Preventive tape was placed at the site, which was removed. Photo: Armando Esquivel.

Armando Esquivel (San Antonio Tlayacapan).- The case of the land next to the San Antonio Tlayacapan seawall, where a private individual seeks to build a private reserve, has reached the Congress of Jalisco, approving a letter to the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) and the Government of Chapala. The land in question is now free of the owner’s alleged illegal trailer, but has been taped off by the Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office, with a sign warning that the land was under judicial process.

Deputy Erika Lizbeth Ramírez Peréz, of Green Ecologist Party of México (PVEM), introduced the bill to generate a letter to both the federal agency and the municipality  to inform them about the situation of the land located at the end of Colón Street in San Antonio Tlayacapan. The legislation was approved  by 37 votes in favor, with no abstentions or refusals, on May 12. Residents of San Antonio Tlayacapan   approached the legislator to ask for her intervention in the face of what they considered a federal invasion, according to her statement.     

A tarp with Fiscalía logos, apparently apocryphal, was left on the controversial land. Photo: Armando Esquivel.

Meanwhile, on the afternoon of May 20, residents of San Antonio Tlayacapan arrived at the end of Colón street, on the shores of the lake to remove a trailer that served as an office for the builders, but to their surprise, the unit had already been removed, In addition, the place was surrounded by preventive tape and a tarp with logos of the Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office, warning that the place was under judicial process, under the file 155/2022, with a late model truck inside the property.

“Take it away so you can cover your chickens”, said one man to another who was removing the warning tarp, while another removed the preventive tape. According to vendors on the boardwalk, the trailer was removed in the early hours of the morning and the tape and tarp were not placed by the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office, but by personnel from the construction company seeking to privatize the area and build on an area of 5,104 square meters in front of the lake.

In January, the authorities knocked down a stone wall and closed the area, but the work continued in a clandestine manner, so in April, the citizens took over the land. The former PAN congressional candidate, José de Jesús Arambul Solorio, claims to be the owner, however, a copy of the deed shown to Launa showed that the deed was made by a notary who is not authorized to act in the area and who was also suspended from his duties at the time the document was made, which makes it null and void, a situation that was confirmed a month ago by Jaime Natera López, President of the College of Notaries of Jalisco.

Translated  by Patrick O’Heffernan