Luxury Properties Along Maya Train Route Linked to Government Official

The family of Manuel Bartlett, the director of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), has reportedly acquired 164 hectares of prime real estate along the route of the anticipated Maya Train project. These properties, located in the luxurious Riviera Maya region, were obtained in areas adjacent to the mega project, even before its official announcement.

The Bartlett family, through various companies established by León Manuel Bartlett Álvarez, the son of the CFE director, and Julia Abdalá Lemus, Bartlett's partner, has accumulated properties in Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, and Tulum. These acquisitions, totaling nearly 164 hectares, are situated at strategic and exclusive points along the route of the Maya Train, a flagship project of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Government.

The properties were purchased between 2011 and 2019, a period during which Bartlett Díaz served as a senator for the PT, an ally of Morena, and also during his current tenure at the CFE. The acquisitions have significantly increased the wealth of the Bartlett family, with connections to former PRI public officials, a party to which Manuel Bartlett Díaz once belonged.

One such official, Borge Angulo, is currently serving time in prison in Morelos for crimes committed within public service, including illicit use of power, embezzlement, organized crime, and operating with resources of illicit origin.

In 2019, when Bartlett assumed the directorship of CFE under López Obrador, Julia Abdalá Lemus acquired a luxury apartment in the La Privada condominium, an exclusive residential area in Tulum. The apartment, valued at two million 581 thousand 498 pesos, was purchased two years before the government began construction of the nearby Jaguar Park.

Despite the President's portrayal of the park as a protected natural area for the safeguarding of the jaguar, local environmentalists have criticized it as a tourism plan that benefits wealthy individuals at the expense of the local ecosystem.