A confusion of travel as entertainment with travel as education. Tourism has led to the cancunization of numerous vrigin green spots. New President of Mexico vows to turn cancunization around.

• CUBA: LIFE AMONG THE RUINS Len and Martha Biallas, January 1996 - Report of a trip to Cuba, with some good explanations of the importance of travel. In the last paragraph under Economics you will find a reference to cancunization.

  In the last few paragraphs on Why Travel to Cuba, you will find:

  "Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintained that there is a meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler. Indeed, travel does help us acknowledge connections to others as we come 'face to face' with their reality as human beings. Seeing the other as 'other' changes the prism through which we understand ourselves and our world.

  Travel to other countries tells us about ourselves and stretches our imagination. Travel frees us from everyday routines, exposing us to new experiences, new cultures, new people. When we set off with reasonable expectations, agility of mind and spaciousness of spirit, travel helps us gain perspectives on life, educates our tastes, and awakens a sense of what it might be like to be someone else or to live in another time or culture."

  Good example of learning to see the "Other" as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have wanted us to. Link added January 12, 2001.

• Mexico's Green Dream: No More Cancúns New York Times, January 12, 2001, By TIM WEINER. This is the article that alerted me that I needed to get "cancunization" into our vocabulary.