Police and soldiers illegally seized a limestone mine, cement works and cargo port in Mexico. One privately owned and operated by a U.S. company based in Alabama. According to Vulcan Materials, police forced their way into their Caribbean coast dock at Punta Venado, near Playa del Carmen. Just like Ayn Rand described in Atlas shrugged, they “nationalized” the property for themselves.
Mexico violates rule of law
“It should be clear that the rule of law is no longer assured for foreign companies in Mexico.” Vulcan Materials issued a public statement advising other American companies doing business south of the border that there’s been a nasty development which could affect everyone. “This invasion, unsupported by legal warrants, violates Vulcan’s commercial and property rights.”
Some say, this is a lot like the way Ukraine’s war started out. We could end up sending tanks and drones to battle it out with the cartels for the places American tourists like to play. All we need to do is move the border a little farther south and we can claim the “Mexican Riviera” as our own.
Police and marines first occupied the property March 14 and were still there a week later. The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has wanted the operation for years.
🚨 WATCH: The Mexican military seized a U.S. company’s (Vulcan Materials) marine terminal in Mexico. This is insane, @SecBlinken @JakeSullivan46
More from Bloomberg —> “Vulcan Facility Seizure Adds to Tension Between US and Mexico” https://t.co/el9GMN1Nv8 pic.twitter.com/gvj40ziefz
— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) March 19, 2023
Since American tourists are his nation’s biggest source of revenue, he’s been trying to build a scenic little railway to shuttle them around. His “Train Maya” project relies heavily on a limestone quarry owned by Vulcan. They use it to produce cement, needed for the railway project. Their private docks are another important feature.
Last May, in a show of heavy handed bureaucratic force, Mexico “shut down Vulcan’s stone quarries.” They claimed that “the company had extracted or exported stone without approval.” That was only a pretext.
Video from the raid “showed a long line of police and military patrol trucks open a locked gate and enter the property.” They didn’t have “any legal paperwork to justify their actions.” When they come toting guns, they’re coming in. The first thing they did was start stealing cement.
Train by December
Mexico continues to insist that their gringo transport choo choo will be running by December, “despite the fact it is well behind schedule.” Vulcan points out that “the police officers then oversaw the unloading of cement at the port facility.” Alabama Senator Katie Britt is livid about the incident.
Her office issued a statement declaring that “this forcible seizure of private property is unlawful and unacceptable. It is shameful that this Mexican presidential administration would rather confiscate American assets than the fentanyl killing hundreds of Americans per day.”
Mexico, she says, “should be more focused on going after the cartels than law-abiding businesses and hardworking people.” The cartels don’t have cargo docks. That’s the big reason for liberating the cement works. That train project needs special gravel for “ballast” on the tracks that they can only get from Cuba.
.@SenKatieBritt decries 'unlawful' seizure of Birmingham-based Vulcan Materials' facility in Mexico — 'Mexico should be more focused on going after the cartels than law-abiding businesses'
By @DTaylor1819 https://t.co/DJkSkpwK5U— 1819 News (@1819News) March 20, 2023
The only problem is they don’t have anywhere to unload it. Mexico’s company Cemex, “once had an agreement with Vulcan to use the port.” Not anymore, Vulcan ended that agreement long ago.
Cemex claims that they filed a criminal complaint and were granted “injunctive relief and a legal warrant to access the property and continue operating” by the state prosecutor’s office. There’s a little problem with that. Mexico has a strange and bizarre legal system to start with but experts note that the “wording is odd, since such injunctions are normally issued by Mexico’s federal courts rather than prosecutors, and such disputes are seldom resolved through criminal complaints.”
Not only that, “Cemex did not specify what crime it alleged had been committed.” The crime is that the property and docks would be great for a water park and cruise ship port. After they evict the crocodiles. “López Obrador wants the water-filled quarry to be used as a theme park to rival the nearby XCaret park. He also wants Vulcan to build a cruise ship dock at the freight terminal. He has pressured the Alabama-based aggregates company to sell the property to the government, or open a water park itself.” It was an offer they couldn’t refuse, but they did.