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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2005 
Tourism Recovery Urgent for Region
 James C. Mckinley Jr. - New York Times
| | A view of the sandless beaches of Cancun on Nov. 24, 2005 after being badly hit last October by a Catergory 4 Hurricane Wilma. Mexico's Tourism Secretary announced that although popular resort points like Cancun and Cozumel may take longer to be fully repaired, much of Mexico's storm-battered Caribbean coast will be ready for tourists on Christmas holidays, with 75 percent of the infrastructure repaired by Dec. 15. (Israel Leal) |
Chiquila, Quintana Roo - Porfirio Guzmán Vázquez does not need a politician to tell him how long it will take to recover from Hurricane Wilma. He just looks out the hole that used to be his living room wall at the four oceangoing fishing boats beached and broken on the road outside his house.
The boats are battered, holes in their sides, prows busted. Guzmán used to pilot one of them for a local fishing cooperative.
There are no fish now; a month after the storm, the water is still too turbid. Everyone in this fishing village is living on their slim savings and mending their nets, eyes scanning the horizon for better weather.
"The crisis is very critical," Guzmán said. "There's no work. There are no fish. There's no tourism."
Throughout the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, where a month ago Hurricane Wilma whirled with significant force, fishermen, hoteliers, restaurant owners, divers, nightclub impresarios and the thousands who work for them are still picking up the pieces. And everyone is hoping that not only the fish but the tourists will come back.
There are signs of progress everywhere. In contrast to the sluggish U.S. response in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, the Mexican government has jumped in to restore power and clear away tons of debris from the streets. The fetid water that flooded streets has receded. The flooded portions of the major roads have been rebuilt with landfill.
In Cancun, construction workers swarm over dozens of battered hotels and restaurants along the famous hotel strip, racing to repair the damage before the December rush. Here and there are signs saying, "We Are Open" or "Cancun Is on Its Feet."
But the initial promise that most of the resorts in Cancun would be open by Dec. 15, when tourists fleeing the North American winter usually begin flocking here, has turned out to be overly optimistic, local officials said.
"It's going to take at least six months to recover," said Rangel Rosado, a spokesman for Mayor Francisco Alor. "We all know, those of us who are living inside it. It's not that easy."
For starters, the hurricane swept about 8 miles of pristine white beach out to sea along the barrier island where many of the lavish, five-star resorts are built. "No hotel in Cancun has a beach," said Jorge Hernández, the operations manager at the Gran Real Caribe. "We have nothing. No beach at all."
Pumping Sand
The federal government has devoted US20 million to a project that will pump the sand from its current location offshore near Isla Mujeres back to the stripped strand of rocks where the resort hotels are. But the work has yet to begin, officials said.
The damage underwater was severe as well, said Jaime González, the official in charge of the coast's coral reefs. Dozens of park workers are painstakingly removing curtains, windows and other debris from the reefs and patching up broken coral with cement and plastic.
So far only about 2,500 people have been laid off in Cancun, a city of 800,000 that depends almost entirely on tourism. The government has started retraining about 34,000 workers for construction jobs. In the meantime the 225,000 hotel workers have been put to work cleaning up. Many feel a deep uneasiness about the future. The publicity surrounding the storm has driven some tourists away.
"Here what is, is tourism," said Eva Durán, 50, a housekeeper at the Riu Cancun Hotel. "If there is no tourism they will start to let people go. I think everyone's a little nervous."
It is not just hotel workers who are nervous. Built in the last 30 years, Cancun and the resorts to its south and north attracted about 7.1 million tourists last year, bringing in about US4 billion.
That is one reason that two Mexican tourism officials and the governor of Quintana Roo visited New York last week to try to counter the impression left by news reports that since the hurricane the entire peninsula is a wreck.
To a degree, the officials are right. Of the 59,400 hotel rooms in the region, only about 28,000 were in Cancun, where the heaviest damage occurred. Resorts like Tulum and Playa del Carmen are in good shape. Artemos Santos Santos, the head of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the city should have about 11,000 rooms available by Dec. 20. "We are carrying out a rapid recovery," he said.
In No Rush To Open
Still, many of those rooms are in the older hotels in downtown Cancun, and several of the major resorts along the barrier island have no plans to open until next spring or even summer, among them two Hyatt hotels, the Ritz Carlton, the J.W. Marriot, the Sheraton and the Hilton.
Some hotels are taking advantage of the situation to do longplanned renovations. Others are considering more hurricane-resistant construction. Sergio Serra, director of sales and marketing for the Hilton, said a team of engineers was still reviewing the damage at the 426-room hotel. There is no way that it will open before March, he said.
"We are probably looking at taking into consideration hurricane-proof equipment and furnishings," he said.
While the big hotel chains have the luxury of waiting to reopen, the fishermen and smaller hoteliers in Chiquila and on the island of Holbox to the north are growing desperate. The fishermen divide their time between catching lobsters and taking tourists to see the whale sharks that congregate just off their shores.
Fishing Industry
The hurricane not only destroyed most of their larger boats and destroyed their piers, but it also severely damaged dozens of outboard motors and carried off thousands of lobster traps. On a recent day, about two dozen fishermen were patiently waiting at the Vanguardia del Mar fishing cooperative while mechanics took their engines apart and rebuilt them.
Several grumbled that the government had initially offered them grants to fix their boats but then gave them loans instead. In the last month, they said, they would have normally caught 4 tons of fish and 225 pounds of lobster.
"We have to get the motors working," said Rogelio Santana, 34, a fisherman who has been supporting his two children with government assistance since the hurricane struck last month. "There is no economy now. No money. Nothing. No tourism, no fish."
All along Holbox's white beach, the island's small hotels have been severely damaged. Several will not reopen for months. At the Villas Delfines, the manager, Dieter Biebelriether, 59, a German expatriate, said he would be ready to reopen on Dec. 15, despite the piles of debris on the hotel's front steps. "This is for sure," he said. "We have been working here day and night."
Farther down the strand, Urvalin Coral, 50, mended his nets with a skilled hand. He was waiting for the water to clear, as he knows it will, from a lifetime of fishing. He has lost 40 lobster traps US4,000 worth of gear. But he managed to save his engines and two launches, so he feels lucky. He said he had faith that the fish would return.
"In all my life I never passed through a storm like that," he said, his hands flying through his nets, fixing a hole left by a shark. "We hope to God everything returns to normal." |
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