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Cancún ( ), often Cancun in English (without the accent; or ) is a city in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It is a significant tourist destination in Mexico and the seat of the municipality of Benito Juárez. The city is on the Caribbean Sea and is one of Mexico's easternmost points. Cancún is just north of Mexico's Caribbean coast resort area known as the Riviera Maya.


Etymology and coat of arms

According to early Spanish sources, the island of Cancún was originally known to its Maya inhabitants as ( yua, niʔ suʔuk), meaning either '
promontory A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the so ...
' or 'point of grass'. The name ''Cancún'', ''Cancum'' or ''Cankun'' first appears on 18th-century maps. In older English-language documents, the city's name is sometimes spelled ''Cancoon'', an attempt to convey the sound of the name. ''Cancún'' is derived from the Mayan name , composed of 'snake' and the verb ~ 'to swell, overfill'. Two translations have been suggested: the first is 'nest of snakes' and the second, less accepted one is 'place of the golden snake'. Snake iconography was prevalent at the pre-Columbian site of Nizuc. The shield of the municipality of Benito Juárez, which represents the city of Cancún, was designed by the
Mexican-American Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexica ...
artist Joe Vera. 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.


History

In the years after the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, much of the Maya population died or left as a result of disease, warfare, and famines, leaving only small settlements on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel Island. Cancún is a planned 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 on Isla Mujeres. Some 117 people lived in nearby Puerto Juárez, a fishing village and military base. Due to the reluctance of investors to gamble on an unknown area, the Mexican federal government financed the first nine hotels. 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 with
Acapulco Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , also , nah, Acapolco), is a city and major seaport in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semicircular bay and has bee ...
. Most 'Cancunenses' are from Yucatán and other Mexican states. A growing number are from the rest of the
Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...
and Europe. The municipal authorities have struggled to provide public services for the constant influx of people, as well as limiting squatters and irregular developments, which now occupy an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the mainland area on the fringes of the city.


Drug trafficking network

In the 21st century, Cancún had largely avoided the
bloodshed Bloodshed may refer to: * Bloodshed (comics), a character in the Marvel Universe * ''Bloodshed'' (film), a 2005 film by Jim McMahon * ''Bloodshed'' (album), a 2004 compilation album by Krisiun * "Bloodshed" (song), a 2013 song by Soulfly * Blood ...
associated with the trade of illegal drugs, but is known for its retail drug sales to tourists as well as for being a center of
money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...
. The links with Cancún date from the 1990s and early 2000s, when the area was controlled by the Juárez and Gulf drug cartels. By 2010 Los Zetas, a group that broke away from the Gulf Cartel, had taken control of many smuggling routes through the Yucatán, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. There have been violent acts in the city related to drug trafficking. Between 2013 and 2016 there were 76 murders: 31 in 2016, and at least 193 in 2017, the vast majority related to drug trafficking. Most have occurred in the urban nucleus, and there have been various violent episodes with firearms in the so-called "Zona Hotelera". Beginning in 2018 with a high wave of violence, Cancún is above the national average in homicides. In January 2018 alone there were 33 homicides, triple the number from January 2017. The violent acts have begun to put pressure on the tourism industry, where in January 2019, Cancún saw its first decrease in international passengers in seven years.


Geography


City layout

Apart from the island tourist zone (part of the Mesoamerican 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" (superblocks), giant trapezoids with a central, open, non-residential area cut in by u-shaped residential streets. Ave. Tulum is the main north-south artery, connecting downtown to
the airport "The Airport" is the 52nd episode of the sitcom '' Seinfeld''. It is the 12th episode of the fourth season and aired on November 25, 1992. This episode centers on Jerry and Elaine's differing experiences in first class and coach on the same air ...
, which is some south of downtown. Tulum is bisected by Ave. Cobá. East of Ave. Tulum, Cobá becomes Ave. Kukulcan which serves as the primary road through the 7-shaped hotel zone. Ave. Tulum ends on the north side at Ave. Paseo José López Portillo which connects to the main highway west to Chichén Itzá and Mérida. Another major north-south road is Ave. Bonampak which runs roughly parallel to Ave. Tulum. The main ferry to Isla Mujeres is located in Puerto Juárez, on Ave. Paseo José López Portillo. 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 the hotel 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; also Malecon Cancún is another large development.


