Video: Cartels threaten tourism in Cancun, locals fear same fate as Acapulco

by El Profe for Borderland Beat      

              

                

Cancun, known as the safest place to visit in Mexico, saw at least 205 people murdered in 2017—more than double from the year before. With continuing extortion of businesses, locals fear it could go the way of Acapulco: a city once equated with glamorous beach getaways for celebrities that has for years possessed the nefarious title of the most murderous city in Mexico. (In the first six months of 2017 alone, statistics range from 412 to 466 murders in Acapulco.)

Government-tracking hackers hide out in the woods to keep surveillance on what they see as government collusion with cartels. This is just one of the ways in which people are trying to put an end to this devolution of Cancun before it truly starts.

The group was formed by Carlos Mimenza, a real estate developer recently turned 21st-century vigilante leader, in the Mayan Riviera tourist city of Playa Del Carmen, about an hour's drive from Cancun in the state of Quintana Roo. 

He started the group after "thieves held a gun to his sister’s head" and stole $46,000 USD from his safe. He offers free iPhones to those who record corruption on camera and is keeping the current Governor of Cancun, Carlos Joaquin Gonzalez, and other officials, under ''24-hour surveillance."

He views the issues facing Cancun as “a problem that the government itself has permitted, and the same government is the only one that can resolve it.” It is through this surveillance that he seeks to hold them accountable.

Mimenza is concerned for his city and rightly so, as "the state of Quintana Roo gets 10 million tourists a year, a third of the national total." However, sales in some of the major stores on Cancun's main boulevard are declining and a major nightclub in Playa del Carmen has been closed for good since five people were shot during a music festival.

A former Cancun policemen, interviewed under anonymity for PBS News Hour states, "that it's practically impossible to be an honest policemen [in Cancun]" and the police are told to "ignore all evidence."

He goes on to say, "the criminals insure that the police cannot behave professionally. The police officers who don't respond to the criminals' demands are laid off. The police make a deal with the criminals that insures disobedient officers will be fired."

The toxic combination of intensifying drug wars with what locals see as government impunity has created this spike in murder rates in the resort cities of Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. 

Once thought to be a safe spot amidst Mexico's violence, business owners and developers now are having to decide whether to pay extortion money to the cartels or create ways to address the violence themselves.

The video below is the news program Unreported World, produced by Quicksilver Media Productions. During the segment, the crew travels to the white sand beaches of Cancun where a hushed-up murder, unnoticed by passersby, has just taken place.

A local business owner and land developer, Hernán Cordero, is interviewed. He says that the Zetas try to extort him and that ''he hasn't paid but many others do.'' Cordero laments, ''Acapulco had the same problem a few years ago and it wasn't stopped." He adds that "[Cancun] could turn into another ghost town, just like Acapulco."

The reporter then travels to Acapulco and on the way from the airport, receives word of a homicide in the surrounding area of the city. They investigate and afterwards, visit the once luxurious Hotel Mirador. 

This hotel was once famous for visitors packing its rooms, wanting a view of the famous cliff divers plunging into the blue Pacific from the rocks a hundred feet above. It is now host to an abandoned terrace with empty seats overlooking ''one of the most beautiful views in the world'' and the highest homicide rate in the country. 

The parallels drawn between these two beach cities is an alarming glimpse into how a booming tourism industry can be easily dissolved by extortion and murder, hastened by government impunity.

The video  is an excellent on the ground reporting from Cancun and Acapulco.  It is a must see to get an up close and personal view of what is happening.  In one vignette, a Taxi driver is executed.   His family comes to the site of the shooting, his wife screams at the sight of her husband’s corpse.  The sister in law approaches the journalist and angrily tells him they want everyone to know what is occurring.  That not only do taxi drivers have to pay piso, they are ordered to collect piso.  To refuse, means death.

 

                      

Sources:

Shootout in Cancun: Narcos Take Their War Into Hot Beach Resorts

Cancun beach violence sends shock waves far and wide

The Cancun that tourists don’t often see: soaring murders amid a bloody drug war

Acapulco is now Mexico’s murder capital