Access to Tenacatita beach reopened

This is the latest news I have.
An Email from a friend who lives there.

The fishermen are still waiting for permission to leave their boats on the beach.

Unfortunately the municipio (LaHuerta) can't take possession of their concession in the zona federal because of the amparo Rodenas filed against SEMARNAT and the municipio for non-renewal of their concession. SEMARNAT and the municipio won the amparo, but now it goes to Review, and until it's decided, the municipio is limited as to what they can do.

Villalobos hasn't given up, but since he lost his main support (ex-governor Emilio Marquez) it looks like he's going down. At least that's what we all hope.

We were there Sunday, the beach was open to swimmers, lots of Mexican beach goers present and enjoying the waves. NO huts, restaurants or bathrooms available. There were police directing traffic, and they had the streets to the town where the old businesses were blocked off. The police make sure everyone is gone around 7 pm. No one around seemed to know what the future for the place holds, but we did hear rumors that PenaNieto is going to decided who gets what land. Not sure of the truth in that. Still a wonderful beach for swimming.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Don't get your hopes up too far, he still holds the concession for the beach.

La Huerta has the concession to the beach. Not Rodenas or Villalobos. They lost that in court a long time ago.
The beach is open for everything except doing business. The President of La Huerta is now trying to figure out what to do next.
Villalobos has guards to protect the 40 something hectares he says he owns. There are State Police there to make sure there is no trouble. This time there are on our side.
We can only hope.
Jerry

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
I would have faith in the "Development Brings Prosperity" thesis except too many hotels in Mexico are of foreign ownership. Oh the name on the paper is Mexican but the money goes offshore in too many cases.

I could give a ratz burro about wealthy Mexicans but when they shut off access to the average Mexicano that gets my goat. The people who exist 360 days a year to have five days at the playa during semana santa should never have their rights purchased out from under them. Big inclusive resorts are designed from putting green to bedspread to keep 99.99% of their clientele's dinero in-house. By hook, by crook. Go to Los Cabos and see. Go to Can't-Cun or Puerto Vallarta or for god's sake to Barra de Navidad to the monstrosity Gran Bay out on the peninsula. The maids there make 125 pesos a day in a place with three hundred dollar a day rooms.

I'm not for or against any of this. But show me a place where a maid makes good money in any country. Most of the maids I have met in my travels in the U.S. are illegal and make about 7 bucks an hour. Take into account the cost of living in the U.S. it is still a ****** wage.

But think of the benefits an employee gets for working for a Mexican company. The ability to get a federally backed home loan at a fixed 6.9%, medical insurance for everyone living under their roof, to see a pension at the end of the road, profit sharing, paid vacation. All of this is provided by the law.

OTOH, each one of these venders qualifies to have all of the above if they are willing to pay for it under the laws provided by Hacienda (SAT) if they register for a CURP (Clave Única de Registro de Población). They claim the amount they want as an average of their monthly income, pay a small tax, can make deductions and with this, enter Infonavit (first home loan purchase), IMSS (social medicine) AFORES (401K), small business loans through PyMeS ( Pequeña y Mediana Empresa (FONDO PYME), and more.

There is a solution for everything. But you have to want it, and you have to know about it.

I would have faith in the "Development Brings Prosperity" thesis except too many hotels in Mexico are of foreign ownership. Oh the name on the paper is Mexican but the money goes offshore in too many cases.

I could give a ratz burro about wealthy Mexicans but when they shut off access to the average Mexicano that gets my goat. The people who exist 360 days a year to have five days at the playa during semana santa should never have their rights purchased out from under them. Big inclusive resorts are designed from putting green to bedspread to keep 99.99% of their clientele's dinero in-house. By hook, by crook. Go to Los Cabos and see. Go to Can't-Cun or Puerto Vallarta or for god's sake to Barra de Navidad to the monstrosity Gran Bay out on the peninsula. The maids there make 125 pesos a day in a place with three hundred dollar a day rooms.

For now, information I have is that the Federal Zone will be marked out and this is where visitors can stay in bounds, and enjoy the beach. There are black-shirted police there. In the still disputed areas above the beach, the grey-shirted Rodenas security guards are still present. La Huerta officials have placed some portable facilities on site, but there are no other amenities nor, as I understand, will any be permitted. A far cry from three years ago, but locals are still hopeful.

