INAH issued a public bulletin on Thursday rejecting a union claim that it handed the Tulum archaeological zone to Grupo Mundo Maya, three days after its own ticket booth stopped selling.
The change took effect Monday, July 27. From that day, the camper booth where the institute printed and sold electronic tickets at the entrance to the walled city stopped issuing them. Visitors now buy at windows run by Grupo Mundo Maya, the state company that operates Parque del Jaguar.
Everyone who walks into the most visited archaeological site in Quintana Roo now pays a state company attached to the Defense Ministry before reaching a single INAH turnstile. The Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Secretaría de Cultura reads that as a transfer of public function. The institute reads it as a change of cashier.
The camper booth stopped printing tickets on July 27
The order came through an internal notice, oficio 401.50.7-2026/888, signed by Margarito Molina Rendón, director of the INAH center in Quintana Roo. It was addressed to José Manuel Ochoa Rodríguez, who is responsible for the archaeological site, and to technical coordinators José Elías Caamal Pool and Isauro Tuyub Mex.
The notice suspended the printing and electronic sale of tickets at the site's camper booth as of that Monday. It also drew the line the institute has repeated since. INAH does not stop selling tickets. It sells them only at Grupo Mundo Maya's points of sale. Molina Rendón grounded the instruction in the presidential decree published July 17.
80 pesos, 165 pesos
That decree, part of the Plan Tulum Renace package the federal government announced from the Tulum airport on July 17, took effect July 20 and runs through the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years.
It sets a single payment covering both Parque Nacional Tulum and the archaeological monuments zone. Mexican visitors pay 80 pesos, Monday through Saturday. Foreign visitors pay 165. Residents of the Tulum municipality receive a benefit equal to the full amount and pay nothing. Sundays remain free for Mexican nationals at the national park. Entry to Parque del Jaguar itself is free for nationals and costs 100 pesos for foreign visitors, with the electric shuttle priced separately at 20 pesos.
The 265-peso figure that circulated after the July 17 announcement does not contradict the 165. It is the sum. A foreign visitor doing the full circuit pays 100 pesos for Parque del Jaguar plus the 165-peso unified charge for the other two areas. One who skips the park pays 165.
For someone arriving at the gate, the practical difference is narrow. The price is the one set on July 20; the exemptions written into the decree for minors, students, teachers, seniors, pensioners and accredited guides remain in place, and the ticket still admits the holder to the walled city. What changed is the counter.
"A silent privatization," the culture union says
The union went public before INAH did. In a statement addressed to public opinion and signed by its secretary general, José Enrique Vidal Dzul Tuyub, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Secretaría de Cultura described the shift as a silent privatization of cultural heritage and said the administration of access had ended up in Grupo Mundo Maya's hands.
The statement warned against converting Maya remains into theme parks subordinate to profitability, and called for a public debate over what the union describes as inalienable property of the nation. Those quotations are translated from the Spanish original.
One sentence about the Tulum archaeological zone reads two ways
INAH's response arrived Thursday under the institute's #INAHINFORMA banner, and it made three points. There was no gift to Grupo Mundo Maya and no transfer of site management. The agreements establish unified access rates and a single collection mechanism, for which INAH sells entry tickets to Grupo Mundo Maya to simplify visitor access. The institute's legal powers over research, conservation, protection, administration, and operation of the Tulum monuments zone are untouched, with no privatization of archaeological heritage in any sense.
The middle point is where the argument turns slippery. In Spanish, that phrasing can be read as the institute selling tickets to the company, which then resells them, or as the institute selling tickets through the company's windows. The internal notice from Molina Rendón supports the second reading. The bulletin does not say which it means.
Nor does it answer the question the union actually raised: who stands between a visitor and the ruins at the moment of payment.
Nothing published so far sets out the commercial terms. Neither the bulletin nor the internal notice states what Grupo Mundo Maya receives for operating the windows, how the unified charge is divided among the institutions involved, or what happens to the arrangement when the decree's fiscal window closes.
Union leaders want the order reviewed and revoked
Dzul Tuyub said the union will seek a meeting with INAH authorities to request a review and possible revocation of the measure. No date has been announced, and the institute's bulletin makes no mention of the request.
Grupo Mundo Maya has not publicly responded to the union's accusation.
The decree runs through the end of the 2027 fiscal year. Until the union gets its meeting or the institute publishes the terms, the only thing a visitor can verify at the gate is whose name is on the window.
Should ticket sales at the Tulum archaeological zone go back to INAH, or does a single unified window serve visitors better? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.