The positive forecasts regarding job creation and development made by the company have not convinced the fishermen. They say that the company does not pay them, but simply evicts them from their homes.
Hercilia Castro
The Ixtapa Island project led by the Mexican National Tourism Fund(Fonatur), with more than 4,000 hotel rooms, a golf course and 3 kilometres of beach, including Playa Linda, Pantla, Barrio Viejo and Barrio Nuevo, will be undertaken by the developing company, Los Médanos SA de CV.
Valid for 52 years, the plan appeared in the June issue of Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (Semarnat) official newsletter.
In the general information section of their environmental impact assessment statement (EIA), filed in 2011, they highlight the “seafront location and proximity to Ixtapa’s hotel zone, which is a tourist centre of international significance.
The site boasts access routes that facilitate the visit of tourists.”
The EIA, registered in Semarnat’s Department of Environmental Impact and Risk (DGIRA) in 2009 before being registered again in 2011, appeared in the ecological newsletter dated 19th to 26th June 2014 with a validity of 52 years under the name of Ixtapa Island and the project number 12GE2011UD010. In other words, the project has only recently been approved.
“The permanent works of this project will only be allocated to the creation of an access route and its associated ancillary works, affecting an area of 21,772.85m².
The remaining area, equivalent to 80% of the land, or 89,879.39m², will be allocated for use as green spaces or gardens ”, according to the Los Médanos’ EIA.
Nevertheless, the Ixtapa Island project has a murky past, given that farmers and property owners started legal proceedings against Los Médanos S.A. de C.V. for the possession of hectares of land in 2005.
The developer wanted to evict 18 farmers from Barrio Lindo, where there is also an ejido (a piece of public land).
The farmers formed the Copropiedad Las Salinas Viejas cooperative, which they used to promote other agricultural projects including the farming of white shrimp, as the 161 hectare area contain a natural lake covering 15 hectares of land near the sea.
The farmers’ lawsuit began after the investors bought out a neighbour, the owner of only 55 hectares adjacent to their land.
In one of the clauses contained in the deed of sale submitted to the investors, the neighbour indicated that there were people occupying the land being acquired, but that they “aren’t a problem”.
Problems started when the farmers discovered that in a surveying and demarcation document the neighbour had included the 161 hectares that belong to them, and for which they have held the respective deeds for more than 30 years.
In 2009, under the government of the ex-PRI mayor Alejandro Bravo Abarca, in a council meeting, the land use change under the Urban Development Management Plan (PDDU) was fast-tracked, classifying the area of Barrio Viejo as “tourist-residential”.
The environmental impact assessment was once again registered, with the peculiarity that it had been approved 2-years beforehand and the validity had been published only a month prior.
The Médanos de Ixtapa Company reported the farmers to the public prosecutor who issued warrants for their arrest and by 2012 many of those affected had fled because of the search. Simply for fighting for their land.
On page eight of Ixtapa Island’s EIA, the project emphasises that “in this area only an urban system can be seen, made up of the Pantla and Barrio Nuevo neighbourhoods, which will structure the primary road network, joining these neighbourhoods and entering as far as the tourist and ecological reserve areas to the north of Laguna Pantla, including the beach zones.”
However, it also passes through the edges of Barrio Viejo and the Playa Linda area, which is currently a public beach that borders the hotel developer Ixtapa (of Fonatur).
Strangely enough, in a press release on the 15th of December 2009, Fonatur announced that “today, Fonatur is beginning a new stage, through which it will certify private sector tourist developments.
This programme, named the Fonatur Advisory and Quality Certification Programme, gets underway today with the signing of the contract entered into with the developer Los Médanos Ixtapa, S.A. de C.V. to carry out the Ixtapa Island project.
The development will be located in Ixtapa Zihuatanejo in the state of Guerrero, in an area that borders on Fonatur’s Integrally Planned Centre (CIP), the same area will become an extension of the centre.”
“This complex, which will be the first to form part of this programme, will consist of approximately 4,000 hotel rooms, 3 kilometres of beaches and an endorsed golf course.
This project is estimated to create more than 4,500 direct and indirect jobs, supporting regional development and the economy and helping to elevate the state of Guerrero to the heights of other international destinations.”
Photo by Lauri Rantala
The project neglects to mention the population centres and public access points to beaches, privatising the affected villages in the interests of “tourist development”, villages that will be condemned to underemployment, migration and the deterioration of their communities, not to mention the real cases of non-compliance by Fonatur in the very development of Ixtapa, which 42 years after expropriation, is yet to settle financially with the affected property owners.
The peope do not want Fonatur, because it has come to crush everything in its path.
The positive job creation and development forecasts made by Fonatur have left the fishermen unconvinced, as is the case with the members of the Isla de Ixtapa fishing cooperative.
Less than a month ago, Fonatur violently entered Playa Linda in order to excavate there, and their workers warned the local fishermen that nobody would hold back a Mexican government project.
Those affected will number at least 2,750, in the areas of both Playa Linda and La Isla Ixtapa.
“We have scars that cannot be forgotten, Fonatur has already done it to us, they have evicted us before” says Inocente Pérez Arellano, in 1982 they were deceived by Fonatur’s sub-office and removed from Playa Quieta, where a natural inner harbour existed. At present, no tourists or locals are permitted entry unless they are members or clients of the Club Med hotel.
Many of them do not have a university education and live in Barrio Viejo, a community 15 minutes (30 minutes using public transport) from Zihuatanejo, which seems untouched by civilization despite its proximity.
Only the main street is tarmacked, unlike the town’s other streets. The health clinics are almost abandoned and the main schools suffer shortages. Progress has not reached Barrio Viejo to cover its most basic needs.
The fishermen relate how they also suffered a violent eviction in 1997 at the hands of the Mexican Army, when they “were removed at gunpoint on the orders of Fonatur” from a one-hectare piece of land that had been given to them by a private individual. Despite holding a protective action so as not to be evicted, violence was used.
“You know that laws were made to be broken” was the response from the Fonatur delegate at that time.
Photo by Alejandro Garcia Linares
The fishermen of Playa Linda, in the Zihuatanejo de Azueta region have more than learnt that they cannot trust the government.
“If those friends get their foot in the door, nobody can get them out”, he says.
They have been subjected to abuse and evictions, something that affects this tourist zone adjacent to the CIP centre in Ixtapa.
Thousands of hectares of public land were expropriated under the government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez, and thus far the 105 property owners, all old, ailing, indebted and destitute, are yet to be paid.
Fonatur, meanwhile, does not pay them, but simply evicts them from their homes.
(Translated by Alfie Lake)