SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
On Nov. 27, a Cuban singer,
Dayami Lozada, was shot dead by
two gunmen on a motorcycle.
Though Lozada performed in
tourist bars, she was killed — like
most of the victims — in a part of
the city seldom visited by foreign-
ers.
In Tulum, some of the city’s
most violent crimes occur in in-
formal settlements, known local-
ly as invasiones, where drug deal-
ers live alongside hotel and res-
taurant employees, who struggle
to find places to live because of
soaring housing prices.
Mexican tourist officials and
hoteliers have been quick to tell
their guests that while Mexico
can be violent, their hotels are
safe.
“The first thing [we] explain is
how far they are from the violent
event guests might have seen in
the news,” said Miriam Cortés
Franco, president of the Quintana
Roo Vacation Clubs.
Unlike other states in Mexico,
where gangs battle for control of
territory so they can move drugs
toward the U.S. border, coastal
Quintana Roo is no longer a
major thruway for narcotics. Its
value is as a market: a bubble of
foreign demand for drugs within
Mexico. For that reason, officials
say, Mexico’s two biggest drug
trafficking organizations, the Si-
naloa Cartel and the Jalisco New
Generation Cartel, both based on
the other side of the country, have
sent hundreds of foot soldiers to
the state.
This month, state officials
tracked a convoy of 50 Jalisco
cartel gunmen entering Quintana
Roo.
More than 18 million tourists
visited the state between January
and October 2021. More than
3 million of them were Ameri-
cans. Because Mexico has im-
posed almost no pandemic-relat-
ed travel restrictions, it has been
a particularly attractive destina-
tion to those seeking a break from
quarantines. Last Saturday was
the second busiest day in the
history of the Cancún airport.
Tourism provides more than
8 percent of Mexico’s GDP. In
Cancún, the contribution is
roughly 50 percent.
Millions of tourists will experi-
ence cities like Cancún and
Tulum with no indication of the
violence that plagues much of
Mexico. The country this year has
recorded more than 30,000 homi-
cides, for the fourth consecutive
year.
Cartels are typically eager to
avoid confrontations with tour-
ists that will affect the local de-
mand for drugs and draw the
attention they’re now getting
from security forces. Earlier this
month, a video surfaced of two
tourists driving toward Cancún
along back roads in the state of
Tabasco when they were stopped
by armed men, apparent cartel
members.
After a few minutes of confu-
sion, the armed men, realizing
they had accidentally stopped
two foreign tourists, tried to calm
them down.
“No problem, no problem,” one
of the armed men said, and patted
one of the tourists on the back,
offering him a hug.
Elsewhere in Mexico, officials
have seen the way violence can
destroy an important tourist des-
tination.
As killings surged in Acapulco,
making the city the murder capi-
tal of Mexico, international tour-
ism crashed. The number of for-
eign visitors fell 63 percent from
2012 to 2017.
Violence there, too, was caused
in part by cartels fighting to sell
drugs to tourists. As in Quintana
Roo, the homicides were concen-
trated away from tourist hot
spots, but the few incidents that
did trickle into hotels and restau-
rants were enough to scare off
many would-be visitors.
“We know how much depends
on our ability to make tourists
feel safe,” said Andrés Aguilar,
Quintana Roo’s secretary of tour-
ism.
[email protected]in Mexico, no single cartel pre-
dominates. At least six criminal
groups operate in the state’s tour-
ist corridor, including three with
links to transnational trafficking
organizations. The competition
among them often turns violent,
as groups fight over access to
tourist hot spots.
In Tulum, the tourists who
were killed in October appear to
have been caught in a shootout
between two local groups, Los
Pelones and Los Compich. Au-
thorities said gunmen from one
group spotted a rival dealer in a
popular bar called the Malqueri-
da.
“The tourists unfortunately
were caught in the middle,” said
Óscar Montes de Oca Rosales,
Quintana Roo’s attorney general.
Those groups have been at the
heart of rising tourist demand for
drugs in Tulum, where an under-
ground party culture has boomed
in recent years, alongside well-
ness retreats and yoga classes.
“Working at the hotels here,
you get used to being asked to
help get drugs. You know, coke,
MDMA, ketamine, all of it. We
make the introductions to dealers
because that’s what the guests
want,” said a concierge at a well-
known boutique hotel in Tulum.
