it's happening all over mexico

it's definitely happening here in Loreto, coastlines are being swallowed up by developments.

from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/business/yourmoney/20resort.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=4ffd1bf2e0bda562&ex=1180324800&emc=eta1

you may need a password, i've pasted some here...

Who Controls Paradise?

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Goffredo Marcaccini at his estate in Jalisco, Mexico, where he lives with his wife, Alix Goldsmith. They are opposed to a development project involving two of Mexico’s most powerful families. More Photos >

By RON STODGHILL
Published: May 20, 2007
COSTA Alegre, Mexico

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

CRUISING along the swerving, mountainous roads of Mexico’s western coast, past trees and vines, blue lagoons and scattered wildflowers, Goffredo Marcaccini stops his Jeep and thrusts his head out the window. “Ahhh,” he croons, inhaling the morning air. “The smell of the earth! Nice, like the scent of a woman!”

His reverie is short-lived. Farther along, he encounters roadside debris, including a bright blue Pepsi can. “Modern man,” he says, wincing, “is the cancer of the earth. We are only here to destroy.”

Mr. Marcaccini is a self-described romantic, a naturalist who waxes poetic about mangroves, giant sea turtles and the beauty of parakeets. He is also an heir to the late British corporate raider James Goldsmith, who once lorded over this richly virginal expanse of nature as though it were his own empire.

Since Mr. Goldsmith’s death in 1997, Mr. Marcaccini and his wife, Alix, the daughter of Mr. Goldsmith, have managed the late patriarch’s most prized asset: Cuixmala, a 2,000-acre private estate with several villas on the Pacific that at various times housed Mr. Goldsmith’s three families, mistresses and high-powered visitors including Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

These days, though, there’s trouble brewing on Cuixmala, which is nestled inside the 32,473-acre Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, a rolling expanse of federally protected coastal land.

In an effort to expand tourism beyond destinations like Cancún and Puerto Vallarta, Mexican officials recently authorized the development of two resorts in the area. The most controversial project, called Marina Careyes — also referred to as Careyitos — is backed by Roberto Hernández, the powerful Mexican banker and developer who sold his financial services firm to Citigroup six years ago for $12.5 billion. Mr. Hernández’s minority partners are Gian Franco Brignone and his son Giorgio, Italian real estate magnates who relocated to Mexico and built a series of sumptuous properties in the state of Jalisco that made it a magnet for the super-rich.

The result is a pitched battle over land rights between Mr. Goldsmith’s heirs and two of the country’s most powerful families — a clash that sheds light on the fault lines between traditional luxury resort developers who favor golf courses, swimming pools and spas, and a newer breed of conservationist-entrepreneurs who champion eco-resorts where guests hike and canoe for recreation. The standoff smacks of a blood feud with roots going back decades to early land squabbles involving the Goldsmiths and the Brignones.

Political analysts in Mexico say the rift is also one of the first tests of President Felipe Calderón’s commitment to the environment. Elected last November, Mr. Calderón has earned some kudos from environmental groups for recently enacting a wildlife protection law, which prohibits activities that may damage Mexico’s coastal mangroves. At the same time, analysts say he is certain to face pressure from Mexico’s powerful tourism industry, which generates billions of dollars in revenue for the country but has also caused once-scenic coastlines to become clotted with megaresorts.

“We still need time to see how committed he his,” said Cecilia Navarro, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace Mexico, an environmental advocacy group. “He needs to keep firm, because we know that a businessman like Mr. Hernández has a lot of power.”

However the conflict at Cuixmala plays out, all of the parties involved are well aware of the influence they have — or don’t have — on the outcome. “Daddy would have had so much leverage in this,” Alix Goldsmith says. “He would have had prominent people in politics, environmental groups, scientists, artists signing a petition to the Mexican president asking for the law to be followed. But that’s why we have to be careful; here in Mexico, compared to a guy like Roberto Hernández, we’re nothing. Nobody knows Goffredo Marcaccini or Alix Goldsmith.”

Mr. Marcaccini’s assessment is more cynical. “This is the classic case of a civil society up against a manipulating government,” he asserts. “Anyone who tries to speak out here in Mexico is crushed like a mosquito.”

Mr. Hernández’s partners say that they are ecologically sensitive developers and that the first family of Cuixmala simply doesn’t want outsiders to encroach on its private enclave. Others, too, have said that Mr. Marcaccini and Ms. Goldsmith might be concerned about something other than their mangroves.

“The ecological policies in Mexico are being manipulated by private family interests,” said Octavio González Reyes, a columnist who covers tourism for the area’s newspaper, El Occidental, in Guadalajara. “This fight is all about economic interests, not the environment. What the Goldsmiths are interested in protecting is their own private emporium.”

ITS name inspired by the small former port town of Chamela and the powerful Cuixmala River snaking through the region, the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve is one of the most studied tropical dry forests in the world. During the transition from the dry to the rainy season, its lowland forest morphs from a muted gray to a lush green, and it attracts scientists who study its special flora and fauna. With the exception of federally owned lagoons and coasts, land within the reserve is mostly in private hands.