MEXICO CITY — A U.S. quarrying company on Monday rejected the Mexican president's campaign of criticism and closures, as well as his offer to buy its property on the Caribbean coast.
In July, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered to buy the Caribbean coast estate from the US company for about $385 million, amid a bitter, years-long dispute.
Alabama-based Vulcan Materials said in a statement Monday that this offering “materially undervalues our assets.”
In papers filed on the case with an international arbitration panel, Vulcan Materials valued the nearly 2,400-acre property, located just south of the resort town of Playa del Carmen, at $1.9 billion.
Mexico's president has in the past threatened to expropriate the sprawling estate, claiming that the wells he dug to extract crushed limestone have damaged the area's fragile system of underground rivers and caves.
But Vulcan Materials rejected the accusation. “Our activities have not had any negative impacts on underground caves, cenotes or archaeological sites. In effect, we have identified, protected and preserved these valuable resources,” the company said in a statement.
Instead, the company alleged that a number of other quarries in the area were operating unlawfully. “Unlike other quarries that have operated unlawfully to supply the Mayan Train, our operations were properly permitted,” the company said.
The Mayan Train is a pet project of López Obrador to build a tourist train around the Yucatan Peninsula. Activists, cave divers and archaeologists say the project has damaged the caves, which contain some of the oldest human remains in North America.
The president's office did not immediately respond to Vulcan's allegations.
López Obrador has said in the past that the most attractive part of the property was the company's cargo port – the only deep port on the mainland coast – which he plans to turn into a cruise ship port. He says he wants to turn the rest of the estate into a nature reserve.
“The Mexican government is using these political threats and false accusations to try to justify the conversion of our property into a 'natural protected area', which – ironically – could be used not to protect the environment, but for commercial tourism purposes and naval operations, including cruise ships. shipping activity,” the company said.
López Obrador said he also wants to use the flooded wells the company dug from hundreds of hectares of limestone soil as “swimming pools” or an “ecotourism” area that would be operated as a concession by a private operator.
The enormous pits are inhabited by crocodiles, a protected species in Mexico.
The company's port in Punta Venado is the only one in the area that can handle cement, crushed stone and other shipments for the Mayan Train. The 1,500-kilometer Mayan Train Line is intended to run in a rugged loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting beach resorts and archaeological sites.
López Obrador is touting the train as a way to bring some of Cancun's tourism revenue to inland communities that have not shared in the wealth. But there are no credible feasibility studies showing that tourists would want to use the train.
