Cancun, Mexico: geographic and cultural overview

Physical and Cultural Geography of Cancun, Mexico

Built from the ground up in the early 1970s, Cancun represents one of the more successful examples of governmental economic planning and development in cooperation with the private sector. Selected for its desirability to the "sun and beach" tourist market, today, Cancun, Mexico represents a popular destination for many domestic as well as international travelers seeking an idyllic and exciting vacation at relatively reasonable prices. Despite the overall desirability of the physically geographic location and the success of the economic development that has taken place since its construction, there are some profound social inequities that characterize life for the residents of Cancun that are directly attributable to the careful planning that went into its construction. Indeed, many local people living in Cancun do not benefit from the tourist trade at all or minimally while others are forced into working at a very young age and most of the economic development is taking place among major conglomerates, many of which are foreign owned. To determine what the current situation is and what can be done about it, this paper provides a case study on the physical and cultural geography of Cancun, Mexico to identify existing constraints in the region's development and opportunities for improving these constraints to encourage future investment and tourism. A summary of the research and important findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Analysis

Physical Geography of Cancun

The desirability of the physical geography of Cancun was one of the driving reasons behind its existence today. According to Jafari (2000), Cancun is a so-called "purpose-built destination" intended for tourism development (253). In an effort to appeal to "sun and beaches" tourism market, the Mexican government selected the location for Cancun to capitalize on its physical attributes. According to Jafari (2000), "The prime example of this type of development is Cancun (a hand-picked location built into a resort city from the ground up) that grew from 300 inhabitants in 1974 to more than 250,000 in 1995" (389). This author also notes that Cancun's beginnings in the early 1970s represented an initiative by the Mexican government to encourage economic development in the economically depressed Yucatan peninsula; the success of this venture has resulted in the Cancun model of developing physical geographic spaces being used in other locations around the world (Jafari 503). The physical characteristics of the Cancun region are described by Orme (2000) as being "Tropical wet, or rainforest, with ample rainfall through ten or more months of the year" (243). Likewise, McIntosh, Tainter and McIntosh (2000) advise, "The environment is broadly characterized as a tropical rainforest on the karstic limestone base of the Yucatan peninsula, but both the ecology and geology are considerably more complex" (271).

The region in which Cancun was built has long attracted human habitation notwithstanding its relatively limited fresh water sources and inhospitable soil for agricultural purposes. For example, Luzzadder-Beach (2000) reports that, "The Yucatan Peninsula was densely populated in the Maya Late Classic period (ca. A.D. 550-830), even though it depends principally on groundwater" (493). In fact, the relatively scarcity of fresh water supplies in the region in which Cancun was constructed has dictated how the land would be used and indeed, how it could be used over the centuries. As Stafford and Rasmussen (1994) point out, "Yucatan's minimalist geography has probably determined the peninsula's history as much as the human societies that have populated it" (22).

The physical geography of the region has also served to define its relationship with the rest of Mexico. For instance, Stafford and Rasmussen also note that, "Separated from the rest of Mexico by swamp and rain forest, Yucatan is essentially an enormous limestone rock jutting into the Gulf of Mexico toward the Caribbean and the United States" (22). Although not particularly suited to agricultural pursuits, the location's geographic proximity to spectacular beaches was clearly a controlling factor in the Mexican government's decision to develop this region. According to Stafford and Rasmussen, the region in which Cancun was built is "barely covered with soil and scrub vegetation, it has no mountains and only a small group of hills to the south, the Puuc, causing the heat to be undeflected and intense. Very few crops can grow there. Rocks make plowing difficult, and irrigation ditches are impossible to construct because the porous soil cannot hold moisture" (23).

Based on hydrologic investigations to determine whether groundwater could have satisfied the domestic and agricultural needs of the early Mayan inhabitants, though, it was found that although the region's groundwater is located near the surface and is influenced by sea-level fluctuations and geochemical analyses determined that the quality of the groundwater is not adversely affected by contamination with seawater (Luzzadder-Beach 493). According to this geographer, "Most of the water that falls on the surface either evaporates or migrates down to the groundwater zone and is discharged as freshwater springs offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of limited surface-water resources, groundwater must have played as critical a role in ancient domestic, economic, and social life as it does today" (Luzzadder-Beach 494). In sharp contrast to the coastal region where Cancun is situated, the center of the Yucatan Peninsula enjoys a wetter and more fertile environment, causing some anthropologists to speculate on the failure of the ancient Mayans to relocate there rather than perish mysteriously altogether (Mann 2006:505).

The coastal region of the Yucatan peninsula on which Cancun is situated is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Map of Yucatan Peninsula Showing Cancun's Location.

Source: Modified from map in Orme at 434.

Cultural Geography of Cancun

Understanding the relationship of a population to the physical geographic features in which they exist represents a basic goal of geographers today. In this regard, Jackson (1994) emphasizes that, "If geographers are to make the most of recent developments in social theory, for example, they require a more sophisticated theory of culture. For culture is not only socially constructed and geographically expressed. It must also be admitted that culture is spatially constituted" (3). Therefore, the places in which people, tourists, visitors and locals alike, live, recreate, work and socialize all play a role in contributing to the cultural geography of a given locale. This point is made by Cosgrove (2005) who reports that cultural geography is a study of "the contingent, diverse, and contradictory manner in which human societies approach the hermeneutic project of making sense of their existential and material spaces for living" (141). In Cancun, the cultural geography is clearly characterized by differentiated spaces for tourists and locals.