Climate

Cancún has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical wet and dry climate ( Köppen '' Aw''), 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 . Unlike inland areas of the Yucatán Peninsula, sea breezes restrict high temperatures from reaching on most afternoons. Annual rainfall is around , falling on 115 days per year. The rainy season runs from May through late October, when hot temperatures, high humidity, and quick, but intense summer thundershowers are common. The dry season normally begins in December and runs through April, when more temperate conditions occur as the northeast trade winds bring northerly breezes, sunshine, and relative humidity is lowest. The hotel zone juts into the Caribbean Sea and is therefore surrounded by ocean keeping daytime temperatures around cooler. Windspeeds are higher than at the airport located some distance inland, which is the official meteorological station for Cancún, averages as shown below. Thanks to the Yucatán current continually bringing warm water from further south, the sea temperature is always very warm, with lows of in winter and highs of in summer.


Tropical storms and hurricanes

The tropical storm season lasts from May to December, the rainy season extends 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. Hurricane Dean in 2007 also made its mark on the city of Cancún. 1988's 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 (1989 USD) due to a decline in tourism was estimated for the months of October, November and December in 1988. 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 . The hurricane's eye first passed over the island of Cozumel, and then made an official landfall near Playa del Carmen in the state of Quintana Roo at around 11 p.m. local time on October 21 with winds near . 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 in
Majahual Costa Maya is a small tourist region in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico, the only state bounded by the Caribbean Sea to its east. This municipality is close to Chetumal (capital of the state) on the border ...
, to the south of Cancún. Fierce winds at the edge of Dean's impact cone stripped sand off of beaches from Punta Cancún (Camino Real Hotel) to Punta Nizuc (Club Med). 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.


Attractions


Old Airport Control Tower Memorial

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. 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 after Hurricane 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.


El Ceviche Fountain

The real name of this monument is "Caribbean Fantasy," located in the heart of downtown Cancun, between the Coba and Tulum avenues
intersection In mathematics, the intersection of two or more objects is another object consisting of everything that is contained in all of the objects simultaneously. For example, in Euclidean geometry, when two lines in a plane are not parallel, their i ...
. 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 got recognized as the youngest state in the
Mexican Republic Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...
and barely a decade after the city of Cancun was born, on October 22 and 23, 1981, the
North-South Summit ''North-South'' ( hy, Հյուսիս-Հարավ) or ''Four Buddies and the Bride'' is an Armenian comedy directed by Davit Babakhanyan and Vazgen Muradyan, starring Diana Malenko, Sona Shahgeldyan and David Tovmasyan. The film was produced b ...
was held at the now defunct Sheraton Hotel. Two abstract pillars made of metal crossbeams gave the structure a stepped
pyramidal A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilater ...
appearance, with small masts displaying the flags of the countries attending the 1981 North-South Summit. The author, Lorraine Pinto, added details representing
Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcoatl (, ; Spanish: ''Quetzalcóatl'' ; nci-IPA, Quetzalcōātl, ket͡saɬˈkoːaːt͡ɬ (Modern Nahuatl pronunciation), in honorific form: ''Quetzalcōātzin'') is a deity in Aztec culture and literature whose name comes from the Nahu ...
on the sides, resembling the pyramid of Chichen-Itza, located in Yucatan. In 1994, the municipal authorities of Cancun 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 kill flies and mosquitoes. The municipal authorities decided to keep its base and the dynamics of the water fountain. Once again, Lorraine Pinto was on call to create what locals began to call the Ceviche Fountain or the Ceviche Roundabout.


