Cancún[a] is the most populous city in theMexican state ofQuintana Roo, located in southeastMexico on the northeast coast of theYucatán Peninsula. It is a significant tourist destination in Mexico[5] and the seat of the municipality ofBenito Juárez. The city is situated on theCaribbean Sea and is one of Mexico's easternmost points. Cancún is located just north of Mexico's Caribbean coast resort area known as theRiviera Maya. It encompasses theHotel Zone which is the main area for tourism.[6]
According to early Spanish sources, the island of Cancún was originally known to itsMaya inhabitants asNizuc (Yucatec Maya:niʔ suʔuk), meaning either 'promontory' or 'point of grass'.[7]
The nameCancún,Cancum orCankun first appears on 18th-century maps.[8] In older English-language documents, the city's name is sometimes spelledCancoon, an attempt to convey the sound of the name.[9]
Cancún is derived from the Mayan namekàan kun, composed ofkàan 'snake' and the verbkum ~kun 'to swell, overfill'.[10] Two translations have been suggested: the first is 'nest of snakes' and the second, less accepted one is 'place of the golden snake'.[11] Snake iconography was prevalent at the pre-Columbian site of Nizuc.[7]
The shield of the municipality of Benito Juárez, which represents the city of Cancún, was designed by theMexican-American artistJoe Vera.[12]It is divided into three parts: the color blue symbolizes the Caribbean Sea, the yellow the sand and the red the sun with its rays.
Cancún is aplanned city, created to foster tourism. When development of the area as a resort was started on January 23, 1970, Isla Cancún had only three residents, all caretakers of the coconut plantation of Don José de Jesús Lima Gutiérrez, who lived onIsla Mujeres. Some 117 people lived in nearby Puerto Juárez, a fishing village and military base.[15][self-published source?] Cancún was created as a government project to boost tourism. In 1967 the Mexican government allocated 2 million dollars fund to be administered by theBank of Mexico to determine the feasibility of creating new recreational zones, “preferably where no other viable development alternatives exist." This was entrusted to INFRATUR, a Bank of Mexico agency.[16]
A fountain allusive toBenito Juárez's coat of arms, in Cobá and Náder AvenuesAerial photograph of Cancún
Due to the reluctance of investors to gamble on an unknown area, the Mexican federal government financed the first nine hotels.[15]
The city began as a tourism project in 1974 as an Integrally Planned Center, a pioneer of FONATUR (Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo, National Fund for Tourism Development), formerly known as INFRATUR. Since then, it has undergone a comprehensive transformation from being a fisherman's island to being one of the two most well-known Mexican resorts, along withAcapulco. The growth of Cancún outpaced the rest of Quintana Roo during the late 20th cenutury, for example, from 1970 to 1980 the population grew annually on average by 62.3%.[17] In hindsight, the development of Cancún astourist city performed better on a number of metrics than what Mexican state planners had envisioned.[17] Once outside the main tourist areas of the World the growth of Cancún was part of a widertouristification of northern Quintana Roo while in the south and east of the state the timber industry developed more than tourism.[17] From places like Cancún the tourism industry then expanded from the 1990s onward intoindigenous territories and protected areas in inland sites.[17]
Most 'Cancunenses' are from Yucatán and other Mexican states. A growing number are from the rest of theAmericas andEurope. The municipal authorities have struggled to provide public services for the constant influx of people, as well as limiting squatters and irregular developments, which in 2006 occupied an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the mainland area on the fringes of the city.[15]
In 2023, a record 21 million tourists visited Cancún, topping the original estimate of 20.5 million.[18]
In the 21st century, Cancún had largely avoided theviolence associated with the trade of illegal drugs; however, drugs are sold to tourists in bars and night clubs. Cancún has gradually been reported for being a center ofmoney laundering.[19]The links with Cancún date from the 1990s and early 2000s, when the area was controlled by theJuárez andGulf drug cartels. By 2010,Los Zetas, a group that broke away from theGulf Cartel, had taken control of many smuggling routes through the Yucatán, according to the U.S.Drug Enforcement Administration.[20]
There have been a number of violent acts in the city related to drug trafficking.[21] Between 2013 and 2016, there were 76 murders: 31 in 2016,[21] and at least 193 in 2017,[22] the vast majority related to drug trafficking.[23] Most have occurred in the urban nucleus, and there have been various violent episodes with firearms in the so-called "Zona Hotelera".[23] Beginning in 2018 with a high wave of violence, Cancún is above the national average in homicides.[24] In January 2018 alone, there were 33 homicides, triple the number from January 2017.[25]
Starting in 2015, Cancun tourism was significantly impacted by the appearance of large amounts of smelly, unsightly brownSargassum seaweed on its white sand beaches every summer.[26] By 2021,Sargassum season had become an annual occurrence at many Caribbean beach destinations, including Cancun.[27]
Apart from the island tourist zone (part of theMesoamerican Barrier Reef System), the Mexican residential section of the city, the downtown part of which is known as "El Centro", follows a master plan that consists of "supermanzanas"[28] (superblocks), giant trapezoids with a central, open, non-residential area cut in by u-shaped residential streets.
