President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has proposed that the land from which Sac-Tun extracts limestone be used for tourism. He says if the company does not agree to use the land for tourism purposes, it will be purchased by his government.
On Thursday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed that he has already spoken with Ambassador Esteban Moctezuma Barragán to speak with the U.S. company about a new agreement.
He says it is his intention to reach an agreement with the U.S. company for them to agree to a tourism project and stop extracting limestone. AMLO says if an agreement can be made, the land would be used to create a tourism complex that could include a cruise port, but no longer should it be used for limestone exploitation.
“What I told Esteban is that there are conditions for an arrangement, but that it be understood that it is no longer the time like before when they were given the permits one day before Zedillo finished his presidency. That was on November 30, 2000, when back then, that is how it was,” he stressed.
AMLO said that during his talk with the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, “we are making progress in reaching an agreement. They asked us to be allowed to remove the material they have stored. We said yes, but that they are no longer allowed to extract more, that those properties can no longer be used for digging.”
AMLO has proposed that Sac-Tun use the land according to ecological regulations. He said that in the event Sac-Tun does not accept the first proposal to use the Playa del Carmen property as a tourist attraction, the government will make an offer to purchase the land.
“This has to be dealt with publicly,” he said. “The other thing that we have suggested is to do an appraisal of the four thousand hectares, which (the Ministry of) Finance will carry out in accordance with our legislation to see how much it costs and then we buy the land from them. Then we can evaluate the properties and use them for public parks and even for tourist activities. We have resources for that,” he explained.