She spoke on the condition of
anonymity because she worried
about losing her job.
A party promoter in Tulum
described the guiding principle
as “making sure there’s only one
cartel providing drugs at a party,
so there’s no fighting between
dealers.”
Quintana Roo has suffered 650
homicides so far this year, down
from a peak of 866 in 2018, but a
marked increase from earlier
years. The majority of those kill-
ings, authorities say, were be-
tween criminal groups and oc-
curred miles from the state’s tour-
ist corridor.
In November, for example, two
homicides took place in separate
Cancún gyms. Several drive-by
shootings occurred along the
main road of La Luna, four miles
from the city’s famous strip of
beachside hotels. Further inland,
three victims’ bodies were found
buried behind an auto repair
shop.cated.
“It seems like the Americans,
when they come here, just want
to get wasted, right?” he asked a
reporter.
Adding to the volatility: In
Quintana Roo, unlike other statesEven some of the troops in the
battalion mock the mission. Last
week, one unit was sent to a
four-star hotel in Cancún to pro-
vide security during a concert.
One soldier recalled watching
tourists get increasingly intoxi-Some coke?” Or the more subtle:
“You want to party?” — with a
finger pointing to a nostril.
“We know it’s not easy to turn
off the supply, as long as there is
demand,” Hernández Gutiérrez
said.BY KEVIN SIEFF
puerto morelos, mexico —
The trouble began, as it often
does here, when tourists asked
the hotel staff to help them buy
cocaine.
It’s a common enough request
across Mexico’s Mayan Riviera
that the employees of the Hyatt
Ziva knew how to accommodate
their clientele. They called a few
local drug dealers, according to
security officials who investigat-
ed the incident.
But the dealers who arrived at
the beachside resort outside Can-
cún last month came from rival
cartels, part of the kaleidoscope
of criminal groups who have con-
verged on Mexico’s busiest tourist
corridor. Within minutes, shoot-
ing began. Security footage shows
the attackers sprinting from the
beach toward the $400-a-night
hotel, and tourists in bathing
suits seeking cover in hallways.
“It was more proof that the
only reason the cartels are here is
because of the enormous demand
for drugs, especially among tour-
ists,” said Lucio Hernández
Gutiérrez, the security chief for
Mexico’s Quintana Roo state. “It’s
a very difficult thing to stop.”
The hotel denies that its staff
should be blamed for the attack.
“To suggest that our associates
were, in any way, involved or bear
a level of responsibility for an
incident that began on a public
beach is unfounded and without
merit,” said Dean Sullivan, a
spokesman for Playa Hotels &
Resorts, which manages the
Hyatt.
In recent weeks, some of the
most famous destinations along
Mexico’s Caribbean coast have
seen alarming displays of vio-
lence, still-rare collisions be-
tween the country’s profound se-
curity problems and its glittering
tourist attractions. Many have
pointed to those incidents as
illustrations of Mexico’s lawless-
ness. But Mexican officials say
that critique fails to account for
the way tourists’ increasing de-
mand for drugs has emboldened
the cartels that sell to them.
In Tulum, a German and Indi-
an tourist were killed by gunmen
in October. In November, the
shootout at the Hyatt spared
tourists but left two apparent
cartel members dead. This
month, gunmen arrived at a well-
known Cancún beach on water
scooters in another apparent tar-
geted killing attempt. They fired
their weapons before taking off
into the Caribbean. No one was
wounded.
In response to the series of
incidents, Mexico this month
launched a “Tourist Security Bat-
talion,” sending more than a
thousand soldiers and police to
patrol its most visited beaches
and popular nightclubs and bars.
Mexican authorities have also
quietly explored ways to diminish
demand for drugs among tourists
without arresting them or dis-
couraging them from visiting — a
delicate balance.
Officials in Quintana Roo met
recently with representatives
from the U.S. Consulate and dip-
lomats from more than a dozen
other foreign countries.
“The message was, ‘We want
tourism, but please remember
that it’s illegal here to buy
drugs,’ ” Hernández Gutiérrez
said.
Asked about the meeting, U.S.