Let's get real about Mexico. As much as I love this country, it has its downside just like the U.S. and Canada. Lyndon Johnson enacted his welfare plan in 1962 with one of his first visits to Appalachia. Appalachia is in worse condition today than it was 50 years ago, we are talking 3 million people in that area.

I'm glad we don't have such a refined social network in Mexico, it would turn out the same. There is no country with a social net that has productive people collecting benefits.

OTOH, there are more benefits today than ever before. Again, I don't think visitors realize what is available to Mexicans. This being a forum, my comments like everyone else's are generalization. I can guarantee you, from personal experience with family, friends, students, and our volunteering, many people prefer the informal market because it is work when they want and how they want it. Their contribution is nil but they are first for receiving benefits when possible, this is true with any capitalist country that offers benefits to the "poor". If I were to list all the benefits that are now being claimed by Mexicans most people wouldn't believe it or understand what they are.

As those who have visited us here in Santiago can attest to, we have a tourist area here by the lake. Vendors rent stalls starting at 500 dollars U.S. per month, yet they only work on weekends. Why, because the money is so good selling trinkets that they import from Guadalajara that they don't need to work during the week. I know first hand as these are my neighbors. Informal, not interesting in borrowing money to grow their business, don't want to pay taxes, and as they say, "no me gusta cuando la gente me manda". (I don't have a real job because I don't like people to tell me what to do).

How about this, those of you who live in Canada and the U.S. along pristine beaches, lets allow unlicensed vendors with rickety carts, wheel barrels, no sanitation, and leave all over come to your country and walk up and down your beaches? Sound like a deal! I didn't think so.

So now, even though we know this will take another 25 years, education and jobs are the goal. Jobs don't pay much in an economy where few people "want" to go to school. Mexico is still a relatively easy place to live outside the rules. Again, this is JMHO.

When I went in there last season the road was almost blocked by encroaching vegetation.

The informal economy exists due to the lack of a real social safety net. In order to feed their families people are forced to become street vendors. Many are uneducated and may have some type of disability. Often the husband is employed but the wages are under 100 pesos a day. So the wife has to be a secondary wage earner. I admire their entrepreneurship and salute them for being proactive and looking after their families.

Moisheh

Yes, there was going to be more to the story, if you believed Villalobos' plan. He would build a grand resort hotel and have a golf course nearby. And yes, that sort of thing does happens in U.S.A. and Canada. With one exception: most folks don't squat on other people's property, they make deals for it to the satisfaction of the present owners. Simply because somebody has friends in high places, such as the former governor of Jalisco, runs a real estate company and a security company, purports to have a bill of sale from a widow, makes it okay to evict dozens of people off their properties at gunpoint, with the backing of 50 state police in full riot gear with automatic weaponry? There were shootings on that early morning, done in the heat of August no doubt to limit the amount of gringo involvement. Is that really how resorts are built in Mexico? Somebody has been making some serious mistakes.

The area saw about 150 RV's visit each winter. The beach was popular, I once counted over 50 private buses parked one day. Each Christmas one area of the beach would be populated by families in tents, from Mexico City; another area saw a 60 -member family from Guadalajara stay. Some of the vendors were the same folks we would see in Melaque, others we knew actually had shops in Barra de Navidad. Others, as Chris said, did sell goods and services to RV'ers, the purified water, beer, fresh baked goods, vegetables and fruit, Hugo, the all-important laundry man, and more. Our friend Ray brought snorklers visiting Melaque out to the coral beach, and to boogie board at Bocca, and sometimes to bird watch near the estero south of El Rebelsito. He still makes a living doing ATV tours, but to the south of Malaque. There were small hotels, eight or ten palapa restaurants, usually with their famous rollodemar dish headling the menus. Some private residences had been built, at least one with a swimming pool. The condition of these properties, if they were spared the bulldozer, must be grim after three years without the upkeep they would need in the environment there. I talked to a man two years ago in Parker, Arizona, whose son had just lost the 250,000 dollars he'd put into Tenacatita, and was at that time, broke.

There is a rather common "Virus" going around in that stretch of the Mexican coast, and that is the trend to only gated access to any and almost every beach. Things are becoming very exclusive, even if just wanting to spend a few hours at a beach. All this to the exclusion of most Mexicans. At least they will again have the sands of Tenacatita.