Walking on money

This was originally posted on Savage Minds, here.

It’s mid-day in Cabo Pulmo. October, 2012. The heat is well on its way. I just finished a late breakfast at a small local restaurant called “El Caballero.” Juevos rancheros, juice, coffee, beans, torillas. I’m talking with Lorenzo*, who has lived in Cabo Pulmo for more than a decade. He tells me more about the story of Meri Montaño, as he heard it from one of the primary founding members of the community. According to this elder, Lorenzo tells me, Meri had a massive amount of land, many heads of cattle and lots of money. She was rich. Meri adopted him, the elder explained to Lorenzo, and eventually gave him everything when she died. This story — about Meri giving all of her land to this particular patriarch—is one of the primary versions of history that gets told about Cabo Pulmo. There are other, competing versions of community history as well.

Lorenzo continues with his version. This elder had no idea the land would become valuable one day, so he sold it piece by piece, often without papers. Some also say he gambled it away. According to one anthropologist who worked in the community in the early 2000s (see Weiant 2005), the land was informally sold, traded, gifted, and passed around for decades. These practices led to an incredibly complex and confusing land tenure situation, which worsened in the early 1970s when the Mexican government tried to clarify and formalize land titles in preparation for impending tourism and real estate development. This transformation from informal to formal tenure systems led to decades of conflict.

NRDC: Cabo Dorado attempts "tactical retreat"

From May 30, 2014:

Recognizing that their proposal is deeply flawed, the investors behind the Cabo Dorado project tried to make a tactical retreat by temporarily removing the project from formal consideration. In an open letter to President Peña Nieto and other officials printed today, the two companies pushing Cabo Dorado, the massive tourism and real-estate project proposed near Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo National Park, announced they would withdraw their project’s environmental impact statement and instead submit a revised version at a later date. Yet their attempted do-over was trumped by the announcement that SEMARNAT, Mexico’s environmental ministry, had in fact already made a decision on the project – a decision the company reportedly refused to formally receive. We’ll have to wait for SEMARNAT’s ruling to be made public (once the company receives it) to see what it says exactly. But one thing is crystal clear; the Cabo Dorado project is not the right type of project for the region.

Read the rest here.

Another marina project on the East Cape: El Anhelo

So there's another project I hadn't heard about until recently.  Not sure how this one slipped past me.  It's called "El Anhelo" and I think it's located south of Los Barriles near La Capilla.  Here's the description from the Van Wormer real estate site:

We are quickly completing the permitting process and are anxious to begin dredging for the area’s premier Marina and Golf Development. We expect to break ground in Spring 2014 for our project which includes Hotel, villas, 500 boat slips, Marina village, residential lots, 18 hole golf course and every amenity imaginable. Please join our mailing list to be updated on future events and limited pre-sale opportunities. Prices available by request.

 And a photo of the project plan (from the same site):

 

I can't find much information about this project.  I'll post more when and if I hear anything new.   If this one goes through, along with Cabo Riviera and Cabo Dorado, that will be three marinas all on the upper East Cape.

East Cape Non-Mexican resident/gringo/retiree survey 2013

Last year I conducted a short, anonymous online survey of the non-Mexican, expat, retiree, second-home owning residents of the East Cape.  Here I provide some basic summaries of the results.  First, however, it's important to talk about the limits of the survey.  One of the big problems with trying to do a survey of this population is that there actually isn't much information about it.  Anywhere.  This includes population estimates--and that makes sampling particularly difficult.  During the survey I did ask people to provide general population estimates for the community where they lived, but those estimates have to be taken for what they are: non-scientific estimates. 

In Cabo Pulmo, for example, the self-reported estimates ranged from 25 to 200 people.  That's a pretty big range.  Based upon estimates during my research in Pulmo, I'd put the range at somewhere between 125 and 200 people.  That number drops dramatically in the off-season, however.  In Los Barriles, which is one of the largest enclaves of non-Mexican residents on the East Cape, self-reported estimates ranged from 40 to 2,500 people.  The most common response was 2,000 (4 of 8 people reported that number).  During my time on the East Cape in 2012 I heard various estimates, ranging from about 500 to 2,000.  Despite the rough estimates, it's pretty clear that this survey doesn't have enough responses to be considered a representative sample.  I had a total of 39 responses, which isn't bad considering the highly mobile nature of this population.  Still, since the sample is so small, the survey results are by no means definitive.

