By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Oct 24 2005 (IPS)

Much less visible than the damage caused by Hurricane Wilma to Cancún’s luxury hotels on Mexico’s Caribbean shoreline is the destruction of the tumbledown shacks built well out of view of the hotel strip, which house the tens of thousands of workers who serve the tourism industry.

Much less visible than the damages caused by Hurricane Wilma to Cancún’s luxury hotels on Mexico’s Caribbean shoreline is the destruction of the tumbledown shacks built well out of view of the hotel strip, which house the tens of thousands of workers who serve the industry.

From Friday afternoon to the early hours of Sunday morning, the island of Cozumel, the city of Cancún, Playa del Carmen beach and other places on the Yucatán peninsula were pounded by Wilma, with winds of up to 270 km an hour. The hurricane was the strongest ever to hit Mexico.

On Monday the storm slammed into the southeastern U.S. state of Florida, where at least one person was killed.

Hurricane season lasts from June to November in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the southern United States. But this year’s season has been especially harsh.

The images broadcast Monday showed enormous damages to infrastructure in the tourism industry, Cancún’s main source of revenue, and chaos and looting in a number of areas. Hundreds of people are still in shelters with neither electricity nor water, and food is running short.

Officials say it will take anywhere between six months and two years for the area, which receives more than 11 million visitors a year, to be rebuilt.

The four billion dollars a year in tourism revenues taken in by the city of Cancún alone represent more than one third of the industry’s national income.

The state’s National Tourism Fund reported that 70 percent of the hotels in the area felt the impact of the storm, and the Tourism Secretariat said that nine of the 11 nearby nature reserves had sustained serious damages.

According to the Secretariat, Mexico is losing between 12 and 15 million dollars a day in tourism revenues due to the damages caused by the hurricane.

The government of Vicente Fox made emergency aid available to help some 40,000 tourists left stranded by the hurricane return home.

But for the area’s residents, those who live in the “invisible” shantytowns ringing the tourism resorts, the situation will be more difficult, because many have lost their homes.

Cancún was founded in May 1970 with the idea of integrating the surrounding jungles, white sand beaches and Mayan cultural ruins into one big international tourism package, the same concept followed in the development of Cozumel.

However, the project entailed the destruction of large, previously untouched areas of mangrove swamps, dunes and other natural ecosystems, in order to build hotels, roads and piers.

Much of the destruction wrought by Wilma is the fault of the governments “that allowed the development of Cancún and its surroundings at the cost of nature,” said businessman Juan Carrillo, one of the pioneers of construction in the area in the 1970s.

In an interview with IPS, Carrillo said construction permits were granted for areas unsuited for development, and that the natural environment was pushed beyond the breaking point.

Along with the boom in tourism came the growth of precarious urban settlements around the resort areas.

Of the close to 750,000 people living 10km from Cancún’s hotel district, 60 percent live in poverty and 39 percent in extreme poverty.

Most of them emigrated there from other parts of the country to work in the tourism industry. Now they have been left without jobs, and in many cases, without homes, drinking water or electricity.

According to government figures, the poor in Cancún earn roughly 400 dollars a month, while those living in extreme poverty earn less than 250 dollars.

For tourists, paying 250 to 400 dollars a night at a hotel in Cancún is relatively cheap. In some of the high-end hotels, one night of accommodation can cost over 5,000 dollars.

To the south of Cancún, two hours away by highway, is the municipality of Solidaridad, created in 1993. It is another example of the poverty rarely glimpsed by the tourists who arrive at the resort town on planes, cruise ships and yachts.

The majority of Solidaridad’s 110,000 inhabitants work in the hotels and other tourism facilities along the coast. Around 30,000 of them do not have electricity, while 70,000 have no drinking water.

The population growth rate in the urban area around Cancún and in Solidaridad is over 20 percent a year, as compared to less than three percent on average in this country of 104 million people.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Oct 24 2005 (IPS)

Much less visible than the damages caused by Hurricane Wilma to Cancún’s luxury hotels on Mexico’s Caribbean shoreline is the destruction of the tumbledown shacks built well out of view of the hotel strip, which house the tens of thousands of workers who serve the industry.

From Friday afternoon to the early hours of Sunday morning, the island of Cozumel, the city of Cancún, Playa del Carmen beach and other places on the Yucatán peninsula were pounded by Wilma, with winds of up to 270 km an hour. The hurricane was the strongest ever to hit Mexico.

On Monday the storm slammed into Florida, where at least one person was killed.

Hurricane season lasts from June to November in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the southern United States. But this year’s season has been especially harsh.

The images broadcast Monday showed enormous damages to infrastructure in the tourism industry, Cancún’s main source of revenue, and chaos and looting in a number of areas. Hundreds of people are still in shelters with neither electricity nor water, and food is running short.

Although the destruction was severe, only seven people died, which authorities said demonstrated the effectiveness of the evacuation plans.

Officials say it will take anywhere between six months and two years for the area, which receives more than 11 million visitors a year, to be rebuilt.

The four billion dollars a year in tourism revenues taken in by the city of Cancún alone represent more than one third of the industry’s national income.

The state’s National Tourism Fund reported that 70 percent of the hotels in the area felt the impact of the storm, and the Tourism Secretariat said that nine of the 11 nearby nature reserves had sustained serious damages.

According to the Secretariat, Mexico is losing between 12 and 15 million dollars a day in tourism revenues due to the damages caused by the hurricane.

The government of Vicente Fox made emergency aid available to help some 40,000 tourists left stranded by the hurricane return home.

But for the area’s residents, those who live in the “invisible” shantytowns ringing the tourism resorts, the situation will be more difficult, because many have lost their homes.

Cancún was founded in May 1970 with the idea of integrating the surrounding jungles, white sand beaches and Mayan cultural ruins into one big international tourism package, the same concept followed in the development of Cozumel.

However, the project entailed the destruction of large, previously untouched areas of mangrove swamps, dunes and other natural ecosystems, in order to build hotels, roads and piers.

Much of the destruction wrought by Wilma is the fault of the governments “that allowed the development of Cancún and its surroundings at the cost of nature,” said businessman Juan Carrillo, one of the pioneers of construction in the area in the 1970s.

In an interview with IPS, Carrillo said construction permits were granted for areas unsuited for development, and that the natural environment was pushed beyond the breaking point.

Along with the boom in tourism came the growth of precarious urban settlements around the resort areas.

Of the close to 750,000 people living 10km from Cancún’s hotel district, 60 percent live in poverty and 39 percent in extreme poverty.

Most of them emigrated there from other parts of the country to work in the tourism industry. Now they have been left without jobs, and in many cases, without homes, drinking water or electricity.

According to government figures, the poor in Cancún earn roughly 400 dollars a month, while those living in extreme poverty earn less than 250 dollars.

For tourists, paying 250 to 400 dollars a night at a hotel in Cancún is relatively cheap. In some of the high-end hotels, one night of accommodation can cost over 5,000 dollars.

To the south of Cancún, two hours away by highway, is the municipality of Solidaridad, created in 1993. It is another example of the poverty rarely glimpsed by the tourists who arrive at the resort town on planes, cruise ships and yachts.

The majority of Solidaridad’s 110,000 inhabitants work in the hotels and other tourism facilities along the coast. Around 30,000 of them do not have electricity, while 70,000 have no drinking water.

The population growth rate in the urban area around Cancún and in Solidaridad is over 20 percent a year, as compared to less than three percent on average in this country of 104 million people.

Excerpt: