Tulum’s marathon 17-day festival event Zamna, which was scheduled to kick off on December 31st, has been postponed following public concerns over the spread of COVID-19.
Zamna Festival was feared to be a superspreader event in the making. Tulum has recently become a hub for music festivals playing it fast and loose amid ongoing pandemic restrictions, and has drawn visitors from the United States and throughout Latin America. Art With Me, a recent festival in Tulum, saw attendees dancing in crowds, and virtually no mask-wearing. The event was tied to a spike in cases, leading many to fear that Zamna would precipitate the same.
Following backlash, Zamna’s organizers have postponed their next event until April, 2021. In a statement shared via the fest’s website and Facebook page, organizers cited an increasing number of infections in the Quintana Roo region as the reason for the change.
“Sadly, the image of Tulum is being affected, in the eyes of the World, by the negligence of some entrepreneurs to organise [sic] events without respecting health and safety protocols and without taking into account the epidemiological traffic light system of the state of Quintana Roo, seriously jeopardizing the health of citizens and the local economic recovery,” the statement reads. “Amongst other things, it has caused an increase in the number of infections in Quintana Roo, resulting in the change of the federal traffic light (that was ALMOST GREEN) to orange, which leaves us no other option than to move our festival to April.”
Organizers stated they will honor multi-pass tickets purchased for their new April dates or for the festival’s next winter season dates, likely to take place in 2022.