99 Acres of Ejido Land Sold Illegally Near Mérida

Authorities at the Cuxtal Ecological Reserve are warning would-be buyers about a wave of online ads offering so-called “investment lots” inside and around the protected area south of Mérida, saying the land behind many of these offers cannot legally be sold as residential property.

Sandra García Peregrina, director of the reserve, said her office remains concerned about rising deforestation and a growing number of listings marketing communal ejido land as individual building lots. The practice, she said, risks triggering new clearing, construction and settlement inside a reserve meant to stay undeveloped.

The problem is most visible near San Pedro Chimay, one of the commissaries inside the reserve’s boundaries. Officials have identified a roughly 40-hectare (99-acre) block of ejido land there where lots have already been sold off irregularly, according to reserve representatives.

That matters for buyers because they cannot title those parcels. Reserve officials said the land cannot obtain formal property deeds or be recognized as a legitimate real estate development by Mexico’s agrarian and property-registry authorities, no matter what a seller promises. Anyone who buys into one of these lots, in other words, is paying for land they may never be able to legally register or build on.

The reserve’s administration said it has filed multiple complaints with Profepa, the federal environmental protection agency, and with Mérida’s Urban Development Department, both of which have carried out property closures in response. Criminal complaints have also been filed against people accused of promoting the sales.

This is not the first enforcement action in the reserve this year. In February, Profepa carried out a coordinated operation in Cuxtal with the National Guard and state police, closing several properties after finding illegally cleared jungle, unauthorized roads and construction without environmental permits.

Cuxtal, decreed in 1993, was the first protected natural area in Yucatán created directly by a municipal government. It sits about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of downtown Mérida and supplies roughly half of the water used in the southern part of the city, making its forest cover directly tied to the region’s groundwater supply.

Much of the reserve’s roughly 12,000 hectares (about 30,000 acres) is not municipally owned but held as ejido land — communal property historically farmed or managed collectively. That status is at the root of the current problem: ejido land can be difficult for outsiders to buy legally, and irregular sales of ejido plots as “investment” real estate have been reported at protected sites elsewhere on the peninsula.

García Peregrina’s message to prospective buyers was blunt: a plot being for sale, or looking attractive online, does not mean it can be developed.

Officials are urging residents and buyers to report new machinery, land clearing or construction activity inside the reserve to authorities as soon as it’s spotted, rather than after the damage is done.