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Mexico Travel :: Yucatan Peninsular

State of Quintana Roo

Until two decades ago, Quintana Roo was the most isolated part of Mexico. This was not always so. The Maya flowering that began between AD 250 and 600 came early to sites like Kohunlich, where there is also evidence of Olmec and Izapan influence. A region of low hills in the state's southwest was the center of the Rio Bee culture, which predated the Puuc in Yucatan. Rio Bee ceremonial centers, like Xpujil, are unique in that they include steep pyramid-like structures, with reliefs of staircases impossible to climb on the sides, topped by temples that cannot be reached because the pyramids are solid. The Indians apparently wanted the look of a Tikal-style pyramid without the trouble of building one. The enormous, and mostly unexcavated, site of Coba to the north is notable for sacbes, raised causeways, which extend to Yaxuna, 100 kilometers (62 miles) due west. It seems that these were a means for Coba's rulers to reinforce control over their domain. After the abandonment of Chichen Itza, the Quintana Roo region was first ruled by Mayapan; when that collapsed, it became the Ecab city-state, governed from Tulum on the Caribbean coast. This scenic city, built on a cliff overlooking the sea, was evidently occupied after the arrival of the Spanish, because frescoes there show the Rain God riding a four-legged animal-a horse.

In 1511, a Spanish ship was wrecked on this coast, and all but two of the survivors were sacrificed. One married the Indian daughter of ChetumaPs ruler, was tattooed with a chiefs insignia, and refused to return with Cortes when he landed on the peninsula in 1519. (Indeed, he had advised the Mayas to slaughter Juan de Grijalva's expedition of the previous year.) The other became a slave and was ransomed by Cortes; he was crucial to the subsequent expedition, because he could communicate with Cortes' Indian consort, La Malinche, who knew both Nahuatl and Maya. Franciso de Montejo returned to the peninsula in 1527, founding a settlement at Chetumal that was soon abandoned. After a long, fierce campaign led by Montejo's son, Quintana Roo's coast was conquered and a military post was established at Bacalar. However, Spanish settlement was all but nonexistent because of the region's isolation and the fear of English privateers from neighboring Belize, who did indeed destroy Bacalar in 1652 (it was rebuilt as a fort in 1726). Moreover, the inland forests were home to Maya tribes well beyond the reach of Spanish rule.

In 1853, during the War of the Castes, the Indian rebels were forced to retreat to a town called Chan Santa Cruz (now Felipe Carrillo Puerto). There they gathered in front of a particularly holy wooden cross and heard it speak (apparently with the help of a ventriloquist), revealing that the Indians would be immune from Mexican bullets. The rebels made Chan Santa Cruz their capital and formed a government called a Cruzob, based on traditional Maya principals; for the next 50 years they lived in an autonomous state in the forests of central Quintana Roo. They were supplied with weapons by the British in Belize, who hoped to extend their control in the area. This help ended in 1893, when England and Mexico signed a treaty defining the boundaries between Quintana Roo and Belize. In 1899, Porfirio Diaz appointed General Ignacio Bravo to end the Cru-zob experiment. Bravo founded the state capital, Chetumal, as a military port, cutting off all supplies to the Maya from the outside world. When the Indians were sufficiently weakened by hunger, Bravo's troops methodically slaughtered them with efficient new cannons, finally capturing Chan Santa Cruz in 1901. Although a few roads were built, Quintana Roo remained isolated-it did not become a state until 1974.

The first tourist hotel was built in the early 1960s, on Isla Mujeres, and in 1968 planning began on Cancun. Within five years of the opening of the first hotel in 1971, Cancun had a population of 30,000. At the current rate of development, the entire Caribbean coast will be lined with hotels by the year 2000. It remains to be seen if the region's delicate ecosystem will survive.

CANCUN

The ever-expanding resort of Cancun (pop 100, 000) is built on Quintana Roo's northeast coast overlooking the blue waters of the Caribbean. Size and glitz are the operating principles here, and the resort is beginning to have crowding problems that resemble Fort Lauderdale at the height of Spring Break. There is nothing older than 1970 in Cancun, except for some tiny vestiges of Mayan temples; for antiquity or colonial sights, you have to head west to Yucatan or south to Tulum and Coba. Cancun is divided into downtown and the hotel zone. The latter is a 33-kilometer (21-mile)-long sandbar (hat arcs south around the polluted Nichupte Lagoon and returns to the mainland near the airport. The hotel zone's main street is the four-lane Avenida Kukulcan, which is lined with condominiums, malls, discos and big resort hotels catering to tourists on package vacations.

The first few kilometers of Kukulcan have fiberglass reproductions of Mesoa-merican monuments, like an Olmec colossal head, placed in the median. The Pok-Ta-Pok Golf Course on the right has a small Mayan temple at the 12th hole. There are also Mayan structures, probably watchtowers, on the grounds of the Camino Real and Shera¬ton hotels. The Anthropology Museum near the Hotel Krystal was badly damaged by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, and there are no signs that it will ever re-open. The El Rey ruins, Cancun's largest, lie to the west of Avda Kukulcan, about two-thirds of the way down the hotel zone. The highlight is a low pyramid surrounded by several platforms. Returning to the north, downtown begins where Avda Kukulcan hits the mainland at Blvd Bonampak. The next major crossing is Avda Tulum, downtown's main street. The sculpture in the middle of the traffic circle commemorates the 1970s meeting of the Organization of American States that put Cancun on the city of best restaurants, cinemas, the bus station, airline offices, nightclubs, municipal offices, the crafts market, supermarkets, gift shops and medium-priced hotels. Buses head out from here to the public beaches of Playa Tortugas and Playa Chac Mool in the hotel zone. Avda Yaxchilan, three blocks west, has an even heavier

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