Puerto Morelos: paradise, but for who?
Sunrise at the main port, Puerto Morelos, 27 September 2025, Quintana Roo, México. Photo © Maozya Murray.
Reportage • Maozya Murray • October 31, 2025 • Leer en castellano
In Puerto Morelos, white hotel blocks tower above a patchwork of colourful houses, an uneasy pairing on a narrow strip of land bounded by mangroves on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other.
From the rooftop of Cuca Macuca hostel, the Bella Mare Condos & Shopping Mall rises sharply against the mangroves. A crane sweeps slow arcs, ferrying buckets of concrete and beams across the construction site.
The property is one of six new developments Mexico’s environmental protection agency (PROFEPA) says are breaking environmental laws in this small coastal municipality.
Half an hour south of the global tourist hub of Cancún, Puerto Morelos long escaped the hotel boom reshaping the Riviera Maya. But real estate sales are growing, and fast. Posters plastered on the shiny windows of yet-to-be-opened condos depict white families and dollar signs as hoteliers market the properties to foreign investors chasing profitable assets.
María, 31, serves coffee to early risers from the counter of her small family-owned restaurant two blocks back from the beachfront. “We used to be able to see straight down to the sea”, she said, looking wistfully toward the shoreline.“Now it’s all hotels.” María, like other locals I spoke with, asked to remain anonymous because speaking out against development can be dangerous.
Last year, the Mexican Center for Environmental Law found that the state of Quintana Roo, which is home to Cancún and Puerto Morelos, was among those with the highest number of attacks on environmental defenders in Mexico. Some were targeted for challenging real estate projects.
Insecurity goes beyond those who speak out. According to a recent government survey, almost three quarters of residents in Quintana Roo feel unsafe. That figure is even higher among women. In a town of fewer than 30,000, that sense of vulnerability is hard to ignore.
Ecology at risk
A stretch of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef sits just a short boat ride off Puerto Morelos’ sandy beaches, and bordering the town to the west are 5,000 hectares of wetlands that shelter marine life and migratory birds.
Linking sea and land, the reef and mangroves form an ecological corridor that supports biodiversity, shields the coastline and sustains Portomorelenses. For a population of fishermen and tourist-guides this ecology is essential: the reef supplies food and income, while the mangroves purify the water that sustains it, providing a nursery for young marine life.
In the 1950s, Puerto Morelos was a fishing village of about 80 inhabitants. Cancún's rapid development began in the 1970s, and fisherman and environmental groups began to notice negative impacts on the reef.
Local residents became aware of instances of coral abuse becoming more common along the coast. “They didn’t want that to happen here," recalls Octavio Granados González, the director of the Arrecife de Puerto Morelos National Park. “They came together and pushed to declare the reef a protected area”.
Today, Puerto Morelos sits between two protected areas: the Arrecife de Puerto Morelos National Park and the Manglares de Puerto Morelos Flora and Fauna Protection Area.
The community's support for the national park remains strong. “It means there are more eyes and ears to take care of the park”, Granados González told Ojalá.
But he was careful to emphasize that a protected areas designation is often not enough. Along much of Mexico’s Caribbean coast, protected areas exist largely on paper, while many parks are understaffed, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.
In Puerto Morelos, the delicate ecological balance has been strained by rapid population and economic growth. Between 1998 and 2006, the population expanded more than threefold, and tourism—which drove much of that growth—accelerated the pace of change. Visitor numbers have continued to rise steadily, climbing nearly 17 per cent between 2019 and 2022, according to the Secretary of Tourism.
With the recent inauguration of two Tren Maya stations in Puerto Morelos those figures are likely to rise. But the train is carrying more than tourists - it’s bringing real estate speculation, too.
A 2025 study confirmed what locals already felt: proximity to the railway is driving up land prices. “For me the main problem with the train is the real estate speculation it is generating”, said Rosalía, a member of Sustainable Puerto Morelos, a local group reporting illegal property developments. She too asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.
“We are creating cities inhabited exclusively by tourists. And so, where do we stand?”, she asked. “Where are our services? Where are our churches? Where are our cultural centers?”
Bella Mare Condos & Shopping Mall under construction. Puerto Morelos, 27 September 2025, Quintana Roo, Mexico Photo © Maozya Murray.
