Fear and Loathing in Acapulco
Once upon a time, Acapulco was the place to be seen. A place where Hollywood film stars mingled with the Nouveau Riche, Jet Set playboys flaunted their wealth, and starry cocktail parties played out under a canopy of unrestrained tropical hedonism. It was a place where glamour and elegance reigned. It was a place of style.
But true style is something that belongs to an older and wiser school, now lost.
Today, Acapulco is slung over a wide, undulating bay like some ailing coke-whore past her prime, groaning endlessly about her glory years and the cruel ravages of time.
Her soul is long gone, devoured by insatiable corporate interests, grotesquely overweight fast-food franchises, and flocks of drunken, stinking carrion adorned in shorts, socks, sandles and straw sombreros.
Acapulco sold out, and beneath a giddying climax of sickly neon signs, something venal is festering.
The 1990s brought an unprecedented crime-wave to the city, when a major drug cartel began utilising it as a trafficking port. As Acapulco gained importance and notoriety, rival gangs tore each other apart for supremacy of its streets.
A tsunami of blood and bullets swallowed the city, and several severed unsmiling heads washed up on the beaches.
Since then, however, the police and army have really clamped down. Most of the horror is now restricted to a few impoverished and neglected barrios, far from the city centre or overly-sanitised hotel zone. Still there remains a sense of terminal decay, despite reports that Acapulco is really on the up.
The city’s single redeeming feature is the continuing tradition of cliff-diving, where brave divers plunge 30m from the rocks into the waves, timing their descent with rising waters. This impressive spectacle is performed several times daily, most dramatically at night, when the cliff face is illuminated with lights and torches.
Perhaps Acapulco isn’t so bad, I think, sitting on the bay in the old town, a giant cruise-ship gleaming in the sun.
But all around me, refuse is piled up and buzzing with black flies – rotten sweet corn cobs, empty beer bottles, polystyrene trays, chicken bones and liquefying food-stuffs – everything’s crawling and pungent in the heat.
A beggar approaches me in soot coloured rags, mumbling madly with furtive eyes and fingers. I give him a dollar and he points at my coffee. I tell him ‘no’ but he takes it anyway. I’m left alone, sitting in all the shit, wondering about the gleaming cruise-ship and what really happened here.
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Tags: acapulco, cliff divers, guerrero, interamericana, Mexico
Vivid snapshot. It’s as if the DTO money sustains the area and no one gives a damn about tourism anymore. The area’s long been a playground and beach home area for drug kingpins; I wonder if the June 09 shootout “near budget hotels” (http://bit.ly/131aGZ) was close to where you ended up staying?
Interesting LA Time piece, thanks. I didn’t see any shoot-outs, but I did get ripped off within 5 minutes of being there.
I also met a lot of honest hoteliers who were struggling with Acapulco’s image problem, and for them it’s sad. It’s indeed quite likely the gangs are running the show now.
Yet the drugs problem has spread to many parts of the country. Even the most provinical cities, Morelia, for example, are looking scary to the average tourist. Poor Mexico – first a drugs war, now swine flu.