Fear and Loathing in Acapulco

Guest Post By Richard Arghiris

I first visited Acapulco in 2008, during a 10 week research trip for my new guidebook, ‘The Footprint Mexico Handbook’, due for release in spring 2010.

Having heard the time-old legends of Acapulco at its heyday, I was initially intrigued by this archetypal pleasure resort. Soon, however, reality dawned. Below is an except from a blog post about my experience:

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 in a haze of sultry tropical hedonism. It was a place of style.

But true style is something that belongs to an older and wiser school, now lost.

Today, the lightly crumbling pleasure-town of Acapulco is slung over a wide, undulating bay like some ailing coke-whore past her prime. Upstaged by younger resorts, ravaged by the advances of time, roughed up by all and sundry, she groans on about the glory days when everything was beautiful.

Black-and-White Photos Exalt Former Guests. Step into the old, great hotels and her mawkish love of nostalgia becomes evident. Row upon row of misty black-and-white photos exalt former guests as if they were hard-won trophies – Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, John F Kennedy and Bridget Bardot, among many, many others.

Where did it all go wrong?

Acapulco was a child of Mexico’s post-war golden age, when consumption, media, tourism and culture boomed all at once. The architect responsible for its success was President Miguel Alemán, who transformed a once obscure and isolated port into a playground for wealthy international jet-setters.

During the 1950s, Acapulco was the shimmering jewel of the Riviera Mexicana. But later, during the 1960s and 70s, Acapulco reached adolescence.

Acapulco Gold. No longer the exclusive haunt of wealthy vacationers, cheap hotels, cheap booze, cheap drugs and sex were readily available for all. Among her new clientele were crowds of hippies who came in search of the local marijuana – Acapulco Gold – so-called for its high cost, resplendent hue and quality beyond compare.

Vice quickly became an established corner-stone of the local economy. According to a 1960 article in Playboy magazine, Acapulco was “a favourite of New York’s top call girls with their patrons in tow”. And in their continuing explorations of the red light district, they discovered:

“Dozens of girls of all colours and ages, waiting for someone to buy them a drink, or ask them to dance or to retire to the cubicles behind the club… for anything from forty cents up…”

It was just as Elvis had hinted in his 1963 film: ‘Fun in Acapulco’.

But the arc of hedonism is always doomed to burn out. The 1990s brought an unprecedented crime-wave, when a major drug cartel began utilising it as a trafficking port. As Acapulco gained strategic importance and notoriety, rival gangs tore each other apart for supremacy of its streets.

A tsunami of blood and bullets swallowed the city, and to the grim horror of foreign holiday-makers, several severed heads washed up on the beaches.

Terminal Decay. Since then, the police and army have clamped down. Most of the violence is now restricted to a few impoverished and neglected barrios, far from the city centre and overly-sanitised hotel zone. Still there remains a sense of terminal decay, despite hopeful reports that Acapulco is really on the up.

Today, Acapulco’s 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 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.

Cruise Ship Gleaming in the Sun. 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 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.

Read more from David Arghiris and view his vivid photos of Mexico and other countries in Latin America on his Interamericana blog. Follow him on Twitter at @ialivejournal.