Acapulco:

del paraíso turístico al desastre.

Abstract

The city of Acapulco is located on the coast of Guerrero, Mexico. Due to his geographical strategic position and his indisputable beauty, in the decade of the fifties the port of Acapulco was stimulated across touristic policies directed to promoting the zone worldwide, turning it one of the most important tourist places into the world. At the same time as great richness was generated for a few, big zones of marginalization arise. The policies that forgot the basic needs of the local population and geographical conditions of an exposed area year-on-year to tropical cyclones and other natural phenomena such as earthquakes and tsunamis, had an impact long after in the expression of spatial segregation, uneven development, population explosion, devastation of ecosystems, land use changes and lack of cohesion within the population. Decades after the start of the tourist boom, we can analyze the impact of tourism as a source of progress in the port of Acapulco, the so-called paradise, which today suffers from serious problems of poverty, violence and disasters. A reflection on the disasters in this case by tropical cyclones, has to be analyzed through its historical process.