Ex-Mayor’s $24M Land Giveaway Exposed

Playa del Carmen, Mexico — Mauricio Góngora, during his tenure as municipal president, gave away a piece of land that was embargoed at the beginning of the year by order of the Yucatán Prosecutor's Office, a debt that can never be recovered for the city.

The property is now secured by order of that prosecutor's office in collaboration with courts and its counterpart in Quintana Roo, due to a family dispute among the Menéndez family that has intensified with the death of Mario Renato Menéndez, founder of the newspaper that received the land.

Góngora, who aspires to be a candidate for governor or "whatever comes his way," as he has stated, was part of this multi-million peso loss to the patrimony of what was then the municipality of Solidaridad, now Playa del Carmen.

A Literal Gift

This was not a gift in a figurative sense, but a literal one, as Góngora, in what the article describes as his "altered reality," was part of the multi-million peso loss to the patrimony of the city.

One of the most high-profile cases, now nearly forgotten by the collective memory, is the gratuitous donation of a well-located plot of land over one hectare in size that he made in favor of the once-powerful media outlet, in complicity with the former treasurer, Jesús Gabriel Castro Cárdenas.

According to property registry documents consulted by Sol Quintana Roo, this deal originated in 2011, when the city council of what is now the municipality of Playa del Carmen approved the handover of the property of approximately 11,000 square meters. The land is located on Avenida Tecnológico with Calle Zapote, next to the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social's (IMSS) General Hospital of Zone number 18 and the courthouse zone in Villamar, a highly privileged area.

The Paper Trail

The real estate folio number 54999, inscribed in the Public Property and Commerce Registry, provides evidence of this squandering of real estate and fraud against Playa del Carmen's patrimony. It clearly shows that in 2015, Mauricio Góngora, who was already aspiring to the governorship for the PRI—a bid that ended in a disastrous defeat—signed the donation contract in the form of a public deed in favor of the various companies that founded the media outlet in question.

The name of Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez, founder of the newspaper that did business with PRI governments like this one, consistently appears in the documents. The article notes that he also astutely presented himself as left-wing by aligning with Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

It is noted that it is no coincidence that in 2016, during the campaigns, Mauricio Góngora appeared prominently on the front pages of the newspaper, which subsequently heavily criticized him after his loss during the next state administration.

Prime Location, Intense Family Dispute

Though Góngora may have forgotten this, the documents consulted by Sol Quintana Roo revive this loss of public patrimony through the squandering of a piece of land that originated from a donation made by the Playa del Carmen ejido in 2010.

The purpose of the donated area was for public services, right where other dependencies such as Civil Protection, the Labor Conciliation and Registry Center, the Prosecutor's Office, and the Red Cross are now also located. This means the property, which is now private property thanks to another donation, was clearly intended for the construction of public works in a zone with a need for schools, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and others.

Although it seems unlikely the real estate will ever be recovered by the treasury of Playa del Carmen, it is now the object of another dispute: a familial one due to a lawsuit filed by Patricia Menéndez Cámara, daughter of Mario Renato.

Current Legal Status

The Sixtieth Civil Court, within case file 113/2021, ordered the embargo of this land, which was ratified on January 23 of this year, ordered by the Yucatán Prosecutor's Office with collaborative effects in legal bodies of that entity.

Consequently, the property, where not even a single stone has been moved, as nothing can be built on it nor can it be disposed of for sale, now sits abandoned.

This is described as one of the many effects left by Mauricio Góngora in this locality, where he allegedly squandered assets left and right alongside former Governor Roberto Borge Angulo, who is now imprisoned. The article concludes that, in his eagerness to be reconsidered for a popularly elected position, he seeks to cleanse this trail of corruption by presenting himself as a politically persecuted figure alongside Félix González Canto, who is described as another official who left pending accounts but evaded justice because they controlled the entire judicial apparatus at the time.