Скачать или смотреть Mexico squatters stand against developers

(19 Aug 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tulum - 4 August 2022
1. Various aerials of the "October 2" settlement next to luxury housing development
HEADLINE: Mexico squatters stand against developers
2. October 2 settlement
3. Various of settlement residents during meeting
4. Various of settlement leader Jose Antonio León Méndez during a meeting
UPSOUND (Spanish) Jose Antonio León Méndez, welder and settlement leader:
"I can't be happy when I see a businessman inside the settlement. They don't pay for electricity. They have decent service. We instead, only have wires and blinking light bulbs. I get nervous when I hear them call us invaders, because us Mexicans cannot be invaders."
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Jose Antonio León Méndez, welder and settlement leader:
"We will not allow them to continue selling the land to foreigners while they send us locals - who have lived in Quintana Roo for 15, 20 or 30 years - to live 20 kilometers into the mountains because this land is for everyone but us.
6. Aerial of October 2 settlement
7. Lorena's shack in October 2 settlement
8. Various of Lorena washing dishes inside her shack
ANNOTATION: Unchecked development has hit Tulum so hard that developers are now eager to build condominiums and hotels in shantytowns.
ANNOTATION: Police are trying to evict squatters and officials plan to relocate them. But residents are fighting back.
9. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Lorena (no surname given) street food vendor:
"Mayan people have always been displaced, and that's enough. We are from here, and we deserve to live with dignity. It is not acceptable that the former governments have sold these lands for so little money without caring about us, while the businessmen get more and more, and we are their slaves."
10. Luxury residential development
11. Advertisement for luxury residential development
ANNOTATION: Condos on the edge and inside the camp now sell for between $100,000 and $150,000 and are advertised in the U.S. dollars.
12. Various of October 2 settlement
ANNOTATION: Around Tulum, 20$ is considered a good wage. So for the average Mexican worker, it would take decades of all their wages to buy one.
13. Aerial of slogan reading "SOS Mr. AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) they are attacking us, help."
STORYLINE:
Unchecked development has hit this once-laid back beach town on Mexico's Caribbean coast so hard that developers are now eager, even desperate, to build condominiums and hotels in a shantytown.
While police are trying to evict squatters so towering condos can be built next to wood and tarpaper shacks, residents are fighting back, saying they are tired of foreign investors excluding local people from their own coast.
Squatter leader Jose Antonio León Méndez, a welder who has lived in Cancun and Tulum for about three decades, says he, like many of the squatters who work as cooks, gardeners and bricklayers at surrounding condos and hotels, was tired of knowing he could never afford a home.
Officials in Quintana Roo state have vowed to relocate or remove about 12,000 inhabitants of the 340-acre (137-hectare) squatters' settlement known as the October 2 settlement, founded in 2016 on very valuable and once public land located between the town of Tulum and its beach.
"We will not allow them to continue selling the land to foreigners while they send us locals - who have lived in Quintana Roo for 15, 20 or 30 years - to live 20 kilometres into the mountains because this land is for everyone but us," León Méndez said.
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