Embassy spokesman John Vance
said U.S. officials “frequently
meet with Mexican officials to
make certain we provide accurate
and timely information that
helps ensure [U.S. citizen’s] safe-
ty.”
The Tourist Protection Battal-
ion has already arrested dozens of
low-level drug dealers. Most are
young men from surrounding
states, some of the poorest in
Mexico.
Those dealers are replaced al-
most immediately. Visitors walk-
ing down Playa del Carmen’s
Quinta Avenida, for example, are
still greeted by a chorus of offers:
“Hey Amigo, want some weed?
The World
BANGLADESH
More than 3 dozen
dead after ferry fire
A fire tore through a crowded
ferry in southern Bangladesh
early Friday, leaving more than
three dozen people dead and
more than 100 injured.
The flames sent terrified
passengers leaping into the water.
Dozens of people, including
children, remain unaccounted
for, officials told reporters.
The blaze, which burned
for more than three hours,
spread as many aboard were
asleep.
The ferry had a license to carry
a maximum of 420 people,
though survivors and officials
estimated that between 500 and
800 people were aboard when
the fire broke out, according to
media reports.
The ferry left Dhaka,
Bangladesh’s capital, on Thursday
and was traveling along the
Sugandha River near the town of
Jhalakathi when the blaze
overtook the three-decker boat.
Local officials said they think the
fire started in the engine room,
the BBC reported. The country’s
Fire Service and Civil Defense
agency did not immediately
respond to a request for
comment.
— Miriam BergerGREECE
At least 27 dead after
3rd migrant boat sinksAt least 13 people died after a
migrant boat capsized in the
Aegean Sea late Friday, bringing
to at least 27 the combined death
toll from three accidents in as
many days involving migrant
boats in Greek waters.
The deaths came as smugglers
increasingly favor a perilous
route from Turkey to Italy, which
avoids Greece’s heavily patrolled
eastern Aegean islands that for
years were at the forefront of the
country’s migration crisis.
The coast guard said 62 peoplewere rescued after a sailboat
capsized late Friday some five
miles off the island of Paros, in the
central Aegean. Survivors told the
coast guard that about 80 people
had been on the vessel.
Earlier, 11 people were
confirmed dead after a sailboat
struck a rocky islet some 145 miles
south of Athens, near the island of
Antikythera, on Thursday. The
coast guard said Friday that 90
survivors — 52 men, 11 women
and 27 children — were rescued
after spending hours on the islet.
In a separate incident Friday,
Greek police arrested three
people on smuggling charges and
detained 92 migrants after a
yacht ran aground in thesouthern Peloponnese region.
And a search operation also
continued for a third day in the
central Aegean, where a boat
carrying migrants sank near the
island of Folegandros, killing at
least three people. Thirteen
others were rescued, and the
survivors reported that at least
17 people were missing.
Authorities said the passengers
originally were from Iraq.
— Associated PressSOUTH KOREAFormer president Park
is granted a pardonSouth Korea’s President MoonJae-in granted a pardon to former
president Park Geun-hye, who
was in prison after being
convicted of corruption, the
justice ministry said on Friday.
Park, 69, became South Korea’s
first democratically elected leader
to be thrown out of office when
the Constitutional Court upheld a
parliament vote in 2017 to
impeach her. She was brought
down after being found guilty of
colluding with a friend to receive
tens of billions of won from major
conglomerates, mostly to fund
her friend’s family and nonprofit
foundations. In January, South
Korea’s top court upheld a 20-
year prison sentence for Park.
— ReutersDIGEST
Tourist drug demand is bringing
cartel violence to Mexico’s resorts
Sensitive to recent bloodshed, the country has deployed police, soldiers to patrol popular destinations
PHOTOS BY KEVIN SIEFF/THE WASHINGTON POST
Mexican security forces oversee the destruction of an illegal establishment used by drug dealers on the outskirts of Cancún on Dec. 16.
In recent weeks, some of the most famous destinations along Mexico’s Caribbean coast have seen alarming displays of violence.ABOVE: Members of Mexico’s security forces stand outside the Malquerida bar in Tulum,
where two tourists were killed in October. BELOW: Members of Mexico’s military prepare to
launch an operation on the outskirts of Cancún as part of the new Tourist Security Battalion.