Confrontation in Baja!

On October 8 and October 11, 1999 a group of  about 300 mostly retired Americans and Mexican-Americans faced eviction from the homes they had built and paid for at Punta Banda, Baja California, Mexico. The reason, they had leased the land from an agricultural cooperative, which in turn was given the land years earlier by the government of Mexico. But, according to the Mexican Supreme Court, it turned out that the land was not the government's to give away! The Supreme Court ruled that the land belonged to several wealthy developers, who, on the above dates, attempted to serve court eviction notices on the cooperative and on the homeowners.  -----   The "new" owners intend to take possession of not only the raw land, but of the homes which have been built on the land. And, they maintain that the homeowners have no right to compensation for the homes they are loosing.  The homes in question range from the very modest, a house trailer parked on an otherwise bare lot; to the grand, multi bedroom mini palaces. Many of the permanent homes fall into the $50-100,000 price range. Some are even less expensive, others are clearly worth $1 million or more.  -----  The cooperative and the homeowners responded by blocking the only road and refusing the "new" owners and their government representatives access to the property.  -----  The photographs in this collection were taken during the period of the blockade and show the action on the barricades, as well as the natural beauty of the area in question.

Almost exactly one year later, early on the morning of  October 30, 2000, Mexican government officials from the Agrarian Reform secretariat backed by 450 federal and local police officers arrived to carry out the eviction order. The American homeowners were given from a matter of minutes to a few hours to gather all they could of their belongings before being escorted from their homes by police. Then the entire peninsula was sealed off and further access was denied. Thus the "new" owners have seized not only the homes the Americans built and paid for, but also much personal property.

For some of the Americans these were vacation homes. They were the lucky ones. Others lost the only home they had. Most of those were retirees. For many, their Mexican home represented the investment of their life savings.

Given the facts as they are known, there are only two possible conclusions to be drawn from this experience. Either these "new" owners succeeded in pulling off a colossal fraud, stealing the land from the cooperative and the American homeowners, or, they were the rightful owners all along and the Agrarian Reform secretariat made a huge mistake years ago by giving away land it did not own. Either way the cooperative and the American homeowners are the losers.

I have no independent means of verifying the claims of these "new" owners, that they were the original victims of an error by the Agrarian Reform secretariat when it transferred the land to the agricultural cooperative. I will have to trust the Mexican Supreme Court that it was not fooled by some clever fraud.

That leaves the second possibility. If the Agrarian Reform secretariat made an error, and the result is that people have lost their homes, you might think that the secretariat would offer some compensation. That hasn't happened so far, and the displaced American homeowners aren't holding their breath. Had such an error happened anywhere in the U.S. government compensation would be virtually automatic. But, this is Mexico, not the U.S.  

So all you Americans considering investing in homes in Mexico, BEWARE, you're not in Kansas anymore! Not only do you have to be fearful of land scams by private developers, you can't trust the government to right it's own wrongs!

Photography by: Larry Luckham

email:     larry@luckham.com