Ejidatarios (shareholders of common land) of Telchaquillo rejected the $8 million compensation proposal offered by the general director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Diego Prieto Hernández, for the expropriation of 14 hectares of Ejidal lands where the pre-Hispanic structures of Mayapán are located.
Those interviewed alleged that Diego Prieto and “his accomplices” from the ejido supported the payment of that amount with an apocryphal document and without the official endorsement of the National Institute for the Valuation of National Assets, whose general director rejected that personnel from that institute had carried out the appraisal and unless he has signed it.
At a press conference on the patio of a cafeteria in Mérida, the Ejidatarios with current agrarian rights Filiberto Martín Uc, Genaro Cobá Tamay, Juan Bautista Uc Ancona and Gladys Uc Flores, reported that they came to Mérida to clarify some points of this fight to defend their agrarian rights, of the Indigenous community and that the income generated by the archaeological zone of Mayapán benefits the people in general.
The group unanimously rejected the payment of $8 million proposed by INAH for the expropriation of the 14 hectares occupied by the pre-Hispanic structures of Mayapán.
Furthermore, those who want to sell the land place that space as common use when there is no such legal figure because the entire surface of the archaeological zone is ideal.
The farmers made a counterproposal to solve this discrepancy, which has kept the Mayapán archaeological zone closed for several months.
They ask that INAH pay the equivalent of the 40 years they have been exploiting the land by charging a fee per person. They do not have an estimate of how much money it would be, but they could talk to reach an agreement with the intervention of the National Assets Institute.
They reject the version of an internal division in the ejido because the majority of the 287 Ejidatarios have rights and the community of Telchaquillo rejects the expropriation because the land is not for sale. What they would accept is that the ejido be co-administrator of the Mayapán archaeological zone, that it manage the outdoor parking lot because it is ejido space, and that the income equivalent to 5% be delivered to the Ejidal nucleus or the committee that they formed for this defense struggle. Of agricultural property.
They do not accept Prieto Hernández’s blackmail that Mayapán only generates $13 million a year and INAH has invested $100 million in its improvement. They even said that they have official statistics from INAH on the influx of tourists and there are months when around 42,000 arrive. If all those visitors paid $70 for their ticket, that is a large amount of money that INAH collects.
TYT Newsroom
