Sheinbaum Points to Historic Land Corruption in Quintana Roo

Mexico City — President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico has experienced historic corruption related to land ownership, reaching what she called “extreme cases” in Quintana Roo.

Speaking at her daily morning press conference, Sheinbaum explained that her administration is working with municipalities and states to modernize the country’s cadastre, or property registry. She appointed José Iracheta as the new undersecretary of territorial, urban, and housing planning to lead the effort.

“The cadastre means having the public property registry in order, to know who owns each plot and to make that information public,” Sheinbaum said. “Historically there has been a lot of corruption related to property.”

She added: “There are extreme cases in Quintana Roo, where plots were sold six or eight times and that were also national lands.”

While Sheinbaum did not provide specific details, the state has seen several high-profile land scandals. In Tulum, the state government irregularly sold national lands that later became part of the Tulum National Park. A so-called “agrarian mafia” also seized the coastal area known as Punta Piedra through an ejido, leading to decades of litigation and evictions.

In Playa del Carmen, the Colonia Colosio neighborhood was built on national land, later claimed by a private individual. The state government created the “Riviera Maya Development Corporation” to mediate, but the corporation traded the lots without legal certainty.

More recently, officials in the administration of former Playa del Carmen Mayor Lili Campos registered lands in the Cristo Rey neighborhood under their own names, taking advantage of overdue payments by original owners. Two officials were arrested for the practice.