MEXICO CITY (AP) – Violent protests over the disappearance of 43 college students have squelched tourism in Acapulco ahead of a major holiday weekend when Mexicans traditionally flock to the beach, business leaders said Wednesday.
As Mexico prepares to commemorate its 1910 revolution Monday, hotels in the Pacific resort city have seen a wave of cancellations after demonstrators temporarily shut down the airport, blocked highways and attacked government and political offices in the southern state of Guerrero.
Acapulco hotel occupancy rates are currently at 20 percent, well short of the 85 percent expected for this time of year, said Joaquin Badillo, president of the Employers’ Association for Guerrero state.
More cancellations have been registered for Christmas week, the busiest time of the year for Acapulco tourism, and Badillo said one company that operates 10 hotels has cut about 200 temporary jobs in recent weeks.
“Seasonal employment in tourism is really being hurt,” Badillo said. “We’re talking about cleaning workers, security, bartenders.”
President Enrique Pena Nieto has tried to keep the violence issue in Mexico separate from his focus on the economy, but now the two are converging in Guerrero as homicide rates in the state have soared in recent years.
Up until 2011, some 180 cruise ships a year docked in Acapulco. So far in 2014 just five have made port calls, according to statistics from local business people.
Security concerns have also affected other sectors.
Juvenal Becerra, head of a pharmacy trade association, said there has been $3.8 million in lost business over the last month in the area around Iguala, where the students went missing after a confrontation with police on Sept. 26.
“Some pharmacies have cut hours. They open later and close earlier,” Becerra said. Organized gangs that dominate the area “never stopped charging extortion or kidnapping or assaults, but since the students disappeared in September, clients leave home less often.”
Investigators say the 43 students from a rural teachers college were rounded up by local police, turned over to a drug gang and apparently killed, their corpses charred into ash and dumped into a river.
Authorities have yet to confirm that any human remains found during the search for the missing youths belong to the students, and officially they are still considered missing.