The Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, reported during the morning press conference on Tuesday that 450 elements of the Mexican Navy, National Guard, and Army arrived in Tulum to reinforce surveillance efforts.
“Right now the 450 men are already in Tulum, they have already established themselves, yesterday the movements were made to be able to have the Army, National Guard, and Navy there, the three forces are acting there,” said the official.
He announced that next week the following security plan for the area will be ready, which consists of increasing the troops in this part of the country, which will use as a base the facilities of the National Guard and the Army, which can be used to house to the agents.
“In Tulum a few months ago an operation had been established to attend a specific case, with the situation that arose, it was analyzed what the condition was, the presence of crime; a new operation was implemented with approximately 250 elements and it will increase to 400-450 ”, mentioned the secretary.
He reiterated, as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had said, that the situation in Tulum will be addressed in a very timely manner, “but also in the entire area of the Riviera Maya, from Cancun, that there are enough troops to reduce the rates of violence ”.
For its part, the Quintana Roo Coordination Group reported that it increased vigilance to strengthen citizen protection actions in the downtown area and hotel zone of Tulum, which included, in addition to the federal forces, elements of the state and municipal police.
“As part of the actions of this Coordination Group, an Extraordinary Session of the State Coordination for the Construction of Peace and Security was held that will allow reinforcing security in the municipality of Tulum after what happened on Wednesday, October 20 in the destination tourism, where two foreigners lost their lives ”, mentioned Edgar Ramírez Morales, technical secretary of the State Coordination for the Construction of Peace and Security.
He recalled that the State Coordination for the Construction of Peace and Security of Quintana Roo is made up of the State Executive, the Secretariat of National Defense, the Secretariat of the Navy, the National Guard, the Quintana Roo Police, the State Attorney General’s Office, the National Intelligence Center, the Secretariat for Citizen Security and Protection, the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, the Superior Court of Justice, the National Institute of Migration and the Secretariat for Welfare.
Reservations fall 20% after attack in Tulum, Quintana Roo
The arrival of federal forces is in response to the violent events that occurred last Wednesday, October 20, when, during a shooting, two foreign tourists lost their lives and three more were injured.
“It was my birthday, a while ago they were singing the mañanitas to me and two seconds later it was. I don’t know, everyone was scared, we hadn’t experienced something similar yet, we lived a bit in a bubble of the perfect Caribbean. There are some things that we have not seen yet ”.
Paula García, Spanish tourist in Tulum, Quintana Roo
Paula added that this problem has been manifesting itself for a long time.
“This has always been and will continue … now the problem is that they have hit a tourist and then, they are putting much more security, but it is something that has been happening for a long time.”
Paula García, Spanish tourist in Tulum, Quintana Roo
The president of the Tulum Hotel Association, David Ortiz Mena, acknowledged that what happened a week ago caused a 20% drop in reservations.
It would be difficult. There would be hotels that could tell me 20%, there are hotels that say they had no impact on sales. It also depends a lot on the market they are targeting and what we have today is a market recommendation from the German Government to stay in hotels. That is to say, you can visit the destination, they recommend it or prefer that people stay in hotels ”.
David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotel Association, Quintana Roo
Given the travel alert issued by the German government, the hotel leader admitted that they perceived a slowdown in sales that was already beginning to normalize thanks to the green color of the state and federal epidemiological traffic light.
“More than cancellations, we could say that we noticed a certain slowdown in the sales that were being made. In our destination, already green, both at the federal and state traffic lights, it was beginning to return to pre-pandemic levels. European countries began to return from this month in an important way to our destination, so this is very unfortunate ”.
David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotel Association, Quintana Roo
