A new tourist destination in the Mexican Caribbean. Cozumel, from an abandonment island to a cruisers port

The authors of this article give an explanation of how Cozumel became a touristic cruisers place from the reconstruction of the modern economy history in the island. It was necessary more than a century and a half to transform the town founded in that island, San Miguel de Cozumel (1848), into a cosmopolitan city and the most important touristic cruisers place in the country. Cozumel was an insignificant national property, almost abandoned. Their settlers from XIX century saw how the progress passed them by because the merchant ships and the passenger ships never stopped in the island, unless a hurricane, a mechanic problem or the need of fresh water forced them. During the Vireinal time until the beginning of XX century, Cozumel was only the interest of the maritime cartography: Its 45 klometres of extension were a very good reference to the ships that sailed the Caribbean sea route, but that very same condition transformed it into a cruisers port.