Residential Real Estate in Acapulco Battered by Rising Crime
 Augusta Dwyer - The Globe and Mail
| | A lone tourist walks along the water's edge in the resort city of Acapulco, Mexico, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007. Violence continues to plague this city, where gunmen dressed as soldiers staged and videotaped simultaneous assaults on two offices of the state attorney general Tuesday, killing at least seven people. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
Recent tourist deaths in Mexico - and the perceived unwillingness of the local police to carry out convincing investigations - has raised concerns in Canada, yet obscured one salient fact: Mexicans are also complaining about their nation's often lax attitude toward crime-solving.
"In the last two years, Acapulco has been characterized by a brutal increase in violence," says Mexico City lawyer Jose Antonio Ortega, president of the Citizens Council for Public Security and Penal Justice. "Drug selling is a daily occurrence, and the protection given to los narcos by some state authorities is commonplace. This collusion between authorities and drug gangs, who are fighting over territory, has made Acapulco a lawless city."
Just yesterday, two separate attacks on police precincts in the city left seven dead, according to the state office of public prosecution.
While Acapulco is popular, especially among visitors from Mexico City, real estate buyers are having second thoughts about the famous beach resort. According to the Mexican Association of Real Estate Professionals, sales dropped 40 per cent last year from 2005. Prices have also fallen, by as much as 20 per cent, although real estate agents also point to an oversupply of condominium apartments.
"And yes, there is also an effect from the bad news we are starting to get in Acapulco about drug dealers and crime," said the real estate association's Luisa Gonzalez. Hector Huerta, president of Century 21 Realtymex, has also lost clients. He deals with high-end clients, 90 per cent of them from Mexico City, who spend an average of $150,000 for a weekend getaway or retirement home. "The problem is that something happens in a town outside of Acapulco and in the news that night, it's portrayed as having happened in Acapulco itself," he complained. What's more, he attributed the loss of business to the parlous state of the 13-year-old superhighway, which runs from the capital to Acapulco, and to the lurid stories of executions, decapitations and other drug mafia score-settling.
While President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to set up roadblocks and go after drug dealers, many in the real estate sector have been playing down the economic burden of the port's dicey reputation and disputing the lower sales figures. According to Ms. Gonzalez's predecessor, Agustin Serrano Jimenez, the resort netted $2.7-billion in tourist property investment last year. The port's latest development at Playa Diamante has been particularly attractive to buyers, both Mexican and foreign, with more than $6-billion spent on beachfront condos over the past six years. "We cannot deny that the violence is affecting [the city], but until now there are no elements to tell us exactly how," he told the local daily, El Sur de Acapulco.
While Acapulco registered a drop of 15 per cent in international visitors last year, local authorities are shrugging off the spate of killings, believed to have been carried out by rival narcotics cartels from the state of Sinaloa and from the Gulf of Mexico. "These are isolated incidents," said Acapulco tourism director Elvia Zavala. "Lamentable, but not affecting tourism."
Mayor Felix Salgado described the 134 executions that have taken place over the past year and a half as "just a run of bad luck. Acapulco is a paradise in spite of the violence."
Thanks to bad weather, civil unrest in the otherwise pleasant colonial city of Oaxaca and other factors, tourism to Mexico was down over all last year by more than 3 per cent, according to the country's Ministry of Tourism, although those who did come spent more money than in 2005, over $10.8-billion last year. The industry is not only important to the national economy in terms of this multibillion-dollar inflow, but also jobs, employing almost two million Mexicans.
For the various civil organizations campaigning against violence in Mexico, however, there is no mincing of words. According to Mr. Ortega, state governor Zeferino Torreblanca is hampered by corrupt bureaucrats from previous administrations, what he called "a mafia encrusted in the office of public prosecution." And nothing will change, he says, until the rot is gone. |
Vallarta Weddings
Puerto Vallarta Real Estate | February 2007 
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