The people of Teacapan and its municipal seat, Escuinapa, in Sinaloa, along with other smaller communities in that area of pristine beaches, full of palm trees and crabs, they waited for development and bonanza.
In 2009, then-President Felipe Calderón made a promise of prosperity in Escuinapa. But it never came.
Today converted into a project to which private investment never arrived, the federal government has already opened the possibility of holding a raffle similar to the allusive to the presidential plane and raffle in batches, all that terrain.
On February 17, 2009 when he laid the first stone of the Integrally Planned Center (CIP) “Spirit Beach”, then President Felipe Calderón, said: “We want investors to come here who are looking for opportunities for their clients, development, hotels, condominiums, from Marina, that precisely allow them, to be able to do a tourism business in order and for us, to generate employment and economic activity for our people “
Calderón presumed that the mega tourism project would be twice as big as Cancun and in him that more than 7 billion pesos of federal resources to encourage private investment.
On a land four times larger than the University City of UNAM in Mexico City, the Playa Espíritu project, located an hour and a half by road from the Mazatlán airport, I would have 12 kilometers of beach, almost 44 thousand hotel rooms, 5 thousand 500 homes and 118 hectares of golf courses, as well as shopping centers and even channels for internal maritime navigation.
Adriana is a waitress at the restaurant Mr. Wayne, which has existed for more than 30 years on the boardwalk of Teacapan, a small fishing town, located at the southern end of Sinaloa, close to Nayarit, where few tourists go. Less, now in pandemic. But she has a good memory and remembers the clients she serves very well.
In that place, poverty is seen in its streets that look unpaved, full of puddles and mud.
“I remember when Mr. Calderón came, who came to lay the first stone, and here we did see movement; I met several entrepreneurs, I attended to them, and then they kept coming because they were interested, the people who came, saw that it was a virgin beach, that it was a lung here, Teacapan for the world“, remember.
The 2 thousand 381 hectares of that land were acquired in that six-year term by the Trust for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur) from the former governor of Sinaloa Antonio Toledo Corro, who was paid a hundred million dollars.
Today, that purchase “good for the private sector and bad for the public treasury,” as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador described it, is condemned to oblivion for that reason.
But at its start, Calderón Hinojosa assured the success of the plan and said that to 2025 would generate 150 thousand jobs a year, which would reach 3 million tourists who would leave about 3 billion dollars of economic income annual for the benefit of the surroundings.
That day, amid applause and smiles, a plaque commemorating the start of the works was placed.
More than 11 years have passed since that promise, the year 2020 is about to end and the Playa Espíritu project began, but it never materialized.
“They sent for people, bricklayers, and there they go to work, and the children of the family, studying tourism, English, gastronomy, to be able to work in the hotels that were going to be there, because that was already a fact”, talks Don Melesio Rojas , an inhabitant of Escuinapa, who comments that the news of this project brought hope and joy to the inhabitants of the place, because they would compete with Mazatlán and would have their own tourism development.
Remedio Vargas, another inhabitant of the area, agrees with him: the project would do justice to Escuinapa, a municipality that lives off the fruit packing plants – mango, above all -, which generates temporary jobs, lasting three months maximum, and of shrimp fishing, which, he says, it is looted by middlemen.
José Barrón, owner of the Mr. Wayne restaurant, in Teacapan, says that at that time Canadians came to buy land adjacent to the beach, as it was also planned to build a road to the seashore that would connect Playa Espíritu with Teacapan.
“Before, nobody cared about those lands because they only gave coconuts, but with the project, they were bought at five, seven, ten million; the entire shoreline of the beach is bought, “he says.
According to information provided by Fonatur, the second half of Calderón’s administration went in the process to start the Playa Espíritu project, but faced fierce opposition from environmental groups who claimed a serious environmental impact due to pretending to build on marshes.
Only until 2014, during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, according to Fonatur, did the works begin.
A express hotel, with 53 rooms, and a beach house, which would serve for investors who came to see the land, stay and negotiate there. They never cared.
In addition, some green areas were built, 40.5 kilometers of internal roads, water treatment plants, sidewalks, a civic plaza, a 500-meter boardwalk, drainage and lights. But to date there is no electricity.
Even so, at least 35 Fonatur employees are currently assigned to CIP to maintenance work and private security. The pool of the express hotel, which nobody uses, is always cleaned by them.
Despite the few advances, until 2018, according to Fonatur, there had been 4 thousand 700 million pesos of public resources of the 7 thousand 313 million that were planned, but the CIP is not finished, it has not been opened for operation and there is not even a peso of private investment. It is a ghost project.
“This land is recast there, where there is no airport … I don’t know how they buy land like that, the fact is that we inherit that land and there is no one who wants to buy it“said López Obrador, on September 21, who has decided not to invest more in Playa Espíritu and raffle off the 5 thousand 500 lots that would be used for housing.
The disappointment
Ignacio Quevedo owns a hotel in Escuinapa and a few years ago he was director of Economic Development for that municipality. For the hotel sector, the news of a tourist destination of that size “was the trigger we were waiting for,” he says.
But after the anticipation generated by the announcement in the early years, came disappointment.
“For now, there was no budget, it was over and They no longer sent them a budget and they left everything abandoned“, says Melesio Rojas, a resident of Escuinapa, who says that the momentum among those who sent their children to study careers in the tourism sector also faded.” It became a bunker because no one from Escuinapa has access to the beaches or the land where the CIP is found, but we are not seeing progress, we don’t know if it will be invested, “adds Quevedo, owner of the IQ hotel in Escuinapa.
But the CIP brought more than disappointment: due to the presence of the CIP, federal resources for tourism programs were concentrated by Fonatur and the municipality does not fall for anything to support the tourism sector that does operate.
Environmental complications
The current federal government has identified that the project has technical and environmental weaknesses that justify stopping investing in it.
According to Fonatur, among the technical weaknesses it faces are the drinking water shortage in the area, a sandy subsoil that complicates the foundation and requires the use of piles, the remote location of material banks for landfills, risk of flooding and unfavorable conditions for maritime works due to the orography with steep slopes.
The environmental weaknesses currently considered by Fonatur are mangrove loss, predation of the sea turtle, loss of forest vegetation, pests and diseases in palms, loss of the coastal dune ecosystem, the presence of pesticides and fecal coliforms (on one side there is an agricultural ranch), hypersalinity and the shallow and polluted aquifer.
Rework lots?
The idea of raffling the housing lots went well with some people from Escuinapa who consider President Lopez Obrador’s proposal a success.
“If for a cheap little piece, they give you a ‘solar’, so to speak, there you relieve yourself a little”, says Don Mario Quevedo, a resident of Escuinapa who remembers that the land that today occupies the unfinished CIP “was a wonderful thing , pure tropical forest … but the machines arrived “.
He says that if they are going to sell that land again, which was the ranch of former governor Toledo Corro, hopefully now the region will benefit.
“Because if that bill is taken to the bag, it will disappear …”, he reproaches.
Opposite opinion has Don José Barrón, the owner of Mr. Wayne, in Teacapan: “It cannot be stopped, there is a lot of investment there“.
However, he has little hope that the government will look back at them.
“Yes, more people would come to see this little town, which is a fishing ground, the beaches here are abandoned,” he says. “Look, since the hurricane passed. WillaThere is the boardwalk because the water entered, knocked all this down; there is, They haven’t fixed it, they have us abandonedWe are waiting for another hurricane to come and finish us off, “he says and laughs, with the resignation of those who waited for the promised bonanza.
RLO
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