Archaeological zones are not theme parks

The electronic ticket printer in INAH's camper booth at the Tulum archaeological zone stopped on Monday. A state company that answers to the Defense Ministry now sells every entry to the ruins.

The instruction came from Margarito Molina Rendón, director of the INAH Quintana Roo Center, in a memo numbered 401.50.7-2026/888 addressed to archaeologist José Manuel Ochoa Rodríguez, who is responsible for the site, and to its two technical coordinators. Molina wrote that INAH would not stop selling tickets, but that it would do so only at Grupo Mundo Maya windows.

For a visitor, the change looks administrative. One line, one payment, 80 pesos for Mexicans from Monday to Saturday and 165 for foreign visitors. For the people who staff the site, and for the union that represents them, the question is who now stands between the ticket and the institute legally charged with protecting what the ticket buys.

The memo that shut the ticket camper

Molina's memo told the site's public servants that they were obliged to comply with the presidential decree of July 17 and to apply the unified payment of fees through Grupo Mundo Maya at its points of sale. Printing and selling electronic tickets from the INAH camper booth was suspended as of Monday, July 27.

The union published the memo the same day, alongside its own statement to the public.

Three fees folded into one at the Tulum archaeological zone

The decree was published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on July 17 and took effect on July 20, with a validity that runs through the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years. It sets access tariffs for Parque del Jaguar and grants fiscal credits against the fees owed for the protected natural areas and the monument zone inside it.

Under that scheme, Mexicans enter Parque del Jaguar free and foreign visitors pay 100 pesos. Anyone who also wants to walk into Parque Nacional Tulum and the archaeological zone pays a single unified amount on top: 80 pesos for Mexicans, 165 for foreigners. The 265 peso figure the federal government announced for foreign visitors is the sum of the two. The internal electric shuttle costs 20 pesos.

Sundays remain free for Mexicans, and residents of the municipality of Tulum enter at no cost. Minors, seniors, pensioners, students, teachers, accredited tour guides and members of nearby Indigenous communities keep their exemptions.

President Claudia Sheinbaum presented the package on July 17 at the mañanera held at the Tulum airport, describing the 80 peso rate as equivalent to what the site charged in 2018 and 2019. Until the decree, reaching the ruins meant paying three separate collectors: the park operator, Conanp and INAH. That stacking is what generated most of the complaints.

"Archaeological zones are not theme parks"

José Enrique Vidal Dzul Tuyub, secretary general of the national executive committee of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Secretaría de Cultura, framed the handover as something larger than a change of cashier.

"Today we face one of the subtlest and most dangerous threats to our historical memory. The silent privatization of our past."

In the statement, the union argues that under the language of modernization and tourism infrastructure, the management of archaeological zones is being handed to commercial corporations, violating the Constitution and stripping INAH of its mandate. Archaeological sites, it says, are inalienable vestiges belonging to the people of Mexico, not to the balance sheets of state transport or service companies. The union called on the public to take part in the analysis and defense of cultural heritage.

The argument is not new. In August 2025, the same union denounced that GAFSACOMM had taken control of the Tulum box office while the National Guard patrolled the site, and then asked the president to intervene.

A state company that already runs AIFA and the Maya Train

GAFSACOMM is the Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos Olmeca-Maya-Mexica, a state company sectorized under the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional and now operating commercially as Grupo Mundo Maya. It already administers Felipe Ángeles International Airport and the Maya Train, and it has managed Parque del Jaguar alongside Conanp since the park opened.

Tulum is the third most visited archaeological zone in the country, behind Teotihuacán and Chichén Itzá. Dzul Tuyub has estimated the site generates as much as 350 million pesos a year, revenue that goes to the federal treasury and is then distributed across more than 187 archaeological zones and 126 museums on an INAH budget of a little over 3 billion pesos.

Cottom sees reinforcement, not a sale

Bolfy Cottom, an anthropologist and jurist who specializes in cultural heritage law, read the decree and reached a different conclusion. He does not see a direct attempt to privatize the archaeological zone. He sees the federal government strengthening a state company with a military profile, one already running the country's newest airport and its newest railway, so that it can bring more tourism to the park through fiscal stimulus and credits.

What he does flag is a clause giving GAFSACOMM the authority to provide "cultural services," and the question that follows: whether the company would then be substituting for INAH.

Days earlier, the same union welcomed the cheaper ticket

On July 20, three days after the decree appeared and a week before the memo, Dzul Tuyub told the newspaper 24 Horas Quintana Roo that the federal decisions pointed in the right direction for the destination, though the effect would be gradual because tour operators had already sold packages months in advance. He objects to who collects the money, not to the amount.

The last time this dispute flared, INAH and the Secretaría de Cultura answered publicly. Their position in August 2025 was that the tickets sold by Grupo Mundo Maya had been purchased from INAH beforehand, that the arrangement did not replace the functions of institute personnel, that exemption policies stayed in force regardless of the point of sale, and that claims of harm to workers' rights lacked foundation. Neither institution nor Grupo Mundo Maya had responded publicly to Monday's statement as of Tuesday.

The union says the letters it sent to INAH director general Joel Omar Vázquez Herrera last year went unanswered. The decree it is contesting stays in force until the end of the 2027 fiscal year.

Should INAH collect the money at its own archaeological sites, or does a single unified booth serve visitors better? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.