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As you drive out of the sunny Los Cabos International Airport, it impossible to miss the overwhelming amount of poverty surrounding you. Children roam the cracked up streets, vending trinkets to tourists or begging.
All of a sudden the poverty stops. There’s some sort of invisible line separating the hotels and tourists from the people who actually inhabit the cities that make up Los Cabos. The most popular destination for college spring breakers is Cabo San Lucas, which sits at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
Tourists experience Cabo in a manner that seems to be the American interpretation of how to get your money’s worth at an all-inclusive resort – fueled by waste. In doing so they disregard the citizens of the country, many of whom cannot afford food or basic living necessities.
Although the development of the vacation destination has helped the locals maintain jobs, 18.1 percent of the population remain in substandard housing and 21.7 percent receive food assistance. Spring breakers enjoy endless food and drinks at upscale hotels, oblivious to the 7 million locals who rely on substandard pay from the tourism industry just to get by. The privilege to go on vacation some college students have is something many of the resort employees are not privy to. These workers may never have the economic opportunity to leave their job at the resort, let alone leave their country or go on a vacation. In other words, many of the locals have no choice but to rely on these privileged young adults.
About 28 percent of the population lives in poverty, and 5.6 percent are in extreme poverty. Poverty is classified as living on less than $3.90 per day, and extreme poverty is less than $1.90 per day. That being said, the poverty levels in Los Cabos are drastically lower than the country as a whole, where 46.2 percent of the population lives in poverty. The stability of the job market in tourist centers accounts for the lower poverty rate in Cabo.
Staying at an all-inclusive resort gives tourists the stamp of approval to enjoy more food than one could ever eat, order endless drinks they only take a couple sips of and throw barely-used towels that require hundreds of gallons of water to clean on the floor. While this is not necessarily the fault of the resorts or the tourists, Cabo locals don’t seem upset that tourists have completely altered the landscape and culture of their city because the heavy reliance upon the tourism industry may force their acceptance.
Before you go to Cabo, everyone urges you to stay away from the areas immediately outside of the tourist attractions. They say it’s dangerous to wander from these areas; this has created a cycle in which tourists are barred to the all-inclusive hotels and don’t have the opportunity to experience Mexico outside of the resorts.
Drug related violence is a reality in many cities in Mexico, and the U.S. State Department has warned its citizens on several occasions against traveling to Mexico on account of kidnappings, gun violence and danger from drug cartels. In fact, Los Cabos became the murder capital of the Baja California Sur during the first two months of 2017. The ongoing threat of violence restricts tourists from experiencing “true” Mexico, despite the reality of threats being essentially invisible to tourists, because they don’t occur in the well-travelled areas.
U.S. paranoia over violence threats in Mexico is rooted in our country’s conflicting views of immigration and differences in ethnicity, despite Mexico only having two percent more crime than many cities in the United States.
American citizens don’t need to exchange money for the peso because the country is catered to the lifestyle of Americans. Vendors have learned to advertise their products based to tourist. Bartering for prices is inappropriate in America, but in Mexico it’s encouraged to “never pay more than half for something.” This is due, in part to, the superiority we assume over ethnicities differing from our own.
Residents of Los Cabos survive off of the revenue derived from the tourism industry, which is why they willingly accommodate tourists. I spoke to many cab drivers in Cabo San Lucas who said they had the best job in the country, and that jobs at the resorts were good as well. These jobs provide steady and safe work, and growth in the tourism sector throughout Mexico now accounts for 8.7 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product. Although this number seems small, it accounted for $13.3 billion of income in 2016 and without this revenue, Mexico’s economy would drastically suffer. Just how much so can be seen in the divide between the eight cities in Mexico that are thriving purely from tourism, and the areas where locals live and foreigners are afraid to go.
Spring Breakers who are bound to the all-inclusive resorts and popular tourist spots don’t experience Los Cabos, they experience a primarily-American occupied party spot located in Mexico. I am not discouraging college students from traveling to Los Cabos or any tourist attraction in Mexico, because it is a double-edged sword. If the industry started to decline, resort employees would be out of jobs and potentially forced into the poverty ridden areas of the country. But there are ways to travel respectfully, and for a college spring breaker that could mean simply throwing away your trash away instead of leaving it on the beach.
American tourists need to recognize the impact of their Mexican vacation. College students specifically need to be mindful not to further exploit the work and experience of the locals, and be more aware of the waste they are producing and do more to reduce the poverty they are otherwise reproducing.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Carlisle Olsen at carlisle.olsen@colorado.edu.