Tourism isn’t the problem, real estate is
Walking through the town, it’s clear that flipper-clad tourists aren’t the main threat to the reef. The real threat is the massive construction sites that edge along the shore.
“Once real estate arrives it’s very hard to stop, they keep building closer and closer to the shore till they’re basically in the water,” said Héctor, a local resident who also asked not be named. “They even tried to buy our secondary school," he added. The seafront Secundaria Technica Numero 7 has long resisted encroachment by real estate developers. Recently, one sought to cut a walkway to the beach through the school grounds.
These changes are not confined to Puerto Morelos. Along the coastline south Cancún — the stretch known as the Riviera Maya — a dizzying vision of luxury condos and tourist enclaves is unfolding.
Puerto Morelos, branded a “rising star” for foreign investment, is fast becoming the state's most sought-after real estate market. In 2024, Quintana Roo drew a record high of nearly a billion US dollars in foreign direct investment, according to the Institute for Statistics and Geography.
The dollars reshaping the coastline — and the lives of Mexican Caribbean communities — are flowing in from Spain, the US and the Netherlands.
Antonella Vázquez Cavedón, director of local environmental NGO DMAS, told Ojalá there are investors from Mexico City too. “I’m sorry to say they are children of the [Tren Maya],” she lamented. “People who saw that if you have connections, friends, and the right knowledge, you can do whatever you want here.”
In a municipality of mostly modest single-storey dwellings, the new developments are jarring. “The mangroves used to stretch to the coast. But now there are hotels in the way,” said Granados González.
Eduardo Rodríguez Garrido is the founder of local conservation charity Puerto Manglar, and he recalls the moment he realised what was happening in Puerto Morelos. “I spotted a crocodile emerging from an area full of garbage,” he said. “I mentioned it to my brothers, and we decided to organize cleanup days for the mangroves.”
But the men quickly realised cleanups were not enough.
“Things were getting dirty faster than we could clean up, and that’s when we realised construction was the problem,” said Rodríguez Garrido.
He explained that beyond increasing carbon emissions, construction —which emits by far the most greenhouse gases globally — directly threatens mangroves through clearing and illegal dumping of construction materials.
Developers, however, insist that existing legislation protects these sites of international ecological importance. “Development is inevitable,” said a representative from the Bella Mare property, which received a closure notice from PROFEPA in July.
A review of PROFEPA records carried out by Maya sin Fronteras show eleven developments have been shut down in Quintana Roo this year due to environmental violations. Upon further review, I found that from May to August this year, a whopping 25 projects have been shut down for environmental violations in the broader Yucatán Peninsula region.
Corruption or negligence?
On October 24 a judge from the Eighth District Court issued a ruling revoking a licence granted by the Puerto Morelos city council for a beachfront project operating illegally under Mexican environmental laws.
Vásquez Cavedón from DMAS, the organization that brought the case before the court, explained that developers moving ahead without environmental permits is a deliberate strategy. “Since there are so many [properties] developers prefer to take the risk: they build and sell first, and deal with the legal consequences later,” she said. The municipality lets it happen, she said, because it's good business.
Most of the properties issued closure notices in Puerto Morelos were already stories high by the time the authorities arrived. “What is the point in closing them when they’ve already been built," asked Rodríguez Garrido, exasperated.
Government efforts to demolish illegal structures can drag on for years, securing environmental compensation is even harder.
The community brings hope
Since the 1970s, the Yucatán Peninsula has been part of a state-led push to promote tourism and foreign investment—a drive that has gained new momentum under successive National Regeneration Movement Party (MORENA) governments.
But even in this context, the people of Puerto Morelos continue to fight for the town's defining features: its ecosystems, close-knit community and quiet way of life.
“The type of tourism we have is very clear. It is elderly people and families”, said Rodríguez Garrido. “We have strict rules around nightlife… We will not become like Cancun”, he adds, determined.
A look at the local environmental initiatives from seaweed construction to youth-led reef restoration explains residents' resilience.
When the sun rises over Puerto Morelos, it still feels like a fishing hamlet. Locals ready their nets and tourist boats for a day on the reef; and the hopes of residents seem within reach.
