Short answers, pulled from the story.
Development of Cancún as a resort city began on the 23rd of January 1970. At that time, Isla Cancún had only three permanent residents, all caretakers of a coconut plantation, while the nearest settlement, Puerto Juárez, held around 117 people.
Cancún derives from the Mayan words kàan, meaning 'snake', and kum or kun, meaning 'to swell' or 'to overfill'. The most widely accepted translation is 'nest of snakes', while a less accepted reading is 'place of the golden snake'.
Hurricane Gilbert struck Cancún directly in September 1988, requiring full reconstruction of tourist hotels and causing an estimated $87 million in tourism losses in 1989 USD. Hurricane Wilma hit as a Category 4 storm on the 21st of October 2005, and Hurricane Dean made landfall in 2007 as a Category 5 storm 190 miles south of the city, stripping sand from 7.5 miles of Cancún beaches.
A record 21 million tourists visited Cancún in 2023, surpassing the original projection of 20.5 million. This figure represents one of the most visited international tourist destinations in the world.
Starting in 2015, large amounts of brown Sargassum seaweed began washing onto Cancún's beaches every summer, carrying a strong unpleasant odor. By 2021 the Sargassum season had become an annual event affecting Cancún and many other Caribbean beach destinations.
Cancún's connections to the drug trade date to the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Juárez and Gulf cartels controlled the area. By 2010, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reported that Los Zetas had taken over many smuggling routes through the Yucatán. The city recorded at least 193 murders in 2017, the majority linked to drug trafficking, and January 2018 alone saw 33 homicides, triple the January 2017 total.