A little person in a referee costume and Tim Burton-style face paint is doing the “Y.M.C.A” dance beside a scantily dressed cowgirl on a nightclub stage. It costs $50 to get in and witness this. A sea of Americans take a break from their beers and tequila to join in, chucking up Ys, Ms, Cs, and As above their cowboy hats. After the song and a few selfies, he hops off stage and heads for another nightclub, ready to be ogled and laughed at all over again.It’s July 4th in Cancún, Mexico. I am here to see the Americans, who are out in full force to celebrate their country’s 250th birthday. Last year, Cancún (or Gringolandia, as it’s known to locals) ranked as both the world’s most disappointing tourist destination and America’s most popular. So where better to peer into the American psyche on its big day?In Cancún, American flags flap in the merciful breeze. Menus offer burgers, pizza, or Tex-Mex slop. Everyone speaks English. You pay in dollars. A shop hawking Mexican tourist tat even feels the need to announce itself as a “Mexican Outlet.” The Yanks on tour stay at all-inclusive resorts, never leaving the premises. Food and drinks are unlimited. There are enough live gigs, swimming pools, and spas to totally destroy the need to move, think, or do anything. This is a place of unhinged, spoon-fed hedonism, an ersatz “paradise” built solely for the entertainment of American outsiders.If you were an American outsider, you might like it, too.“Curious, I attempt to sneak into one of these resorts”I get chatting to one named Antonio, sitting with his shopping outside a Gucci store. He’s middle-aged, with a shaved head, James Harden-style beard, tattoos, black vest, and U.S. flag basketball shorts. After four days in the sun, he has virtually nothing to say about Cancún or what he’s been up to. “It’s great,” he reflects with a numb stare, “my resort has been great.” Another shirtless American says that he too has barely left his resort but is seemingly appreciating the culture. “Too many times, we’re just stuck in America, not being able to see the world,” he says, “and, you know, there’s propaganda everywhere.”Curious, I attempt to sneak into one of these resorts, a hulking building that looks like a cream-colored Barbican called the Grand Park Royal Cancún. (Rooms come in at roughly $350 per night.) I march confidently through the entrance, past the guards and the guests with their enormous metal suitcases, and down the stairs towards the main area.I move quickly, but not so fast as to alert suspicion. The pool is in sight, flickering in the sunlight. I can see the kilograms of shrimp sitting in buffet trays while sunburnt eating machines follow the conveyor belt, hauling piles of grub onto their undersized plates. I’ve made it. I can indulge! Maybe I’ll even get a massage.And then, “Excuse me, sir.” It’s all over. I’ve been rumbled. The Grand Park Royal Cancún was built in 1974, as were most of the resorts in the Hotel Zone, a strip of land running along the beach and the main destination for tourists in Cancún. In 1970, just three people lived on this entire peninsula; workers on a local coconut plantation. At the time, the Mexican government was desperate for an economic boost, so it used an IBM computer to pinpoint the perfect spot for a new resort complex: one with the perma-blue skies, white sand, and relatively shark-free waters needed to attract wealthy Americans.They landed on Cancún and shipped in thousands of workers to build the place from scratch. Within four years, the area transformed, going from practically zero residents to 40,000.A 1972 New York Times article reported that the government planned to build “the resort of the future.” Fifty-four years later, I was venturing out to see what had become of that future. After a day of lounging poolside, resort dwellers are shuttled en masse to the Cancún Strip. Here, modern hedonistic urges reveal themselves; the need to fuck, to snort, to gamble. In all fairness, these urges—and this expat-friendly setup—aren’t the sole preserve of American tourists in Caribbean Mexico. If you’re British, imagine a Yankified Benidorm; to Aussies, it’s Kuta with more cowboy hats; wenn sie Deutscher sind, ist es deren version von Ballermann. Conga lines of American bar crawlers chant and swerve through crowds. Nightclubs blare horrific EDM remixes of “Pursuit of Happiness (Nightmare)” and “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, competing on a sonic battlefield to provide the most debilitating headache. It’s hot and neon, sweaty and blinding. The men are rendered primal, staggering and stumbling around, necking stale Coronas, and trying to chat up girls in tight dresses. Shady guys on the periphery approach you asking, “Coke for you amigo? Good price.” Or they’ll offer a nearby strip club. “You can fuck amigo. Good price.” Most punters avoid eye contact, but you see a few ears prick up. At one point, a public bus passes, its passengers glaring at the spectacle. I speak to a wild-eyed American, roaming around in matching shirt and shorts. “Cancún’s dope man,” he says, before explaining—with a wink—that he has to go find some “chicas.” The strip also hosts heavily armed police and military forces. The brutal cartel violence elsewhere in Mexico is slowly leaking into Cancún. In 2023, four people were killed in a drug-related shooting on the beach in the Hotel Zone. The Mexican government has subsequently expanded armed deployment in the region. The tourists must be safe. In part this violence is, of course, fueled by said tourists and their appetite for drugs.On the beach I find a square-jawed 20-year-old Mormon named Cruz. Yes, a Mormon in Cancún. “I hate Cancún,” he says, “the Vegas vibe is kind of weird.” I’m not surprised; even the most seasoned booze hound would find it overwhelming, let alone someone who’s never touched a drop and is forced to navigate snarling bouncers and dead-eyed strippers dancing in cages. “I don’t vibe with Cancún on any of those levels,” Cruz says.The Vegas comparison, though, is a point of pride for one venue, which is named “Cocobongo” after the fictional club in The Mask. A huge billboard reads “‘Puts Vegas Nightlife to Shame’—CNN,” above a 4th of July poster with a blonde woman in a cowboy hat and “USA” spandex.I am reminded of the words of a pair of academics, whose work I came across while researching for this article. “Cancún has become a simulacrum,” wrote Rebecca Maria Torres and Janet D. Momsen in 2005, in their paper Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico. “A dynamic ‘hybrid-space’ in which elements of Mexican, American, and artificial Maya culture have been re-constituted for tourist consumption.” The result, as I experience it at least, is a void. I feel I am in neither Mexico nor the U.S., but a kind of nowhereland precision-engineered for cheap thrills and numbing the mind.The perfect place to go on holiday, then.“America’s richest, the ones who have made its dream their reality, are away for its birthday, chowing down on a beige buffet on foreign shores”Walking down the beach, I stumble upon a 4th of July party hosted by a fancy resort. This time, I have no issue sneaking in. Star-spangled banners are everywhere. A live band is playing “Uptown Funk” and “Pink Pony Club”, badly. Some dance and others sing. Most are old people with old money, dressed in polo shirts and chino shorts, sat drinking enormous glasses of red wine, loudly chortling.I get chatting to one couple, David and Letitia, who are dressed in matching U.S. flag T-shirts and shorts, wielding enormous cocktails. They’re seasoned veterans of Cancún.“We like Mexico because of the way they treat us,” David says, gesturing around. They look at me as if I’m a dog about to be put down when I say I’m staying in a cheap hostel nearby. Their plan for the rest of the evening is more partying, drinking, and celebrating the USA! “This is amazing. This is beautiful,” Letitia marvels.The band wraps up and a woman in a red dress enters the stage. She begins belting out the U.S. national anthem. Almost robotically, the entire crowd rises to its feet. Some join in, others stare proudly. The resort workers look bored, unimpressed. Two hundred and fifty years has been leading toward this. America’s richest, the ones who have made its dream their reality, are away for its birthday, chowing down on a beige buffet on foreign shores. After the performance, the red, white, and blue fireworks go off. The crowd stares up, mouths ajar. “Born in the U.S.A.” plays. Then it ends. A large cloud of smoke floats over the resort. God Bless Gringolandia.Follow Fin Carter on Instagram @fin.carterrThe post ‘God Bless Gringolandia’: VICE Celebrates Independence Day in Cancún appeared first on VICE.