ON 20 April 1970 was officially recorded as the founding date of Cancún. “Forgive me for saying this, but I think a Mexicana jet will never land here,” snapped Cresencio Ballesteros, owner of the airline, to a pioneer named José García de la Torre.
The scene, experienced in 1971 on a tour that the director of the Bank of Mexico, Ernesto Fernández Hurtado, organized with the director of the then Infratur, Antonio Enríquez Savignac, was recorded for posterity in the book “Cancun Fantasy of Bankers”, by the journalist Fernando Marti.
In 52 years, hoteliers in particular, and tourists in general, have faced all kinds of challenges and adversities: hurricanes like Gilberto and Wilma and pandemics like H1N1 and now Covid-19, which frustrated the 50th anniversary in the middle of April 2020. But in all they have been successful.
Today they face a new threat just as or perhaps more damaging than the previous ones. His name is Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the 4T. It happens that in the political struggle between the environmentalists and the tenant of the National Palace for the construction of the Mayan Train, the president has already raised the businessmen.
For days now in this space we have been telling you how the hostile narrative has been built up against those in the Presidency who are considered sponsors of the campaigns and movements opposed to what is the most complex infrastructure work of this government.
Yesterday the attacks reached an extreme, revealing once again the typical modus operandi that the workshop applies in its morning conferences: the spokesman Jesús Ramírez raised the question to exhibit the hotelier José Chapur Zahoul, owner of the Grupo Palace Resorts chain.
Chapur was accused of having been benefited by Fonatur during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term with direct award contracts of at least 178 million pesos. What opinion do you have of these hoteliers who oppose the Mayan Train? They asked him.
“They dedicated themselves to looting, stealing, and there was impunity. And now there is no impunity for anyone. And this has to change and it doesn’t matter if they get angry,” replied López Obrador.
Chapur had to record a message that circulated all morning as a reply: “I want to comment that throughout our existence with companies, 35 years of tourism in Quintana Roo, I have never sold anything to Fonatur, much less built in works that are supposed to be non-existent because we are not builders, we are hoteliers who today have almost 12,000 employees on the payroll”.
Three weeks ago, during his last tour of Quintana Roo, López Obrador posed with a smile showing a copy of a local pamphlet with an eight-column headline: Mercenary environmentalists!
The head was accompanied by a set of 15 photos with the faces of José Chapur, Abelardo Vara, Romarico Arroyo, Pedro Vaca Elguero, Jesús Almaguer, Octavio Lavalle, Miguel Quintana Pali, Ernesto Zedillo Velasco, Roberto Cintrón, Eduardo Solis Preciat, Eduardo Albor, Alejandro Burillo, Moisés El-Man, Armando Palma Peniche, and Francisco Córdova Lira.
Surely the Chief Executive does not know many and, of course, ignores that some are precisely part of the pioneers who arrived more than 40 years ago and developed today’s Cancun, which, including the Riviera Maya, Holbox and Isla Mujeres, is home to some 102 thousand 842 rooms.
Due to the happy Mayan Train and the influence exerted on him by Daniel Chávez, who has been appointed by the President as his adviser on the project, relations between local hotel businessmen have been strained with the federal government in recent months, until degree of display and public reviling.
The owner of Grupo Vidanta is seen as an outsider and upstart, who is taking advantage of his proximity to power to point out, harass and now persecute businessmen who at some point disagreed with the Mayan Train and who are now forcing them to speak well of him.
This other hunt that they have undertaken from the National Palace will lead to nothing good.
AND WHILE ANDRES Manuel López Obrador loosens up the hoteliers of Quintana Roo so that they do not oppose the Mayan Train, on the other hand he asks other businessmen, those who produce consumer goods from the basic basket, to tighten their belts and renounce the utility of their businesses so that prices do not increase and contain, according to what the Presidency believes, inflation. The agreement will be called Program to Combat Inflation (Pacic) and will be disclosed in detail, as I informed you yesterday, next week. In it, the catwalks of the leading producers of the 24 products whose prices are to be frozen will continue. Aim for Your Karne by Jesús Vizcarra, Kimberly-Clark by Claudio X. González, Bachoco by Fracisco Javier Robinson Bours, Gruma by Juan Antonio González, Pinsa by José Eduvigildo Carranza, Pilgrim’s directed by Fabio Sandri, Unilever chaired by Reginaldo Ecclissato, Alpura led by Francois Bouyra, the Grupo Porres sugar producer owned by Jaime Porres Fernández, the rice farmers of Hermanos Schettino led by José Luis Schettino and the Mexican Pig Farmers Organization headed by Heriberto Hernández, to which should be added Coca-Cola, Bimbo, Lala, Grupo Mar, Walmart, Soriana, Chedraui, Comercial Mexicana and HEB.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL of the Republic, Alejandro Gertz Manero, continues to support Juan Collado Mocelo so that he does not falter in the complaint he filed against the lawyers Juan Araujo and César González. He now promised to get him out of the North Prison with a medical justification under the argument that his health has deteriorated in recent weeks, which can be inferred from the recent statements of his wife, Yadhira Carrillo. The Prosecutor’s Office offered the lawyer for Carlos Salinas, Enrique Peña Nieto and Carlos Romero Deschamps, that in exchange for him not backing down, they would take him out with a special permit. Likewise, as long as he does not desist from the complaints, they also offered to stop the complaints that Araujo and González filed last week against him, his brothers Antonio and María Julia, and his children Juan Ramón and María del Mar Collado Dot, for falsehood. declarations to a ministerial authority. Looks like Getz is burning his bullets. He will see.
THE SECRETARY OF Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation gave three weeks for those interested in building the Nichupté Bridge in Cancun to present offers. What is striking is the urgency of the person in charge, the Undersecretary of Infrastructure, Jorge Nuño: he asked that a second proposal be added to the original, at the free will of the shooters, a sort of Plan B, all in record time, which raised suspicions that the dice are already loaded towards a group. Of the 12 that attended the visits, there are three favorites: ICA by Guadalupe Phillips, INDI by Manuel Muñozcano and Grupo México by Germán Larrea. The first builds Section 4 of the Mayan Train, the second 3 and the third, which goes with Grupo Acciona, Section 5.
REGARDING the resolution of the First Section of the Superior Chamber of the Federal Court of Tax and Administrative Justice, for the execution of the direct amparo 145/2020 related to the contentious trial 3970/18-17-11-5/77/19-S1- 04-04 promoted by TV Azteca, which the media began to retake yesterday, Ricardo Salinas’ group came out to clarify that it is a legal process, for more than a decade, that continues and in which they will continue to exercise their right to defend themselves against what they consider to be erroneous and excessive charges, which are based on an illegal and unfair base estimate.
#hunt