Maya archeological sites

There are some small Mayan vestiges of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Cancún.
El Rey El Rey, Spanish for The King, may refer to: Locations *El Rey Inn, Santa Fe, New Mexico *El Rey National Park in Argentina *El Rey Theatre, a live music venue in Los Angeles, California *El Rey archaeological site, a Mayan site in Cancun, Mexico ...
(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. Close by in the Riviera Maya and the Grand Costa Maya, there are sites such as
Cobá Coba ( es, Cobá) is an ancient Maya city on the Yucatán Peninsula, located in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The site is the nexus of the largest network of stone causeways of the ancient Maya world, and it contains many engraved and sculp ...
and Muyil (Riviera) the small Polé (now Xcaret), and Kohunlich, Kinichná, Dzibanché, Oxtankah, Tulum, and
Chacchoben Chacchoben (chak-CHO-ben; Maya for "the place of red corn") is a Maya ruin approximately 110 mi (177 km) south of Tulum and 7 mi (11 km) from the village from which it derives its name. History Settlement by the Maya at th ...
, in the south of the state. Chichén Itzá is in the neighboring state of Yucatán.


Sports

Soccer club
Atlante F.C. Atlante Fútbol Club, is a professional football club based in Mexico City, Mexico. Founded in 1916, Atlante were original members of the Mexican Primera División when it began in 1943. Atlante has won three national league championships, two ...
was founded in 1916 in Mexico City and moved to Cancún in 2007 due to poor attendance in Mexico City. In June 2020, a possible move of Atlante F.C. began to be speculated. On June 26, the relocation of that club to back Mexico City became official, effectively losing its site in Cancun. The same day, the relocation of
Cafetaleros de Chiapas Club de Fútbol Cafetaleros de Chiapas is a Mexican football club based in the city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas currently competing in Liga Premier de México, the third tier of Mexican football. Between 2015 and 2020, the team played at Asce ...
was announced, the team was moved to Cancún and renamed as
Cancún F.C. Cancún Futbol Club is a Mexican professional football club based in Cancún, Quintana Roo currently playing in Liga de Expansión MX. The club was established in June 2020 after the Cafetaleros de Chiapas franchise announced that it would be mo ...
They play in the Mexican second division
Liga de Expansión MX The Liga de Expansión MX, also known as Liga de Desarrollo (Liga BBVA Expansión MX for sponsorship reasons), is a Mexican football league founded in 2020 as part of the Mexican Football Federation's "Stabilization Project", which has the prima ...
at Estadio Andrés Quintana Roo. The city is also home to the
Pioneros de Cancún Deportivo Pioneros de Cancún F.C. is a football team based in Cancún, México that plays in the Liga Premier Serie B. History The club was founded on May 3, 1984, and in the same year joined the Tercera División de México. It won its first ...
, who play in the third division Liga Premier de México. The Cancun Tiburones (sharks), are a professional American football team playing in the FAM, the largest Pro American Football league in Mexico. The city is also home to the baseball team Tigres de Quintana Roo, who play in the Mexican League (LMB).


Transportation

Cancún is served by the Cancún 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. The island of Isla Mujeres is located off the coast and is accessible by ferry from Puerto Juárez and Playa Tortugas in the Hotel Zone. Cancún is also served by three private bus lines that connect it to the downtown area and the "hotel zone" as well as more distant destinations such as Playa del Carmen and Tulum. The
Tren Maya The Tren Maya (sometimes also Mayan Train or Maya Train) is a intercity railway in Mexico that will traverse the Yucatán Peninsula; construction began in June 2020 and is scheduled to be completed by 2024. The railway begins in Palenque in C ...
, under construction , would connect Cancún to Palenque, Chiapas with intermediate stops on the Yucatán peninsula.


Sister cities

* Wichita, Kansas, USA – November 25, 1975 * Timișoara, Romania – March 5, 2019 * Naperville, Illinois, USA – February 5, 2021


See also

*
Cancún Underwater Museum The Cancún Underwater Museum ( es, Museo Subacuático de Arte, known as MUSA) is a non-profit organization based in Cancún, Mexico devoted to the art of conservation. The museum has a total of 500 sculptures, by a series of international and loc ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cancun 1970 establishments in Mexico Beaches of Quintana Roo Populated coastal places in Mexico Populated places established in 1970 Populated places in Quintana Roo Port cities in the Caribbean Seaside resorts in Mexico