Article Author:
Associated Press
Mark Stevenson
TULUM, MEXICO (AP) — Uncontrolled development hits this once laid-back beach town on Mexico's Caribbean coast We gave it a go, and the developers are now working hard on it. Desperate—build condominiums and hotels in the slums.
Police are trying to evict the squatters so they can build towering condominiums next to timber and tar paper huts, but residents are resisting. Fed up with foreign investors excluding locals from their shores.
In the latest clash on July 27, police accompanied backhoes, fired tear gas and attempted to topple squatters' homes in the shadow of new apartments with balconies. The attempt ended as the wind forced the gas back onto the officer, who retreated under a hail of rocks.
The contrast between the rich and the poor is striking: vaguely Mayan-sounding names and phrases such as "live in the luscious jungle" and "immersive spiritual experiences." A gleaming white four-story condo with an English slogan."
There are only a few public access points in the 80-mile (130 km) stretch known as the Riviera Maya on the coast, where uncontrolled resort development has already closed most public access to beaches. . Squatter resident camps may have reason to ask if poor Mexicans are allowed to enter here. pledged to relocate or remove about 12,000 inhabitants of the 340-acre (137-hectare) settlement. Founded in 2016 on highly prized, former public land, a few blocks from the town's main street and about 2 kilometers from the coast.
Such land encroachments are common throughout Mexico. Many are quickly eradicated. However, there are those who gradually blend into the city. As many as 250,000 people are believed to live in the squatter community outside Cancun.
Officials allege that "invaders" have created a semi-lawless area, tarnishing Tulum's reputation for growing violence and threatening a vital tourism industry.
Squatter leader José Antonio Leon Mendez is a welder who has lived in Cancun and Tulum for about 30 years and has worked as a cook, gardener and bricklayer in surrounding condominiums and hotels. Like many squatters who work as foreigners, they were fed up with not being able to afford a home in a town that was increasingly filled with foreigners.
"Mexicans being 'invaders' in their own country. It doesn't make sense. It's like saying someone is stealing what's theirs." ' said Leon Mendes. These people are not thieves. They are Tulum's workforce.
"We have no personal problems with foreigners, but they should respect our rights," he said, adding that on October 2, He added that Mexicans represented the last stand to be discounted from their shores.
The settlement is part of 500 acres (200 ha) of public land that was sold by the city authorities in the 2000s, primarily to foreign developers.
Condos at the edge of the camp and within them are currently priced at between $100,000 and $150,000 and are advertised in US dollars, as are admission fees at many seaside resorts. I'm here. Around Tulum, $20 per day is considered a reasonable wage. So it would take decades for the average Mexican worker to buy one of his.
Quintana Roo Attorney General Oscar Montes de Oca vows to evict squatters. "We even have a court order for eviction," Montes de Oca said. "It's just that every time we try, they just quickly gather and block the road."
Many of these obstacles remain. Piles of stones, tires and scrap wood are piled up in the streets ready to be set on fire.
Mateoculus, who rents a room for himself and his two children in the settlement, sports an angry bruise on his thigh from being hit with a police tear gas canister.
"They came and said we had to move out of the house and take our stuff," Cruz said of the July 27 eviction attempt. The land on which he lives is directly below his new four-story apartment building.
"What were they thinking? They fired tear gas in front of a lot of people," Cruz said.
Montes de Oca says authorities are planning to relocate squatters. … a businessman is about to donate money to build a house.
"This will make him 70% of these people willing to leave with the confidence that they will be able to secure decent housing," said Montesdeoca. When asked what he would do with his remaining 30%, he said he would "apply other means".
Leon Mendes rejects such offers.
“While letting locals who have lived in Quintana Roo for 15, 20, or 30 years live 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, they are giving land to foreigners. I'm not going to allow it to continue to sell.In the woods," he said. "It is non-negotiable."
Given the cost of taxis and bus routes for tourists, commuting from the new settlements requires workers to pay 4 per day. It could cost you a fraction of that.
Officials, however, make other claims.
As in the rest of Tulum, street-level drug trafficking was behind many of the killings in the camp on 2 October. In October, two tourists—one an Indian-born California travel blogger, the other German—were caught in a shootout of rival drug dealers and killed along Tulum's boulevard. Murdered in a restaurant.
State Police Chief Lucio Hernandez says government security cameras have detected that many of Tulum's drug dealers are using the squatter camps as hideouts.
Squatter leader Rafael Hernandez Juarez admits the area has become increasingly violent, with drug sales and killings frequent.
"We try not to get involved with them," said the amiable former tourist shuttle driver, who said it's dangerous to report drug dealers.
Victor Reyes, who lives in Tulum and works in real estate, estimates that about 70% of condominium investments come from foreign developers, and the Prices are set in dollars.
He echoes the suspicions some locals have about squatters. "Their group became the mafia," said Reyes. “These organizations are rallying people and using women and children as cannon fodder to avoid eviction.” "They won the lottery," he says, by squatting on such precious land.
The squatters are clearly a political group, now aligned with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Morena Party. In a way, many see their humble hut as winning the lottery.
Many build his second set of rooms. , the original shack is rented out to locals. Some squatters sold his spacious 10 x 20 yard (meter) lot for $8,000 to $12,000 for him. They all have enough savings for materials that they seem to invest any amount of money in building rooms.
However, while all condos built in the same camp are connected, they do not have water or sewer connections. Some condos also have pools. Squatters have installed temporary electrical connections and dug wells and rudimentary septic tanks into rocky soil, but the combination is problematic.
The majority of squatters struggle to make ends meet, even though they live in expensive properties.
Construction worker Lenin Solis builds his house one by one with his Vega cement blocks. He was evicted twice from his previous plot of settlement. One of them is about to be built in a new condo he's 20 yards from his current home.
"Now they say, 'Why are you building?' and they want us out," he said. ``But how? even
A native of Campeche, Lorena spent years cooking for tourists in hotels and restaurants, but she was once forbidden to speak her native language, Maya. I was. She asked not to use her surname to avoid problems with her authorities.
And after building a hut of wood and tarpaulin—she planted trees and built a goldfish pond in the back—outside her house her own street her hood Now able to put up her stand.
She even learned to recite the menu in English for the "beef, chicken, pork" empanadas she sells to tourists who drop by from her condo.
"We welcome all investors," she said Lorena.