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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2005 
Speedy Recovery Crucial to Cancun
 S. Lynne Walker - Copley News
| | Tourists are seen enjoying sun and surf in Cancun despite the massive damage caused last weekend by Hurricane Wilma. (Photo: El Universal) |
Cancun, Mexico – A steady drumbeat is pulsing through Cancun, a sense of urgency stirred by the fierce winds of Hurricane Wilma and shared by everybody from Mexico's president to the city's poorest residents: Cancun must be rebuilt by December.
In this resort city of 750,000, more than 314,000 jobs are generated by tourism. Every man, woman and child lives off money spent by foreigners lured by the lovely beaches, coral reefs and calm, turquoise water.
But when Wilma whipped into town on Oct. 21, the image Cancun had worked three decades to build was almost wiped out in 63 hours.
The sea swept away part of the beach. The drainage system stopped up. Hundreds of hotels were damaged, along with scores of bars and restaurants. Galvanized steel electrical poles snapped like toothpicks and trees were stripped of their leaves, creating a winter landscape in the tropics.
Insurance companies are calling it the most expensive natural disaster in Mexico's history.
The government has vowed the resort will be ready for the peak holiday season, but many believe Cancun won't be back to normal until early next year.
The city's residents, mostly poor people who migrated from all over the country to work in the city's 26,000 hotel rooms, fear Wilma has taken away the thing they value most – their jobs.
Already, some employees have been furloughed for 15 days or have had their work week shortened to just two days.
Ivonne Rosado worked at a beauty shop in the Ritz Carlton until Wilma turned its fury on Cancun.
Rosado had to swim out of her small, concrete house as a 6-foot wave of water swept through the neighborhood of Las Culebras, one of the poorest in Cancun. Afterward, she was left without drinking water and electricity.
Still, Rosado is focused on Cancun's future instead of her discomfort. The damage at the Ritz Carlton is so severe that the hotel has closed for the year.
"If the hotel zone isn't functioning, how are we going to work?" she said. "If we don't rebuild everything, we are going to have a very sad Christmas."
Lyssette Casarin blanched when she saw the devastation along Cancun's glitzy hotel row. She was being groomed to be an assistant to the director of a popular restaurant. Now, the restaurant is barely standing.
"We're not going to have the tourism we expected in December. Why would they come? There is nothing left," Casarin, 35, said as she sat staring at the ocean.
"I speak English. I have an education. But right now, I am in the same situation as a poor person. What are we going to do? That is the question of the future."
Recognizing the extent of the disaster, President Vicente Fox flew to Cancun as soon as the storm subsided, riding into town on one of the Navy's amphibious vehicles. Conditions were so bad in the hotel zone that he stayed in a $35-a-night room in town.
On Thursday, Fox returned to tour the devastation and promised hotel owners financial breaks if they kept people employed. By then the resort was already on the mend and Fox spent the night in a fancy hotel and dined on lobster.
"The goal is to restore Cancun to the best tourist center in the world by the 15th of December," Fox said Thursday.
The sounds and sights of rebuilding were everywhere last week.
Chain saws roared as they cut away broken trees. Heavy equipment scooped up tons of debris piled by hotels on the main boulevard. Residents lined up at banks and shopped for fragrant pineapples at fruit stands that are once again stocked and open.
Forty-eight hours after the wind stopped, officials began talking about a new campaign to bring tourists back to Cancun.
"We will not have the same tourist offerings this December that we've had in the past," acknowledged Artemio Santos, CEO of Cancun's Convention and Visitors Bureau. "But Cancun sells attractions all over the region. We have enough variety to offer."
His message: Cancun is not Paradise Lost. Cancun is Paradise Interrupted.
When Wilma struck Cancun, the Category 4 storm not only decimated a Caribbean resort, it also decimated a pillar of Mexico's economy.
Tourism is the third-largest source of revenue for the Mexican government, after petroleum and the money sent home from the United States by migrants.
The Maya Riviera, a breathtaking coastline from Playa del Carmen to Tulum, when combined with Cancun, accounts for 38 percent of the country's tourism revenue. Roughly 33 percent of those revenues – about $4 billion a year – come from Cancun.
"Cancun is a good business for the federal government," said Ana Patricia Morales, executive vice president of the Cancun Hotel Association.
It's such a good business that even before Wilma hit, Fox's government had pledged $20 million to restore the beach.
"If there is no beach, there is no tourism. We know that," said Yazmín Díaz, the city's deputy director of tourism.
Americans are Cancun's most frequent visitors, constituting 51 percent of the resort's tourist base. When Wilma hit, nearly 18,000 Americans were vacationing here.
Even now, thousands of American tourists remain stranded, desperate to get home and frustrated by the response they're getting from the U.S. government. They wonder why U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza did not come to Cancun when the British ambassador traveled to the city a day after the storm and spent hours in shelters speaking with British citizens.
Judith Bryan, press attache for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, said 50 embassy staff members were sent to help citizens during the hurricane, and consular officials worked behind the scenes to coordinate buses and airplanes to get Americans out of Cancun.
Garza "happened to be unable to come," she said, "but I know that he takes this very seriously."
Even as Americans were fuming about their own government's actions, they were struck by the kindness of Cancun's residents.
John Eisenlau, a 42-year-old architect from Atlanta, said people living near the emergency shelter where he rode out the storm brought the evacuees soup, spaghetti and coffee.
"The thing that was surprising to us is that it was their shelter in their neighborhood and they were feeding us while their shacks were being torn to bits," Eisenlau said. "They could have looted us and robbed us and they didn't. They understand that this is their livelihood. There's no doubt that they want Americans to be here."
Despite these warm, personal experiences, some tourists say their fear of being trapped by another hurricane will keep them from returning to Cancun. Others say the experience has strengthened their bonds with Cancun's people and they will definitely be back.
After the hurricane, tourists at the Royal Solaris Cancun Hotel offered to prepare and serve the three hot meals served at the buffet each day.
"They are appreciative of what we did for them," said Edgar González, 30, a manager at the hotel's reception desk.
"Many of the people said they are going to come back to Cancun just to visit us. We have made a lot of friends." |
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