Dzununcán: Mérida’s Most Vulnerable Reserve and Its Latest Threat

Heavy machinery rolling through a protected ecological reserve south of Mérida has triggered a federal enforcement action, the latest in an ongoing struggle to preserve one of the city’s most vital green spaces.

Mexico’s federal environmental enforcement agency, Profepa, closed down a property in the ejido of Dzununcán after inspectors confirmed that roughly 1 hectare (about 2.5 acres) of vegetation had been illegally stripped from land inside the Reserva Cuxtal. Inspectors also seized the heavy equipment found on site, believed to have been used in the clearing operation.

The action was set off by a report from officers with the Yucatán State Public Security Secretariat, who spotted the machinery operating inside the reserve. Staff from the Reserva Cuxtal then alerted Profepa, whose inspectors carried out the formal inspection and ordered the closure.

Dzununcán sits well beyond Mérida’s Periférico, far from the city’s tourist circuits and booming real estate market. It is among the poorest communities in the municipality, home to single mothers, children living in extreme poverty, and an unknown number of migrants who settled there to escape violence or difficult circumstances elsewhere. Basic services such as running water, electricity and paved streets remain scarce in parts of the ejido. It is precisely this kind of marginal, under-resourced community that has long been vulnerable to outside interests seeking to exploit land with minimal pushback.

The Mérida city government followed the closure with a public appeal urging residents and landowners to verify permits and required authorizations before undertaking any activity inside the reserve, warning that unauthorized interventions can cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem.

About the Cuxtal Reserve

The Reserva Cuxtal, established in 1993 as the first municipally decreed protected natural area in Yucatán, stretches across more than 10,757 hectares (about 26,600 acres) to the south of the city. It supplies roughly half of Mérida’s drinking water through the aquifer it recharges, and shelters more than 168 bird species, most of them migratory, along with a broad range of other flora and fauna. The reserve also encompasses historic henequen haciendas, cenotes, and Mayan archaeological sites — making it as much a cultural asset as an ecological one. The word cuxtal is Yucatec Maya for “life.”

Despite its protected status, the reserve has faced constant pressure from urban expansion, real estate speculation, and unauthorized land-use changes since its founding. Profepa has been called in before on similar violations. The ejido of Dzununcán is one of nine communities that fall within the reserve’s territory — a community whose residents, paradoxically, have the most to lose when the reserve’s water-supplying forest cover disappears.

Anyone owning land or planning activity inside the reserve is required to obtain permits from the appropriate authorities before any vegetation removal, construction, or land modification takes place. Violations can result in closure orders and equipment seizure, as this latest case illustrates.

For more on Dzununcán and the community organizations working there, see our feature on El Buen Pastor Mission. More on the reserve’s role in the region’s ecological network is available at reservacuxtal.com.

Quick Facts: Reserva Cuxtal

• Located south of Mérida; the ejido of Dzununcán is one of nine communities within its boundaries
• Established July 14, 1993 — the first municipally decreed protected area in Yucatán
• Covers 10,757 hectares (about 26,600 acres)
• Supplies approximately 50% of Mérida’s drinking water
• Home to 168+ bird species, most migratory
• Contains historic haciendas, cenotes, and Mayan archaeological sites
• Managed by the Mérida city government as a public decentralized entity
• Permits required for any land use or vegetation removal inside the reserve

Sources: lajornadamaya.mx; yucatanmagazine.com; reservacuxtal.com