Thoughts on a Dying Mall
A Social and Economic Aftermath
As I walk through Plaza Caracol, I’m struck by how incredibly empty it is. Most of the shops gone, replaced with EN RENTA signs and at first I see no other people, beside a lone janitor mopping the steps. The quiet is strange, library-like. I flash back to photos I saw a long time ago, of a mall in Cancun that was full of sea water and fish, destroyed during hurricane Wilma. It had been left to rot for a long time, but I think it’s gone now.
I turn a corner and look over a banister and see the first sign of life, a souvenir shop, selling the same depressing, mass-produced schlock you can find in just about every souvenir stand in Cancun. It’s obvious there haven’t been any kind of customers in a while; the workers mill around talking to each other, with no eye out for tourists.
As I continue to explore, I think of a dying coral reef. What once had been home to a number of different businesses and a host of activity is now a nearly lifeless husk. Only Starbucks and the generic souvenir shop, the bottom feeders, remain. This thought is only reinforced by the fact that most of the open space has been turned into an art gallery, full of rather uninspired paintings of scenery or abstracts. There is very little movement or interest here, only stillness.
My steps echo in the cavernous main plaza and for a moment, I think of what a windfall a mall would be in the post-apocalypse. It was easy to imagine families dividing up the space, turning storefronts into homes. I could see the smoke from cooking fires escaping through a broken sky light, plants growing up through cracks in the foundation, vines winding their way around banisters. Kids would play in the puddles where the rain leaked in, and mothers, speaking a language that doesn’t exist yet, would call them in to eat.
Just as quickly as the reverie had come, it was gone.
Hurricanes have done their damage to the community over the years, and I was standing right in the middle of an economic scar left behind. It may be a while before the area fully recovers, though you can see it happening. New businesses open, and every winter and spring the hotels and bars and streets are full of rich, drunken kids making fools of themselves.
When I think of Puerto Rico, it breaks my heart. Hurricane Wilma, the strongest category five storm up until 2015, hit the Yucatan Peninsula twelve years ago. If Cancun, with its strong tourist economy and support from the Mexican government is still coming back, how will they?
