Mexico’s government has acknowledged that at least two well-known Mayan ruin sites are unreachable by visitors because of a toxic mix of cartel violence and land disputes.
But two tourist guides in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, say two other sites that the government claims are still open to visitors can only be reached by passing though drug gang checkpoints.
The explosion of drug cartel violence in Chiapas since last year has left the Yaxchilán ruin site completely cut off, the government conceded Friday.
Land disputes = Native Mayans own the land, some corporation has stolen it.
Meanwhile, officials concede that visitors also can’t go to the imposing, towering pyramids at Tonina, because a landowner has shut off across his land while seeking payment from the government for granting the right of way. […]
But the damages are mounting for the Indigenous residents who have come to depend on tourism.
“There are communities that sell handicrafts, that provide places to stay, boat trips, craftspeople. It affects the economy a lot,” said the first guide. “You have to remember that this is an agricultural state that has no industry, no factories, so tourism has become an economic lever, one of the few sources of work.”
Maybe you shouldn’t be so eager to celebrate the site being shut down
Sorry, how does that change what I just said? Do you think the landowner got that land from the Mayans for a fair deal?
I think you’re assuming a lot about the landowner and ignoring the many native people who benefit from the tourism
And those native people wouldn’t benefit from the same tourism if they owned the land themselves?
What am I assuming exactly? The land used to belong to the Mayan people, hence a city being there, and now it belongs to one rich landowner. Or do you dispute the entire history of the conquest of Central America?
Very common. I was in Tulum with a client looking to build a home on “her” land and the Mayans are basically forced to use shady dealers like Coldwell Banker to manage their land. Basically white person comes from the US, Italy, Israel, etc, typically conservative leaning, hires CWB, they come up with some shady way to get land from the Mayans. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn’t. Cartels use them too. That basically goes for the majority of the Yucatan. Go further north to Playa del Carmen or Cancun and it’s more corporatized.
I was coincidentally just telling my daughter about how I took a trip across the Yucatan peninsula with my parents as a kid in the 80s. We took public buses and stayed in small hotels, so it was not as touristy as it could have been (although we did start at Cancun and end at Cozumel)… but I remember the poverty very well all these years later. There were child prostitutes, definitely indigenous, at the entrance to the ruins of Chichen Itza (that, at least, has apparently been cleaned up and better-maintained).
These were people who once created an amazing civilization. One that independently discovered writing and the number zero, came up with a complex calendar system, learned amazing hydraulic and irrigation techniques, working with almost unfarmable soil in a place that had few natural bodies of water, they even knew how to fill cavities! And they were reduced to literally prostituting their children.
This was under the PRI one-party state and the economy was in shambles, but I bet it’s not super improved.
“Land conflicts” is such chickenshit phrasing here when the Zapatistas have been holding out here for a while.
Remember the US created this whole gang problem in Mexico. Now we use it as a fear tactic too. The US model for success.
Sounds like a good use for the military, clear the gangs out by force and eminent domain the land that is disputed so you can have the tourism industry pump money into an economy that needs it
The military is in on it, too.
All of mexico is a narco-state, now. It’s what they want.
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