Cancún

Cancún is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, located in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. It is a significant tourist destination in Mexico and the seat of the municipality of Benito Juárez. The city is situated on the Caribbean Sea and is one of Mexico's easternmost points. Cancún is located just north of Mexico's Caribbean coast resort area known as the Riviera Maya. It encompasses the Hotel Zone which is the main area for tourism.

According to early Spanish sources, the island of Cancún was originally known to its Maya inhabitants as Nizuc (Yucatec Maya: niʔ suʔuk), meaning either 'promontory' or 'point of grass'.

The name Cancún, Cancum or Cankun first appears on 18th-century maps. In older English-language documents, the city's name is sometimes spelled Cancoon, an attempt to convey the sound of the name.

Cancún is derived from the Mayan name kàan kun, composed of kàan 'snake' and the verb kum ~ kun 'to swell, overfill'. Two translations have been suggested: the first is 'nest of snakes' and the second, less accepted one is 'place of the golden snake'. Snake iconography was prevalent at the pre-Columbian site of Nizuc.

The shield of the municipality of Benito Juárez, which represents the city of Cancún, was designed by the Mexican-American artist Joe Vera. It is divided into three parts: the color blue symbolizes the Caribbean Sea, the yellow the sand and the red the sun with its rays.

In the years after the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, much of the Maya population died or left as a result of disease, warfare, and famines, leaving only small settlements on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel Island.

Cancún is a planned city, created to foster tourism. When development of the area as a resort was started on January 23, 1970, Isla Cancún had only three residents, all caretakers of the coconut plantation of Don José de Jesús Lima Gutiérrez, who lived on Isla Mujeres. Some 117 people lived in nearby Puerto Juárez, a fishing village and military base.^{[self-published source?]} Cancún was created as a government project to boost tourism. In 1967 the Mexican government allocated 2 million dollars fund to be administered by the Bank of Mexico to determine the feasibility of creating new recreational zones, “preferably where no other viable development alternatives exist." This was entrusted to INFRATUR, a Bank of Mexico agency.

Due to the reluctance of investors to gamble on an unknown area, the Mexican federal government financed the first nine hotels.