The properties have passed into private hands, mainly in destinations with high tourism potential.
“Privatization and dispossession of social property” is what the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry has called the situation that has occurred in the region during the last 30 years, mainly in the Mexican Caribbean.
A study by this organization points out that the overwhelming real estate development has displaced the original owners of the properties, whose value today amounts to millions of dollars.
Between 1993 and 2018, a total of 208,469 hectares of common use lands in Quintana Roo were formally parceled for change of ownership.
In the same period, a total of 103,575 hectares were parceled in Yucatan and 43,260 hectares in Campeche.
The organization relates this phenomenon to “the agrarian mafia,” that is to say, those businessmen who were favored by the government with the sale of land at preferential prices or through land dispossession.
Holbox, according to the study, is one of the best known and most emblematic cases of ejido land privatization; its analysis makes it possible to identify the different actors, instruments, and modalities involved in the process of dispossession promoted by the so-called “agrarian mafia,” due to the land grabbing that took place in the area by businessmen from Monterrey.
