Every year, millions of tourists from the United States and around the world flock to Cancún—Mexico’s most popular and profitable destination. Paradise Lost provides the first history of Cancún and uncovers the hidden mechanisms through which this remote Maya island in the Mexican Caribbean was transformed into an international tourist hub. Drawing on numerous archives in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and national capital, and dozens of oral histories with Cancún’s founding workers, Carlos R. Hernández reconstructs not only the development of Cancún and the Riviera Maya but also the underlying transformations of the Mexican state that facilitated this process. The book deftly argues that the invention of touristic sites enabled “developing” countries to engage in large-scale forms of privatization after decades of state-led development. Paradise Lost revises our critical assumptions about development, tourism, and the state while calling for more inclusive and sustainable alternatives.