Caribbean coast
Shots fired on the beach: Mexican holiday region has a violence problem
Heavily armed soldiers of the Mexican Navy patrol the Playa del Carmen.
© Natalia Pescador / DPA
Shots are often fired at the holiday destinations of the Riviera Maya in Mexico – even on beaches and in hotels. As a rule, the attackers do not target tourists – but they still sometimes become victims of violence.
It is usually beautiful on the Riviera Maya: fine sandy beaches with coconut palms, pyramids on the turquoise blue sea, snorkeling on coral reefs. The Mexican holiday paradise on the Caribbean coast knows how to impress, but several recent shootings leave it in a darker light. Foreigners were also killed, including a German.
On a sunny afternoon three months ago, 15 gunmen stormed the coast near Puerto Morelos, south of Cancún. They ran with rapid-fire rifles between the palm huts of a hotel, as the video recording of a surveillance camera showed, and shot down two drug dealers. In speedboats, they set off on the run. When the shots rang out, tourists and hotel employees were sheltering in inner rooms. There were no other casualties.
They were lucky. Two weeks earlier, a German tourist and a travel blogger from India had been killed in the trendy town of Tulum. They were eating at different tables in the bar “La Malquerida” when an exchange of gunfire began. Drug traffickers pursued an opponent. He entered the restaurant and returned the fire from there. Police found 25 shell casings fired at the scene. Two other Germans and a Dutch woman were injured.
“We have a great demand and a great supply of drugs, ” the Attorney General of the State of Quintana Roo, Óscar Montes de Oca, told the television channel Televisa. “That’s what leads to this violence”.
Killed by contract killers
Large drug cartels and local gangs are fighting for drug transshipment points and extortion money, from which neither small nor large stores are spared. Even taxi drivers and street vendors have to pay. The Argentine manager of the beach club “Mamita’s” in Playa del Carmen was recently killed for unknown reasons.
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Transnational criminal organizations are also represented in the neighborhood. Two Canadians who were killed at a hotel in Xcaret near Playa del Carmen in late January were implicated in international crime and drug trafficking, according to investigators. They were therefore shot by a contract killer because of a dispute over debts.
Hotel and restaurant owners are worried. The Federal Foreign Office and the US State Department warned tourists to be careful. For a region that thrives on tourism, this is not good news. Such attacks have a special “resonance in the media”, even if crime is generally declining in the state, the governor Carlos Joaquín regretted on the Fórmula radio station.
The sealed-off bar La Malquerida in Tulum. Two women from Germany and India were killed in a shootout here,
© Attorney General’s Office Quintana Roo / DPA
No proof of vaccination required for entry
Millions of holidaymakers visit the most famous resorts of Mexico on the northeastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula every year. Even during the pandemic, they arrived continuously. Mexico relies on an open door policy: neither corona tests nor vaccination certificates are necessary for entry into the country.
In Cancún alone, the drug trade is worth around 4.3 million euros annually, as the newspaper “Reforma” reported, citing security sources. “Drug trafficking and prostitution have always existed in Quintana Roo. Tourism is inviolable here. There is no control, ” says Azucena García of the German Press Agency.
García, who is a biologist by profession, is a member of the citizens’ initiative “Observatory of Public Safety and Gender Equality” in Quintana Roo. It also speaks of an unsustainable development of tourism with negative consequences for the environment and people. One hotel after another has been built on the sandy beach of Tulum in recent years, many of them marketed as eco-chic. Mangroves were destroyed, the groundwater polluted and the virgin forest was used as an open dump.
Now more and more soldiers are patrolling the beaches. They belong to a special unit of the National Guard that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador set up to protect the visitors. The government of the state of Quintana Roo also wants to cooperate with representatives of the US Federal police FBI, the US Anti-Drug Agency DEA and the Canadian police on security issues. More tourists are expected to come to the region soon. A new airport in Tulum and the so-called Maya train will take care of this from the end of 2023.