Seven Siblings Preserve Akumal’s Early Memories in New Book

Akumal, Quintana Roo — Sixty years ago, eight siblings from Mérida made their way to a remote bay that few had ever heard of: Akumal.

At the time, there was no Riviera Maya. Cancún had not yet been born as a tourist project. Getting to that small bay meant following dirt tracks, traveling by sea, and venturing into a region where nature set the rhythm of life.

That family expedition left a permanent mark on the memory of the López Mena siblings. They recall fishing for their own food, living alongside the families of Akumal’s old coconut grove, and burying huge blocks of ice under the sand to keep food fresh for days — an image that would later inspire the title of their book, Akumal: The Ice Beneath the Sand (Akumal, el hielo bajo la arena).

Sixty years later, seven of the siblings returned to the same place with a certainty: if they didn’t write down their story now, it would likely be lost forever.

The result is a book built from memory, but also from research and deep respect for the pioneers who made the development of this corner of the Mexican Caribbean possible. It gathers testimonies about key figures such as Pablo Bush Romero and the family of Don Pedro Tun, as well as the experiences of those who knew Akumal when it was still a virtually untouched spot.

At just over 100 pages, the book serves as a recovery of a part of Quintana Roo’s history that rarely appears in official documents, but which remains alive in the stories of those who witnessed that era.