Tiny Mahahual Just Fought Off Royal Caribbean and Their Own Local Authorities: We Should Be Taking Notes

Mahahual, Mexico and San Pedro, Belize have a lot in common. It totally makes sense…we are probably less than 40 miles apart (if you go from the north north tip of Ambergris Caye). Same reef. Same mangroves. Same fishing flats. A TOTALLY tourism-based economy. Many San Pedranos probably have relatives in Mahahual…even if you have to go back a few generations on the family tree.

We also have the same complicated issues when it comes to development vs. the environment. The environment that originally brought tourism to both our shores for the first time in the 70s and 80s. And is our entire economy today.

But one big difference is that in tiny Mahahual, some of the development proposals come with a lot more zeros attached.

Even so…yesterday, May 19th, Alicia Barcena, the head of Mexico’s environmental ministry, stood at a podium in Mexico City and announced that Royal Caribbean’s “Perfect Day Mexico” (barf) project would not be approved. For those of us who rely on this reef system and our environment for our livelihoods (aka all of San Pedro and along the Belize coast), yesterday was a very inspiring day.

Here’s a graphic I just pulled from Royal Caribbean’s site. GOOD LORD.

Orlando, Florida or the Mexican Caribbean Coast? Who cares!

It’s even more interesting as I read more and more about it.

Here’s the scoop so far: Mahahual is a fishing village of about 2,600 people, roughly the same size as Caye Caulker. (My last visit was 2012 – LOOK AT THAT BEACH!)

It already has a huge Costa Maya cruise ship port that brings in nearly 3 million cruise (HOLY SHIT) passengers a year. That is more than triple the cruise visitors that all of Belize receives.

Side note: Belize collects $11 per cruise passenger in combined head and environmental taxes. Mexico currently collects $5, rising to $21 by 2027. (Ok…that’s not the point…it’s just interesting)

The point is: Royal Caribbean looked at a small fishing village on the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world already handling three million visitors a year and decided what it really needed was a 230-acre private resort complex, a massive waterpark with a daily visitor capacity of 21,000 people. MORE MORE MORE! In a town with no reliable drinking water, power outages, inconsistent trash collection, and no sewage or adequate waste management (does that sound familiar!?!?!). They were confident enough in the project that they spent $292USD million buying the port (222 beachfront acres) and set aside another $529 million for construction. A 2027 opening had already been announced.

But I guess nobody properly consulted with the 2,600 people who actually live there.

HOW IT GOT STOPPED

NOT EASILY. And not one heroic moment. And most significant to me, it wasn’t just Royal Caribbean – the big ugly outside corporation they were fighting. It was their own local government too.

A Cancun-based legal nonprofit called DMAS…representing Spanish for “Defending the Right to a Healthy Environment”, had been watching development run roughshod over Quintana Roo’s coastline since 2017. They were founded by attorney MS. Antonella Cavedon and a small group of lawyers who decided that someone needed to serve as the legal arm for communities that couldn’t afford one. They take cases for free.

Their track record before Mahahual includes blocking illegal construction on Tulum beaches in sea turtle nesting areas, challenging huge developments along the Tren Maya corridor that were destroying mangrove habitat, filing against six separate projects in Playacar/Playa del Carmen damaging wildlife habitat, and winning a landmark case in 2023 in which they successfully sued the Quintana Roo state legislature for failing to require environmental risk assessments before approving coastal construction.

When Royal Caribbean’s project was announced, DMAS went to work. It wasn’t just a big, ugly foreign corporation (cruise ship corporations are the heroes in very few stories) with huge plans. It was a local government that had quietly made those plans possible!

Now this is where it gets crazy interesting to me…

The municipal council changed the zoning for 107 acres of jungle and mangrove in less than three weeks. The vote was held at night, with no public consultation. The permits were approved before most residents knew what was happening. By the time anyone could object, the legal groundwork for a BILLION-dollar waterpark was already in place.

A billion US dollars. Insane. That’s about 1/3 of the GDP of Belize.

DMAS filed four separate lawsuits to stop the project . Three were thrown out. The fourth won a temporary suspension blocking construction permits. And then THAT was overturned by a higher court on the grounds that DMAS, being based in Cancún rather than Mahahual, lacked standing to bring the case. The corporation had the permits. What can we do? The local government provided the cover. We can’t fight out local government! And then the courts shut them down completely.

But here’s the thing…they STILL didn’t go away.

A separate local group called Salvemos Mahahual (SAVE MAHAHUAL!) organized on the ground. A Change.org petition gathered 4.783 million signatures (read the petition) for a town of 2,600 people. Greenpeace got involved, warning publicly about threats to the reef, the mangroves, the dune systems and erosion, and the underground freshwater that the entire region depends on. The press kept covering it. Pressure was building and…at some point an “exciting development” becomes a major liability.

Yesterday, May 19th, Alicia Bárcena, the head of Mexico’s environmental ministry, stood at a podium and made it official: the Royal Caribbean Perfect Day project will not be approved. The president had already signaled where things were heading. Bárcena just closed the door.

WHAT I’M LEARING AS I READ MORE…and WHAT’S SO INSPIRING!

Belize does not currently have a Perfect Day proposal on its doorstep. But what happened in Mahahual is a case study in what it actually takes to push back, and the lessons are not just about fighting corporations. They are about what happens when local authorities don’t represent the communities they serve and instead represent the interests of whoever shows up with the biggest checkbook.

The actual threats Belize faces look different. They are smaller but scattered all over our island and our country. In many ways harder to fight and more insidious.

Environmental impact assessments skipped entirely. Good laws with zero enforcement. Mangroves mowed down without permits. Dredging approvals seemingly handed out with no follow-through. No transparency, no accountability, no consequences. Not one big villain with a billion-dollar checkbook, but a slow accumulation of small decisions that individually fly under the radar and collectively add up to the same thing: the gradual erosion of exactly what makes this place worth coming to.

Belize is extraordinarily blessed – I am so lucky to live here. The reef. The mangroves. The marine life. The cultures. The community.

The destinations that will thrive long term are not the ones that said yes to everything. They are the ones who understood what they had, protected it in a serious way, and refused to sell it piece by piece by piece.

What Mahahual shows is that fighting back requires alot. Building the organizational capacity…legal capacity…being vocal…not stopping. And there are key differences between Belize and Mexico. Primarily the size of the country…

Though that could be an asset…

The Cancun legal organization spent eight years building legal infrastructure and credibility before they ever heard the words Perfect Day. The courts kept ruling against them…

Belize has organizations, advocates, and communities who care deeply about this reef. Caring is not enough on its own. It takes structure, unity, legal work, persistence, and lots and lots of courage to stand up to local authorities and hold them accountable when they make decisions in the dark…decisions that affect all of us.

I’m not saying we can do it right now…maybe not ever. But folks need to use their voices and their votes…change is possible. Belize and Belizeans have long been underestimated…let’s not underestimate what we have to lose.

Mahuhual just showed us one path. And I find it SUPER inspiring! I can’t wait to read more…I’ve only read a handful of the articles so far…and pieced this together. But it’s so GOOD!

(I just hope our government isn’t talking to Royal Caribbean about moving this operation to Ambergris Caye – Perfect Day Bacalar Chico, A UNESCO World Heritage Water Park.)

Ugh…I shouldn’t even joke.