Ecocide continues in Yucatán, now in San Felipe

The Mangrove area is being devastated, residents complain with PROFEPA and the government does nothing.

Mérida, Yucatán (March 12, 2021).-After four years of continuous extermination of the mangrove in one of the most important ecological reserves in the country, the Ría Lagartos Reserve, located in the eastern part of the state of Yucatán, its fauna and ecosystem are dying due to the orders of the Trustee of the San Felipe Municipality, Felipe Marrufo López and Mayor Juana Baltazar Santos, to extract the mangrove in other parts of the port.

The impunity generated by the apparent decision of Profepa not to intervene is such, that it has motivated the neighboring port of Rio Lagartos to also destroy the mangrove, the corresponding authority has not taken any actions in the face of the constant complaints made by the residents of these eastern ports, those who, in the face of the pandemic, have made several calls to 800 PROFEPA, from which they have not received a response.

It should be noted that several formal complaints have been made against the destruction of nature in the port of San Felipe. Such as the one made in 2018 by the UNTA (National Union of Agrarian Workers) before the PGR. Also, in 2019 the federal Representative Cecilia Patron Laviada, complained before PROFEPA to those responsible for the attack against the environmental balance in areas that correspond to the Ecological Reserve, obtaining in both cases no response from the authorities.

This large ecocide began in the municipality of San Felipe back in 2018 with the extermination in the water arm known as “Oca de Alesh” by removing the mangrove with heavy machinery, filling that area with material to make streets and subdivide land, leaving hundreds of species that spawn and nested there to die and without a natural habitat.

Now, San Felipe continues destroying mangrove in other points of that port, and even at neighboring municipalities such as Rio Lagartos.

Apparently, the destruction of natural resources takes place with the protection and collusion of the ejido and the Federal agency PROFEPA that is supposed to protect the habitat of the local flora and fauna, but instead, they are destroying it.