Rafa Marín placed Maya communities at the center of a national sovereignty assembly in Tulum, held for the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, and closed with the declaration that in Mexico the people decide.
The Informative Assembly in Defense of National Sovereignty gathered militants and supporters of the Fourth Transformation around the date the United Nations has marked every August 9 since 1994. Sovereignty, Marín told the crowd, means that Mexico keeps the capacity to decide over its territory, its resources, its institutions, and the course of the nation.
The speech carries weight beyond the plaza. Marín, a founder of Morena in Quintana Roo, registered in June for the party's internal process to head the state Coordination for the Defense of the Transformation and National Sovereignty, and the assemblies he has led since then have become a steady political tour across the state. For Tulum readers, the gathering is a data point in a season that will only get louder: the movement that governs the country, the state, and the municipality is choosing the figures who will carry it forward, and it is doing so plaza by plaza.
The choice of date did part of the work. In a municipality where Maya ejidos and communities surround the tourist corridor, the observance gave the assembly its frame, and Marín granted the Maya people the leading role in his message, presenting the original communities as holders of the identity that sovereignty protects.
The sovereignty assembly in Tulum, weeks into a statewide tour
The Tulum stop belongs to a series announced on June 27 in Cancún, where Marín appeared alongside federal deputy Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar and Gerardo Rodríguez, the Labor Party's state affiliation coordinator, to present a municipality-by-municipality plan of informative assemblies across Quintana Roo, described by its promoters as part of a national effort.
The format has since been repeated in Chetumal's Fovissste neighborhood, in the ejido of Kantunilkín, in Cancún's Región 102, and in Playa del Carmen, where Marín recalled that his ties to the state go back 39 years to his business beginnings in Cancún. Organizers describe the meetings as spaces to inform and to listen. They also run alongside the internal contest that regional outlets cite when they describe Marín simply as the aspirant.
"Do not lie, do not steal, and do not betray the people"
In Tulum, the central stretch of the message was a defense of the Fourth Transformation's record. Marín traced the project from the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and repeated the movement's founding pledge, "do not lie, do not steal, and do not betray the people," as the standard he says still governs it.
The evidence he offered was programmatic. Social programs, scholarships for students, and support for producers and rural communities appeared in the speech as proof, in his telling, that development under the Transformation is reaching families directly, and as the measure by which it should be judged.
Marín ties the Tren Maya to development with dignity
The economic case reached for projects with weight on this coast. Marín named the Tren Maya, the connectivity of the southeast, and the growth of foreign direct investment as parts of a single strategy. That strategy, he said, does not seek to isolate Mexico. It seeks to deal with other nations from a position of dignity and defense of the national interest.
The train he cited runs through Tulum itself, with a station linked to the airport that opened south of town in December 2023, and the argument that openness and sovereignty can coexist has particular resonance in a municipality built on international visitors and foreign capital.
From infrastructure, the message turned to the countryside. Marín claimed for campesinos, milpa farmers, Maya beekeepers, and artisan women the role of guardians of the country's identity and its sovereignty, the passage most directly addressed to the communities the August 9 observance honors.
Warnings about disinformation and open backing for Sheinbaum
The combative stretch arrived near the close. Marín warned of disinformation campaigns directed against the Transformation movement and asked supporters to stay organized and attentive. The answer to those campaigns, he argued, has to be information, truth, and citizen participation.
His backing for President Sheinbaum was explicit, in line with earlier stops on the tour where he has leaned on the president's own foreign policy formula of collaboration yes, subordination no. In Tulum, he compressed the idea into a single phrase. "Mexico is nobody's piñata," he told the crowd.
He closed with a call to honor the memory of the original peoples and with the line he offered as the summary of the day. "In Mexico, the people decide."
The series was announced as a run through the state's municipalities, and nothing in Tulum suggested a pause. Marín left with the instruction he has repeated at stop after stop, to stay organized, while the internal process that put him on the road in June keeps framing every assembly that follows.
What does the defense of national sovereignty mean for daily life in Tulum and its Maya communities? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.