The work analyzes the case of tourism development in Cancún and the Riviera Maya,
Mexico, as a tourist project that emerged as an initiative of the Mexican State in the seventies.
The paper discusses the role of the State as a social entrepreneur in promoting and boosting
productive activities. The study is based on the entrepreneurial capacities of the Mexican State
to devise and create an important global tourist pole, from the institutions that promote
finance. In this perspective, we highlight the role of state managers who play as entrepreneurs.
The sources of information include documents of that time, studies on the history of the
tourist pole and official statistical sources. The main conclusion is that in the creation of the
tourist pole of Cancún, the Mexican State assumed an entrepreneurial profile that distanced
itself from other forms of participation and control as a managerial institution or as state
monopoly capital. The work is structured in three sections. In the first, the problem is posed
by contextualizing the locality of the Mexican southeast. In the second section the concept of
the entrepreneur is discussed. The third section includes the analytical framework of the work
in which the entrepreneurial capacities of the State are identified as a guiding element of the
study of the case analyzed, and section four is finished with reflections and conclusions.