The survey is also limited, in part, because of how the sample was taken.  All surveys have potential sources of bias and/or error, and this one is no exception.  This was an online survey, in which people made the choice to participate (or not participate).  This is not a random sample taken from a larger population in which every person had an equal mathematical chance of being selected.  You can read more about sampling bias/error here.  I wrote the survey, posted it online, and then invited people to participate, mostly through the contacts I obtained during my year of research, and by posting the survey on a well-known online forum (Baja Nomad).  This is known as an "opt-in" or "self-identified" sample because the participants are non-random volunteers.  In this case, the data from the survey have not been weighted to reflect the larger population, primarily because I don't have reliable information about that population (as discussed above).  Another obvious source of bias is the fact that the survey was online--this means that anyone without online access was automatically excluded.  Ultimately, what this means is that it's not possible to calculate a sampling error for this survey, and that we can't make any generalizations about the larger non-Mexican/retiree population on the East Cape.

Regardless, the survey does provide some interesting and useful information about the sample of people who did respond.  It gives us some preliminary insights into the lives of these people and opens up some good avenues for future investigation.  Let's take a look at the results.

The latest version of "Cabo Cortes"

I received a flood of emails a couple of days ago about the latest project proposal for the Punta Arena/El Rincon area of the East Cape.  For those of you who were hiding out the past four years, or who have never heard of the East Cape, that's the same place that the late "Cabo Cortes" mega-project was going to be built.  Cabo Cortes was cancelled by former Mexican President Felipe Calderone in June 2012.  Shortly after, another proposal was submitted under the name "Los Pericues," but that one also failed to move forward.  Now we have Cabo Dorado, the third and latest big project proposed for this part of the East Cape.

Cabo Dorado literally means "Golden Cape," although it could be a reference to one of the most sought after prizes for many sport-fishing enthusiasts in Baja (a.k.a. Mahi-mahi or Coryphaena hippurus).  When I first heard the name I thought of "tacos dorados," which are small, rolled up, fried tacos you can find all over Mexico.  However, I doubt the developers behind Cabo Dorado are planning on rolling up and frying Punta Arena--but you never know.  Hard to tell what they are going for at this point, since there doesn't appear to be a website for the project yet.  Here's a summary of the project from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Switchboard Blog:

For the third time, the threat of massive coastal tourism and real-estate development has returned to Cabo Pulmo National Park, one of the world’s most robust marine reserves and home to a critically important coral reef system. The new mega-resort project, now called “Cabo Dorado”, is proposed for the exact same spot where the Cabo Cortés development was planned. From the looks of it, the project is not much different from prior versions, raising the specter that Cabo Pulmo’s fragile coral reef and the local community’s fresh water supply could once more be at risk.
 
The local group the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA) will be formally calling for a public meeting and consultation to ensure people are adequately informed about the project plans and the potential social and environmental impacts, but here’s what we know so far about Cabo Dorado:

• The 3,770 hectare project is proposed on the same lands - just north of and adjacent to the Cabo Pulmo reserve - where first [...] Cabo Cortés and later Los Pericúes were proposed.
• This new iteration of the mega-resort would be built in five phases at a cost of at least 3.6 billion dollars.
• The project would include the equivalent of 22,500 rooms distributed over 9 hotels and more than 6,000 residences. 
• There would be two golf courses,  sports facilities, beach clubs, a 14 kilometer aqueduct and other facilities and infrastructure. The project plan also proposes to construct a new airstrip on the site.
•  A project of this scale and scope would generate 711,900 kilograms of waste per day and could extract up to 4.8 million cubic meters of water from the local aquifer of this arid, desert region.
• Apart from the proximity to the fragile Cabo Pulmo coral reef and the marine life it supports, the proposed project site is home to 26 species considered at risk under Mexican law, including endemic plant species and endangered sea turtles. 

Read the rest here.  It's going to get interesting on the East Cape again, no doubt about that.  More updates soon.