Cancún's mainland or downtown area has diverged from the original plan; development is scattered around the city. The remaining undeveloped beach and lagoon front areas outside theHotel Zone are now under varying stages of development, in Punta Sam and Puerto Juarez to the north, continuing along Bonampak and south toward the airport along Boulevard Donaldo Colosio. One development abutting the Hotel Zone is Puerto Cancún;[29] Malecon Cancún[30] is another large development.
Cancún has atropical climate, specifically atropical wet and dry climate (KöppenAw), with little temperature difference between months, but pronounced rainy and dry seasons. The city is hot year-round, and moderated by onshore trade winds, with an annual mean temperature of 27.1 °C (80.8 °F). Unlike inland areas of the Yucatán Peninsula, sea breezes restrict high temperatures from reaching 36 °C (97 °F) on most afternoons. Annual rainfall is around 1,340 millimeters (52.8 in), falling on 115 days per year.
The rainy season runs from late August through November, and the dry season runs from November through April. The hurricane season runs from June through November.[31] The Hotel Zone juts into the Caribbean Sea and is therefore surrounded by ocean keeping daytime temperatures around 1 to 2 °C (1.8 to 3.6 °F) cooler. Windspeeds are higher than at the airport located some distance inland, which is the official meteorological station for Cancún; averages are shown below.[32]
Thanks to the Yucatán current continually bringing warm water from further south, the sea temperature is always very warm, with lows of 79 °F (26 °C) in winter and highs of 84 °F (29 °C) in summer.[33]
The tropical storm season lasts from May to December, the rainy season extending into January with peak precipitation in October. February to early May tend to be drier with only occasional scattered showers. Cancún is located in one of the main Caribbean hurricane impact areas. Although large hurricanes are rare, they have struck near Cancún in recent years,Hurricane Wilma in 2005 being the largest.Hurricane Gilbert made a devastating direct hit on Cancún in September 1988 and the tourist hotels needed to be rebuilt. In both cases, federal, state and municipal authorities were well prepared to deal with most of the effects on tourists and local residents.[37]Hurricane Dean in 2007 also made its mark on the city of Cancún.
Making landfall in 1988, Hurricane Gilbert was the second most intense hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic basin. It landed on the Yucatán peninsula after crossing over the island of Cozumel. In the Cancún region, a loss of $87 million (1989USD) due to a decline in tourism was estimated for the months of October, November and December in 1988.[38]
On October 21, 2005, Hurricane Wilma made landfall on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, with strong winds in excess of 150 mph (240 km/h). The hurricane's eye first passed over the island ofCozumel, and then made an official landfall nearPlaya del Carmen in the state of Quintana Roo at around 11 p.m. local time on October 21 with winds near 140 mph (230 km/h). Portions of the island of Cozumel experienced the calm eye of Wilma for several hours with some blue skies and sunshine visible at times. The eye slowly drifted northward, with the center passing just to the west of Cancún, Quintana Roo.
Two years later after Hurricane Wilma, in 2007, Hurricane Dean made landfall as a Category 5 storm inMajahual, 190 miles (310 km) to the south of Cancún. Fierce winds at the edge of Dean's impact cone stripped sand off 7.5 miles (12.1 km) of beaches from Punta Cancún (Camino Real Hotel) to Punta Nizuc (Club Med).[39]The authorities asked tourism operators to suspend sending tourists to Cancún while Hurricane Dean was approaching, but did ask airlines to send empty planes, which were then used to evacuate tourists already there.[40]
Despite being a young city, Cancún has a memorial monument of its foundation on a replica of the old Airport Control Tower that resembles to its own date of foundation. The original control tower was a provisional wooden structure, the work of Mexican architects Agustín and Enrique Landa Verdugo.[42]
The old airport was located on the same part of the city that today corresponds to the Kabah Avenue. The tower is 15 meters tall, has a 45 step staircase and has a base dimension of 5 × 5 meters. The memorial was first built in 2002 with a donation by Aerocaribe, a local airline, but the structure was damaged afterHurricane Wilma in 2005. After pleas by the local people to rebuild the tower memorial, a new version was erected in 2010, which was later abandoned without proper maintenance until Woox Pinturas, a local wood maintenance company, made a donation to restore the structure to its original appearance.[43]
The real name of this monument is "Caribbean Fantasy", located in the heart of downtown Cancún, between theCoba andTulum avenuesintersection. It is the nerve center of the daily urban traffic of the city. It has witnessed multiple social and political events, undergoing constant repairs and remodeling for years.