Indeed, according to Hall and Page (2002), Cancun, like many tourist destinations, seek to provide a specified location or regions in their communities that are devoted exclusively to tourist-related activities and others that remain the devoted to businesses and other activities that serve local residents and this is certainly the case in this tourist destination. For instance, Hall and Page note that, "The recreational business district is the seasonally oriented linear aggregation of restaurants, various specialty food stands, candy stores and a varied array of novelty and souvenir shops which cater to visitors' leisurely shopping needs" (289). In Cancun, there has been a thoughtful spatial differentiation made between the recreational business district and those other districts in the city that are devoted exclusively to tourist accommodations in order to better management tourism development (Hall and Page 289). According to Jafari (2000), Cancun was intentionally built in this fashion in order to keep the tourist-related activities separated from those used by local residents. As a result, Jafari notes that, "There is often little or no opportunity (and, for many tourists, little need or desire) for contact between visitors and local people and, in effect, [Cancun] is little more than an annex of tourism-generating country attached to the destination area" (253). In this regard, Hashimoto (2002) cites the desirability of destinations such as Cancun to foreign visitors but emphasizes that there are some serious consequences involved for the local residents of these destinations that are frequently overlooked in general and are certainly not included in the travel brochures promoting them in particular. "The typical images of paradise shown in travel brochures and on television are of lush green foliage, wild animals, smiling natives, and exotic food," Hashimoto notes and adds, "These promises of unforgettable experiences lure people to the developing world. Pristine natural environments, abundant wildlife, and rich traditions in the least developed countries (LDCs) are irresistible attractions to tourists of the developed world. However, the creation of these paradises does not come without hidden costs to host populations" (82).

The "tourist ghettos" that result from such spatial segregation for the haves and the have-nots has been the source of a growing amount of concern on the part of sociologists and others who suggest that this approach to development contributes to the social inequities that pervade many tourist destinations in developing countries today. In this regard, Jafari emphasizes, "As a result, tourism ghettos are frequently criticized for alienating tourists from local people and culture, thus minimizing the chance for meaningful encounters and exchange" (254). Indeed, while the major hotel chains and business situated in the recreational business district reap in the profits from the well-healed tourist traffic, there is little "trickle-down" economics at work in Cancun so that the poor stay poor while the rich just get richer. For example, Jafari concludes that tourist ghettoes "also bring little economic benefit to local communities as visitors have few opportunities to spend money on local goods and services; whereas resort income is maximized, the majority of tourist spending occurring within the (often foreign-owned) resort complex" (254).

This spatial separation between tourists, visitors and others from local residents and workers has been further reinforced and even encouraged by the inordinately high rate of migration to the area which can be attributed both to the climate and location, but to employment opportunities for Latin Americans as well. As a result, child labor is rampant in Cancun. For instance, according to Castellanos (2007), "In Cancun, adolescent migrants as young as age eleven work in the service and construction industries. They can be found cleaning hotels and private homes, selling goods on the street, and mixing cement for building crews. Not surprisingly, domestic service is one of the most common forms of child labor" (2).

The demand for unskilled labor to support the service industries that have cropped up in Cancun has increased over the past four decades or so across the board as well in ways that have fundamentally, and some say adversely, affected other aspects of the cultural geography of the city. For example, Hashimoto emphasizes that "Tourism development tends to have an impact on labor markets, attracting mainly unskilled laborers in direct and induced jobs. The migration of laborers causes not only a shift in human resources in the primary and secondary industries, but also the relocation of the population" (82). This has certainly been the case in Cancun as well. For instance, Castellanos adds that, "The construction of Cancun in the early 1970s intensified migration in the region, particularly from indigenous communities, and stimulated the local economy's reliance on service work, a gendered division of labor, and global capital. The resulting migration of adults and, more recently, adolescents has deeply affected the social life of indigenous communities in the peninsula" (2). The increasingly young and largely unskilled workforce that has resulted from this unplanned but relentless migration has created an even more divisive separation between affluent tourists and the local residents who make their visits possible.

There are some viable alternatives to the existing approach to development and administration, though, that hold some promise in addressing the foregoing problems for local residents and foreign visitors alike in sustainable ways. In this regard, Hashimoto emphasizes that, "Sustainability is a buzzword in the contemporary development discussion and the use of the term in the tourism industry is no exception. As national resources, including culture and heritage, are the main assets in tourism, it has been argued that economic well-being should not precede social and environmental well-being" (83). In fact, social and environmental well-being of the local residents of Cancun can be promoted by using a fundamentally different approach to tourism that encourages rather than discourages foreign visitors from touring the regions in which these people live and work. For instance, Hashimoto concludes that, "Officials have debated whether alternative forms of tourism rather than mass tourism, which has been the mainstream product for quite some time, are more sustainable. Ecotourism, particularly community-based ecotourism, is becoming the mainstay of alternative tourism development in least developed countries" (83).