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Paul's Third World Tourism Updates - Mexico
it self a
> fwd from Mangrove Action Project Quarterly News, 6 (3), Spring 1999
Paul Gonsalves wrote:
>
> Sell-off of Prized Coastal Area Spurns Bitter Battle
>
> For years various environmental groups have been pleading with authorities
> to stop the rapid sell-off of the pristine Caribbean coast of Mexico to
> hotel developers. The recent sale of one prized beach, X'cacel, has become
> a symbol of this siege and has spurned one of Mexico's most bitter
> environmental battles today. A federal reserve until 1992, X'cacel is one
> of the world's most important nesting areas for sea turtles, also boasting
> mangroves, coastal rainforests, and even pre-Columbian ruins.
> Protests by Mexican conservation groups such as Ecologists Group Mayab and
> People of the Mayan Cancun Corridor along with international groups
> including Sea Turtle Restoration Project, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and
> Rainforest Action Centre have only been shrugged off by government officials
> and developers. In January, the Audobon Society sent a letter to President
> Zedillo of Mexico, signed by Carl Safina, National Audobon's Living Oceans
> Vice President, on behalf of 48 environmental organisations in the US,
> Australia and Mexico, asking for protection of X'cacel.
>
> A Flurry of Developments
>
> X'cacel is just the latest in a long line of sell-ofs along the Caribbean
> coast. The NGO People of the Mayan Cancun Corridor recently wrote: "The
> Mayan Riviera is in great trouble now as each new day brings more
> construction. In one weekend, working night and day, an entire building
> site can take over a healthy thriving mangrove before anyone can even
> comprehend what is being done. This may temporarily benefit the local
> economy as this creates jobs and stimulates cash flows, but the long range
> results will be devastating. The mangroves, vital to the life of our
> coasts, coral reefs, and so many mammals, are being sacrified for the
> almighty dollar and thousands of hotel rooms, malls, golf courses ..."
>
> The Outrage draws Media Coverage
>
> The New York Times recently covered the X'cacel outrage in an extensive
> story, "Voice of the Turtles Opposes a Hotel Development" (November 25, by
> Sam Dillon). The following excerpts make clear the continuing need for
> international pressure to save this valuable coast.
>
> " Mexican environmentalists view X'cacel's ivory sands and emerald waters as
> sacred terrain, on a smaller scale but a bit in the way people in the US see
> Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.
> " But in February, after months of secret negotiations, the state government
> announced that X'cacel had been sold for $ 2.2 million to Sol Melia, a
> Spanish conglomerate that plans to build a 450-room resort.
> " Aracely Dominguez, the founder of the region's most important conservation
> group and owner of a small Cancun hotel, said highways had been gouged
> through coastal rain forests, mangrove swamps paved into parking lots and
> delicate coastal bays dredged with hydraulic draglines. 'We can't permit
> them to plunder X'cacel as they have all these other beaches,' she said.
> " Scientists and conservationists have based turtle protection and
> environmental education programs for the entire Yucatan Peninsula here. For
> a decade, thousands of children and their families have made annual
> pilgrimages to X'cacel to experience the wonder of the summer nesting
> season, when on any evening, scores of 400-pound loggerheads glide through
> the surf, lumber up the sloping beach and burrow into the dune to lay eggs.
> Turtle rangers protect the nests from teh poachers who sack beaches
> elsewhere in Mexico.
> " 'This sale has fed cynicism about the government's environmental policies,
> because an entire generation of children has learned that X'cacel is a
> protected area,' said Julio Zurita, a Quintana Roo biologist who helped
> identify its importance. 'Then overnight they were told it's been sold.'
> " Governor Villanueva who secretly negotiated the deal reacted to protests
> by declaring a swath of dune 100 metres wide the length of the beach to be a
> 'protected natural area' and prohibiting construction there.
> Conservationists said the move has little practical consequence since few
> hotels build on the dune anyway.
>
> Developers in Denial
>
> " 'Construction at X'cacel has not begun yet, but Sol Melia employees who
> put up a barbed wire fence around their newly purchased property have
> chopped down 1,200 rare palm trees', said Juan Carlos Cantu, Greenpeace's
> Mexico director. Sanchez denied that. 'We're not going to do anything that
> will go against nature,' he said.
> " Alfredo Cesar Dachary, Director of Quintana Roo's Caribbean Centre for
> Sustainable Development, asks, why did the government sell a coastal
> treasure like X;cacel for a price feteched by some private homes in Cancun
> or the nearby island of Cozumel?
> " The government sold several beaches in the same area last year. Atop a
> mangrove marsh on the beach adjoining X'cacel, a developer is building
> tracts of concrete bungalows. Builders describe the sprawling resort as
> 'low-density', but from the air it looks like Levittown.
> " All the construction has attracted thousands of workers to Quintana Roo,
> and many live in coastal slums. One squatters' settlement near Playa del
> Carmen, 42 miles south of Cancun, has 30,000 inhabitants.
> " Artemio Santos, President of Coparmex, the state's most important business
> group, said environemtnal adn social disputes were beginning to disrupt
> Quintana Roo's coastal development because the government had failed to
> enforce clear environmental policies.
> " 'There need to be clear rules for investors about respecting our fauna and
> flora, and that's where we've fallen short,' Santos said. 'And this could be
> what's happening with this X'cacel project. They're developing an area that
> should be dedicated to the turtles.' "
>
> fwd from Mangrove Action Project Quarterly News, 6 (3), Spring 1999
>
> by
>
> Paul Gonsalves
> Bangalore, India
> + 91 80 525 4054
> asfute@vsnl.com
> http://members.xoom.com/asfute
>
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