The Xcaret Group has five theme parks and six attractions in Quintana Roo, and although they are the main tourist attractions in the Riviera Maya, they are characterized by culturally segregating the inhabitants of the communities and causing environmental impacts.
Now it intends to build a Mixed Private Real Estate development made up of nine hotels and investment lots in the municipality of Santa Elena, where 96 percent of the population considers itself Mayan and which is located in the south of Yucatán, very close to the area. archaeological site of Uxmal.
With this hotel complex, this international firm aims to promote “large-scale adventure and nature tourism” activities to attract 2 million 555 thousand visitors from all over the world per year, that is, more than the current population of the state of Yucatán, which is 2 million 321 thousand inhabitants.
Through the Environmental Impact Statement (MIA) marked with code 31YU2024UD049 delivered to Semarnat, it was possible to learn that the tour operator of the company Xcaret requested a change of land use on land with forest vegetation for the construction and operation of this project that they estimate to be high impact.
To do this, they describe in the document that they would need four years to prepare the site and another six years for the construction phase, while they would expect the tourism and real estate project to have a duration of more than 100 years.
The group which has positioned itself in the Mexican Caribbean mainly for foreign tourism, recognizes that the municipality of Santa Elena “is an excellent option” to build a resort, since it is located close to the Uxmal Archaeological Zone, on the Puuc Route.
That Yucatecan municipality is located just 14 kilometers from that pre-Hispanic site, so everything indicates that it would become one of the tourist products that would be exploited to attract clients, as it does with Chichén Itzá.
In the MIA, it is specified that to reach the area, they guarantee that people will be able to do so through land transportation on Federal Highway 261, either from Mérida and its ‘Manuel Crescencio Rejón’ International Airport, as well as from Cancún, Quintana Roo. , and its International Airport in conjunction with the use of the federal project called “Mayan Train”, using land transportation from the Teya and Maxcanú stations, in Yucatán.
The question is: Do the people of Santa Elena, a small rural community with a few thousand inhabitants, have any idea of the magnitude of the project that Grupo Xcaret is planning to build on their land?
TYT Newsroom