Court Orders Calica to Restore Playa del Carmen Land

Playa del Carmen, Mexico — A federal tribunal has ordered the company Calizas Industriales del Carmen SA de CV (Calica) to enter the grounds of its own quarry solely to remediate, compensate, and restore the exploited zone, under the supervision of environmental authorities. This action, however, appears set to proceed without consultations with the affected neighboring populations.

The Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), Alicia Bárcena, had previously declared the area a protected natural area (ANP), where "not one more gram of limestone" could be extracted and 50,000 hectares would be preserved for the protection of flora and fauna.

The situation raises questions as to why the U.S. company Legacy Vulcan LLC, the owner of Calica, would be willing to comply with this restoration mandate after years of indiscriminate exploitation and environmental damage. Further questions are raised as to why the company would agree when it positions itself as the party treated unjustly and inequitably and has sued the Mexican State for $1.9 billion under the legacy clause of NAFTA in the USMCA at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

If Semarnat itself states that the damages are "irreversible," why permit access to the mine for "restoration"? Some aspects do not seem to add up.

Expert Warnings and Calls for Transparency

Environmental expert Raúl Benet was consulted on the matter. He stated that the supposed "triumph for Mexico" in a federal tribunal is "an interpretation that the company is forced to begin restoration, but it seems more like a trap to regain possession of the properties." He added, "By not having a program, they have too much leeway to do what they want."

Teresina Gutiérrez Haces, a researcher at UNAM and an expert on trade and investment treaties, commented that although last Friday's announcement "might lead one to believe the Mexican government won, until ICSID publishes that the company and the government have reached an out-of-court settlement, with a detailed document resulting from a visual inspection of the land—which I would call the remediation inventory—we will know who won and how."

She urgently proposed drafting a detailed public protocol on the operations the company will be permitted to conduct, to prevent it from becoming a blank check; creating a permanent monitoring commission with free entry to the remediation site; and preventing a situation where a restoration is simulated while the material conditions for the company's "re-anchoring" are actually created.

Community Concerns and Lack of Consultation

It is vital that the Ministry of Economy, which is facing the case at ICSID with million-dollar legal expenses, clearly inform the Mexican people, and particularly the community of Torres de la Paz in the vicinity of Playa del Carmen, about the Mexican government's strategy for confronting this case.

For example, it turns out that the idea of creating an ecotourism destination at the site as an alternative to mining has not been consulted with the local population.

Araceli Domínguez, of the Grupo Ecologista del Mayab (Gema), stated that there was originally an agreement to later convert the area into a tourist zone. "Now that concept is limited because it is a protected natural area. Mass tourism would be very bad. Semarnat must develop a management program so that what the tribunal dictated has safeguards that can truly guarantee the objective of a protected natural area."

For his part, Quetzal Tzab, a Mayan leader from the area who will travel with a Mexican commission to Washington soon to testify about the impacts of NAFTA/USMCA before the U.S. Congress, said that "he has heard that they are already bringing the dining halls back."

International Legal Context and Precedent

The Semarnat bulletin stated that the government of Mexico requested consent to internationally counter-sue the company Legacy Vulcan, of which Calica is a subsidiary, and that this legal mechanism "is pending resolution before the international arbitration tribunal."

Unfortunately, ICSID does not accept lawsuits from governments against companies. The investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (known as ISDS) is a one-way street. In the vast majority of cases, affected communities are excluded.

This was already seen in the case of the mining company Odyssey, which won a case in an ICSID tribunal where Mexico had to pay $31 million and where fishing communities from Baja California Sur were denied the ability to present an amicus curiae brief. More recently, another amicus curiae on human rights issues and corporate due diligence was denied in ICSID to communities from Sierra Mojada in Coahuila in the case of the mining company Silver Bull Resources against Mexico.

A Call for a Change in Trade Policy

Therefore, it is urgent for Mexico to remedy the hole into which the governments of the past six-year terms plunged the country. The review of the USMCA is an opportunity to shake off this perverse system still active between Mexico and the United States.

It is also urgent to eradicate it from the Transpacific Treaty (under which Mexico already faces two lawsuits from Canadian companies) and not to accept it in the "modernized" trade agreement with the European Union, which President Sheinbaum has announced will be signed in February 2026.

The Vulcan versus Mexico case is one of more than 20 pending lawsuits. A true change of direction regarding trade and investment treaties is urgently needed. If not, the end of neoliberalism will remain a chimera.