They detect 12 groups of drug traffickers in the jewel of the Mexican Caribbean, the Riviera Maya

A confrontation between two gangs for control of a territory was the cause of the shooting on a beach in Puerto Morelos in the Riviera Maya, one of the jewels of the Caribbean Mexican, where it has been detected that 12 drug trafficking groups operate, state authorities indicated on Friday.

After the dramatic hours that hundreds of tourists lived, mostly foreigners, Puerto Morelos, with crystal clear waters and white sands, returned to tranquility. On Thursday afternoon, on a beach near the Azul Beach Resort and Hyatt Ziva hotels, 15 armed men entered through the parking lot of one of the complexes and in the middle of the Petempich Bay beach shot at two members of a rival group and then they fled in a boat.

Authorities are making progress in the investigation to identify the two deceased persons, the attorney general of the southern state of Quintana Roo, Oscar Montes de Oca, said on Friday. He added that one of the deceased fled to one of the hotels before dying and another was killed on the beach. In the incident, one person suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Some guests posted images on social media of tourists hiding in lobbies and hallways. Keith Jackson, an Englishman who left the beach before the shooting, said Friday that “We are not sure we will return after thiso ”, and acknowledged that “We are all concerned that something will happen while we are there.”

Jackson and Marie Hitches, another English tourist, reported that they saw about five masked men walking along the beach a couple of hours before the shooting asking questions even of a lifeguard and security personnel, apparently looking for rival drug traffickers who had posed as trinket sellers.

According to the authorities, the rival gangs in question are vying for control of the territory in Puerto Morelos, some 50 kilometers south of Cancun. Montes de Oca added that in Tulum, also in the Riviera Maya, they operate approximately “10 groups of drug dealers.”

“We are in a matter of demand and supply of drugs”said the prosecutor when speaking of the two violent incidents that have occurred in 15 days in Puerto Morelos and Tulum and admitted, in statements to the local radio station Imagen Radio, that these events “lthey scare the tourist destination ”.

On the night of October 20, there was a shooting at a restaurant in Tulum, about 100 kilometers south of Puerto Morelos, also due to a confrontation between drug gangs that left two foreign tourists dead, California travel blogger Anjali Ryot and the German Jennifer Henzold, and three other wounded. Nine people have been arrested in the case.

The prosecutor said that the state of Quinta Roo, where Cancun and the Riviera Maya are located, about 140,000 tourists arrive weekly and added that the large flow of visitors is an attraction for investors “But also for criminal groups, and they also begin to approach, they begin to want to invade areas and impose themselves with their structures.”

The recent incidents have generated concern among hotel businessmen in the area, as admitted by Antonio Chaves, president of the Riviera Maya Hotel Association, who said in an interview with the AP that at the moment there have been no immediate consequences in terms of cancellations of the reversed in the last hours due to the Puerto Morelos event.

“Surely we will have results of arrests in a very short term”, Chaves said when expressing his confidence in the actions of the authorities, but added that “They are (criminal) cells that do not care about the place, the place, the time and this has an impact on a tourist area.”

After the Tulum attack, the federal government ordered the dispatch to Quintana Roo of up to 450 elements of the National Guard, the Army and the Navy for the first days of November. In this regard, the business leader mentioned that the entity’s governor, Carlos Joaquín, is demanding that the number of elements of the public forces in his state continue to be increased.

Asked if hotels will take action on their own to reinforce security, Chaves said that several have already started a plan to connect their security camera systems to the police, and pointed out that some hotels are considering having private armed guards.

In the Riviera Maya, the paradise visited by thousands of tourists each year and which was now beginning to recover after the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation seems to have gotten out of control because gangs linked to the Gulf cartel and the cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, among other groups, are fighting for control of the retail drug sale not in marginal areas of the periphery of Cancun, as was usual, but on the beach and among the most exclusive hotels.

In June two men were shot and killed on the beach in Tulum and a third person was injured.

In the nearby city of Playa del Carmen, the police carried out a massive raid in October in which they arrested 26 people – apparently the majority for selling drugs – after a local policewoman was shot to death and her body put in the trunk of a vehicle. Crime “It has gone a bit on the rise in terms of extortion, in the sale of narcotics to foreigners or to nationals themselves”the prosecution said in a statement at the time.

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has great expectations for Tulum, where it has among its plans to build an international airport and a stop for the Mayan Train, which will travel through the Yucatan Peninsula.