Letter to the Editor: The Battle Over Playa Tenacatita

Byline: Jack Davidson

I read Capt. Pat Rains’ story “Legal Battle Continues Over Playa Tenacatita; Boaters Still Locked Out” in the Oct. 28-Nov. 10 issue with interest.

Just imagine what would happen in Southern California if a developer who wanted to build a hotel in the middle of a prime coastal resort area could simply hire an army of private police and a parade of bulldozers to forcibly remove all of the local residents and flatten all the local restaurants, houses, bars and boat-serving businesses in one day. That developer — and all of his henchmen — would find themselves in jail.

Evidently, that’s not the way it works in Mexico. If you’re a friend and political supporter of the state governor (as Mexico news reports suggest), you can apparently just issue a statement that all of the people living in your targeted resort area are “squatters” whose property deeds mean nothing, get a judge to issue an eviction order and start clearing everyone out in your own private lightning raid. Then, after the dust clears, put up a big fence around the site, and hire patrol boats to keep out nosy boating tourists who used to frequent the area.

As worldwide publicity began to focus on this injustice, the developer suddenly ran into a few hurdles in his plan to quickly put up a luxury resort hotel on the site. The developer is now in the spotlight and is embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the evicted community members, with a final decision on this matter expected in December.

It will be very interesting, indeed, to see how things come out.

Jack Davidson
El Cajon