Six years after Quintana Roo was recognized as the youngest state in theMexican Republic and barely a decade after the city of Cancún was born, on October 22 and 23, 1981, theNorth-South Summit was held at the now defunctSheraton Hotel. Two abstract pillars made of metal crossbeams gave the structure a steppedpyramidal appearance, with small masts displaying theflags of the countries attending the 1981 North-South Summit. The author,Lorraine Pinto, added details representingQuetzalcoatl on the sides, resembling thepyramid of Chichen-Itza, located inYucatan.
In 1994, the municipal authorities of Cancún decided to demolish the commemorative structure because the city had been the scene of one of the most devastating climatic-environmental phenomena in the history of the Yucatan Peninsula,Hurricane Gilberto. The sculpture was irreversibly affected, leaving only the solid concrete base and the metal skeleton.
Due to its crosswise and bare appearance, the locals began to call it "Insectronic", a device manufactured by the Steren company to killflies andmosquitoes. The municipal authorities decided to keep its base and the dynamics of thewater fountain.
Once again, Lorraine Pinto was on call to create what locals began to call the Ceviche Fountain or the Ceviche Roundabout.
There are some small Mayan vestiges of thepre-ColumbianMaya civilization in Cancún.[44]El Rey (Las Ruinas del Rey) is located in the Hotel Zone.El Meco, a more substantial site, is found on the mainland just outside the city limits on the road north to Punta Sam.[citation needed]
Cancún is served by theCancún International Airport with an added main runway that commenced operation as of October 2009. It has many flights to North America, Central America, South America, and Europe. It is located on the northeast of the Yucatán Peninsula serving an average of about fifteen million passengers per year. The airport is located around 20 km (12 mi) from the Hotel Zone, approximately a 20 minute trip by car.[52] The island ofIsla Mujeres is located off the coast and is accessible by ferry fromPuerto Juárez and Playa Tortugas in the Hotel Zone.[53] In 2020, the Quintana Roo government implemented a law that all international visitors arriving to the State of Quintana Roo are required to pay a fee called the VisiTAX.[54] Visitors with a Mexican passport are exempted from the tax.[55]
Bus service from Cancun Airport to Downtown Cancun is provided by bus companyADO.[56]
Cancún is also served by five public transportation companies, who are granted concessions by the Quintana Roo Institute of Mobility (Imoveqroo) or the Municipality of Benito Juárez, depending on the type of vehicles operated.[57]
These companies include:
Autocar S.A. de C.V. (Autocar)
Transportación Turística y Urbana de Cancún (Turicún)
Sociedad Cooperativa de Autotransporte del Ejido de Alfredo Vladimir Bonfil (Bonfil)
Sociedad Cooperativa de Transporte Maya Caribe (Maya Caribe)
Transporte Terrestre Estatal (TTE)
Together, these companies operate 36 bus routes in Cancun and its surrounding areas.[58] Autocar operates 18 routes, both Maya Caribe and Turican operate 28, and Bonfil operates 20. TTE only operates Microbuses andMinibuses known as "combis."[59]
Most bus routes terminate near eitherPlaza Las Americas, the ADO Bus Terminal, Tulum Avenue, or the Hotel Zone.[59]
In the Hotel Zone, the main routes are R-1 and R-2, which run up Kukulkan Avenue. Operated by SEA (a joint venture between Turicun, Autocar, and Maya Caribe), services run around every 5 minutes and go between Tulum Avenue and the Westin Resort.[60][61]
One of the new buses in Cancun's Hotel Zone.
In April 2024, SEA announced it had received 100 new air-conditioned buses, and were running them along the R-1 and R-2 routes. It was also announced that the two routes would be phased out in favor of a new corridor that ran between the Hotel Zone and Kabah Avenue, with other inner-city routes being considered.[62]
In August 2024, it was reported that asubsidiary of ADO, which already operates buses inMerida, was interested in operating 184 units in Cancun.[63]
ADO AEROPUERTO (Airport) already operates long distance bus services from its Cancun Bus Terminal, with destinations includingPlaya del Carmen,Tulum,Merida and the Airport.[61][56][64]
^"Se disparan 300% los homicidios en Cancún" [Homicides soar 300% in Cancun].La Palabra del Caribe - Journalism with ethics - Quintana Roo News (in Spanish). February 1, 2018.Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. RetrievedFebruary 2, 2018.
^Benigono Aguirre."Cancun under Gilbert: Preliminary Observations"(PDF). International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters March 1989, Vol. 7, No.1, pp. 69–82. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on December 10, 2005. RetrievedOctober 1, 2006.
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