The Urbane R © 2004 P. Scott Cummins
To the Honorable Gustavo Gonzalez Villasenor, Mayor of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. Your Excellency, your city of Puerto Vallarta is one of the most compellingly beautiful tourist destinations in the world. No wonder so many friends and neighbors from Seattle return every year. I too have just been to Puerto Vallarta (“PV” as so many there refer to it). This was my first trip to Mexico. Our family traveled with another Seattle family – and while there greeted other friends from the neighborhood where we live in Seattle. The joke here is that “PV” is Seattle’s sunny southern suburb. We also met many Americans from the Midwest and Northeast during our stay - but there seems to be a special rapport between the people of your state (Jalisco) and us from up the coast. Maybe it is the sixty-plus year legacy of connection between the workers from Jalisco - who came to Washington to pick the fruit, dig the ditches and struggle to improve their lives while contributing mightily to the relative economic advantage we enjoy in El Norte. People from Seattle are cognizant of that legacy of sacrifice – as well as the richness of culture and inter-connectedness which has manifested between us. PV is almost unique, it seems, because it helped pioneer large scale tourism from around the world - after Tennessee Williams’ film “The Night of the Iguana” was made south of town at Mismaloya. Puerto Vallarta was “discovered” by Euro-American “jetsetter” tourists because stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and legendary director John Huston had homes there. But it is a joke to think that PV was discovered then, because of the more than four hundred year history of Spanish settlement there. And, next to the resort where we stayed near the Iguana set, the Pueblo Mismaloya - a tiny, poverty-stricken village where people of Native American Mestizo ancestry have lived for millennia. That legacy adds to the cultural richness which makes Puerto Vallarta so compelling. But sometimes it seems only in other kinds of riches that others are interested, does it not? This leads directly to the point, Mr. Mayor: we visitors do not wish to destroy what we have all come to enjoy. Yet along the coast, a tide line of soapy effluent clearly signals that the sewage outfall from the many hotels and condominiums needs treatment, to head-off serious lasting damage to the very ocean we admire for its beauty and enjoy for its bounty. The United Nations, World Tourism Organization, and many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) focusing on the concept of Sustainable Development could “zero in” on Puerto Vallarta, and Mismaloya in particular. At Mismaloya beach is a resort boasting all the amenities for awesome vacation memories -and compelling future return visits. Yet outside the resort’s high walls are throngs of the very poor marketing their wares to the (comparatively) very rich. Sustainable Development practices could provide these people a host of low-risk, high-reward venture benefits, among them: micro-lending to boost workers into service business and mercantile opportunities; sustainable tourism certification designations to boost service demand while increasing confidence among the visitor-customers; and implementation of basic public and sanitation requirements, food handler permits, etc. To walk just five minutes from that resort at Mismaloya, into the nearby Native American pueblo, can take you back from the twenty first century - virtually into the nineteenth. With local government encouragement – your championing the message of “best practices” in sustainable development of the tourism economy can inexorably “nudge” the corporate interests owning the nearby resort toward partnership with you: in building the water and sewer systems, rebuilding the crumbling roads, and developing retail opportunities for the impoverished citizens of the Pueblo Mismaloya. Because, you see, for those of us at this end of the visitor economy, who very much want to see our tourist dollars “spread around” more evenly, this will only enhance our visitor experience. More than that, the confidence which such leadership inspires will bring a whole new dimension of prosperity to your community and citizens. Transparency in government policymaking and adjudication, a well defined rule of law rooting-out corruption and graft, carefully crafted and administered accounting practices: we here in America have our share of challenges. We have much work to do in America, and we admire your resolve in Mexico as well. One of the tricky aspects of commerce brought on by globalization is that all of us are compelled to make market decisions based on “best practices” - not just “best prices” – the world is now just too small to pretend otherwise.
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