Cancun is disgusting. It is America’s prostitute. Its high rise
hotels and nightclubs is a smearing of make-up on a once naturally beautiful
face. Americans fly in: they throw money at it; use it; and leave, giving it
just enough time to reapply some lipstick and spread its legs for the next wave
of cashed-up tourists. The pristine beaches, with painfully perfect turquoise
water, are decorated with Corona and Rock Star Energy Drink tents, and
obedient Mexicans scurrying back and forth to serve fat, tanning businessmen
and their spoilt brat children. Four Coronas will cost you four dollars and a
dollar tip, the beach lounge is free. Loud speakers blast Top 40 pop while the
frigate birds circle overhead wondering what the fuck has happened. Mayan ruins
and cenotes are easily accessible but most visitors would never know, opting
instead for the raucous nightlife and beach parties and booze cruises. Spring
Break is when it steps up a gear and absorbs thousands of college students on
their mid-semester break; most are under 21-years-old and heading south to
Cancun more for the legal alcohol opportunities than the foreign experience.
Touts accost patrons along Cancun Boulevard with offers of free drinking and
appearances by T-Pain or Snoop Dogg at any of the dozens of tacky local clubs,
where they will be told to ‘wave their hands in the air like they just don’t
care.’ People fly in to Cancun, spend seven days at the beach or hotel pool
overlooking the beach and seven nights at the clubs then fly home, saying
they’ve been to Mexico and ‘it was great.’
As recently as the 1970s Cancun was still a coconut plantation
with only three residents. Seeing the potential, the Mexican government
financed a number of hotels to go up along the shoreline. Now, nearly 40 years
later its population pushes towards one million and it has become a hotbed of
excess, with drug-pushing taxi drivers and scamming ex-pats trying to cash in
on the influx of naïve, wide-eyed teens on a binge. And now it isn’t only
Americans visiting, but horny youths are flying in from all over the world partly
due to the success of videos such as Girls Gone Wild and MTV pool parties, all
hoping to get involved in a wet t-shirt contest or in the background of a rap
video.
Cancun has been denied of any dignity and charm and put kitsch and
depravity in its place. Two hours south along the Yucatan Peninsula is the chic
and relaxing beachside town of Playa del Carmen. An hour further is the
archaeological site of Tulum, famous for its Mayan walled city and verdant,
natural beaches where Mayan ruins rest on cliff-tops overlooking the sparkling
ocean. Instead of ruins and colonial architecture Cancun has all-you-can-drink
bars and prostitutes.
It is disgusting and it is wonderful. Cancun has the potential to
be every man’s ultimate fantasy and every woman’s free pass to debauchery. Cancun
doesn’t judge nor discriminate. If you’re there, you get in. It doesn’t matter
how expensive your shoes are or even if you’re wearing any. You don’t have to
pretend to be interested in culture or history, or say things like ‘the Mayans
really were ahead of their time.’ Instead you can concern yourself with perving
on unchaste women and drinking margaritas. It’s where a middle-class, spotty
college student can live like he’s in a rap video, spending money like a tycoon
without the risk of going bankrupt. Teen-age girls can grow up dreaming of
being the centre of attention to a mob of howling louts in a wet t-shirt
contest. In Cancun it becomes a reality. On any night there is a plethora of
venues encouraging young women to strip their shirts off on stage and get
sprayed with water, alcohol and abuse. And they do it. Cancun is a free pass,
an immoral playground removed from the consequences of daily life back home,
where ones actions will become anonymous once they pack up and board the direct
flight back home. It is freedom, excitement, alcohol, adventure and debauchery
all wrapped up like a full, dripping taco.
Despite everything
Mexico has to offer, Cancun has cornered market for the much sought after
dollars of binging students and prowling deviants. While much of the country
doesn’t see the income Cancun enjoys, it also doesn’t have to endure the indignity
of a trampled soul that’s been whored out to the wealthy neighbours. An
indignity that Cancun, and all of its visitors, is perfectly content with.
