Business owners across Tulum say municipal, state and federal officials are now demanding the protection payments once collected by organized crime, deepening a tourism crisis already worsened by a historic sargassum season.
The accounts come from hoteliers, restaurant operators, small shopkeepers and visitors, and they describe something that has hardened into a routine. An inspector arrives, finds a violation, and names a price. A traffic officer stops a driver and produces a card reader. The payment ends the problem. No receipt. No paperwork.
What makes this different from the corruption Tulum has lived with for years is who is doing the asking. Merchants say the cartel cobro de piso that once bled them has receded. What replaced it, they say, is a demand that arrives with a badge, an inspection order and, increasingly, a bank transfer.
Organized crime stepped back. The paperwork stepped in.
Business leaders describe a municipality where the cost of staying open has been folded into the regulatory process itself. Fines are the instrument. The violation is the leverage.
"They are practically killing Tulum. Tulum is dying because there is no political will," said a business association leader who asked not to be identified, citing fear of reprisals. "The cobro de piso now has to be paid to the authorities, and as a businessman you have to watch out for all of them, municipal, state and federal."
He described payments ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 pesos, triggered by findings that are difficult to contest and, in his telling, sometimes manufactured. Water quality is a recurring pressure point. The supply is provided by the state, and it routinely fails chlorination testing.
"I have cases where inspectors show up to check restaurants. A few days ago the inspector arrives, runs the test, and it turns out he was already carrying the result with him," he said.
Asked directly whether the test had been altered, he answered: "That is correct."
The Tulum extortion pattern reaches the smallest businesses
The pressure is not reserved for hotels and large operators. Owners of small establishments say they pay monthly quotas to avoid closure.
Israel, who runs a vegan taquería, described inspectors who search until they find something.
"The inspector looks for something on you, and he finds it, he finds it. You see them kneeling on the floor with a flashlight, searching the corner, under the stove, looking for whatever," he said. "The law is being used as an instrument of extortion, so that inspectors can tell you: either you take the legal route that costs you 50,000, or you take this other one that costs you 5,000 a month."
That arithmetic is the point. For a small restaurant, the illegal option is the affordable one.
A traffic stop, a card reader, and 21,000 pesos
Tourists are not exempt. Steve and Claudia, a couple from England, were stopped by Tulum traffic officers after renting a motorcycle and having dinner in the hotel zone near Parque del Jaguar.
They had two beers before eating, then walked. On the way back they encountered a checkpoint.
"There was a young woman sitting in the back of her vehicle with the trunk open, and she was crying with her hands over her face," Steve recalled. "We could not understand why she was crying, and we soon realized they must have been doing to them the same thing they were doing to us."
Steve was given a breathalyzer test. The reading did not exceed 0.2 milligrams per liter. Officers told him that at that level he would have to be detained for 48 hours.
Tulum's traffic code says otherwise. Chapter XI, Article 67 sets the threshold at 0.8 grams of alcohol per liter of blood or 0.4 milligrams per liter of exhaled air, double the reading Steve registered. The code also states that the corresponding fine is 30 times the minimum wage and that the driver must be turned over to the Public Ministry.
None of that happened. Officers told him the fine was 21,000 pesos, already discounted, and produced a bank card terminal.
"They had a machine, a card terminal, and we had to take out our phones and try to make it work, but it did not work," Steve said. "Then they put us on the phone on speaker with a guy with an American accent. He said we would have to make a transfer from Revolut. So they made us make the transfer from Revolut for the full amount."
The voice on the phone added a warning: if they cancelled the transfer after leaving, they would not make it out of the airport.
"So we made the payment and then they let us go. There was no receipt, no paperwork, you just leave. We left, and we never said anything, because we were embarrassed, because we thought we had been played," he said.
Both were careful to say they do not hate Mexico or Mexicans. They were equally clear about what they will do next.
"We would never come back to Mexico. Never ever. And we would never ever recommend anyone go to Tulum," Steve said. "It was on the second day of our holiday and it ruined it completely."
Health inspections and the question of who is inspecting
Over recent months, sanitary inspections of hotels, restaurants and other businesses have intensified. Owners say inspectors comb through establishments "looking for a failure, but we all know they come for money."
There is also confusion about jurisdiction, and that confusion is useful to whoever exploits it. The federal health regulator, Cofepris, has stated that it does not operate a municipal delegation in Quintana Roo, and that sanitary surveillance corresponds to the state's Directorate for Protection against Sanitary Risks, known as DPRIS.
Merchants say the inspections that concern them are coordinated by a state sanitary official assigned to Tulum. They allege that after inspectors identify irregularities, particularly around water quality and mandatory documentation, some offer to make the sanction disappear in exchange for recurring payments. The Tulum Times is not naming the official. There is no public record of a judicial ruling or a final administrative sanction against him, and the allegations rest on testimony from business owners.
Five years of complaints, and a mayor's promise
Eugenio Barbachano, a Tulum council member and president of the Cabildo's Anticorruption Commission, said the body has received complaints from hotels, restaurants and shops about alleged extortion by sanitary inspectors over the past five years. He urged those affected to file formal complaints and gather evidence so authorities can investigate.
Mayor Diego Castañón Trejo has acknowledged the problem publicly. At a June 23 press conference, he said inspectors were already being removed.
"We have been hearing on social media that many inspectors have been extorting people. Right now we have two who are the first to go, for that same reason," he said. "We are going to do the same in the traffic department, and our secretary is going to help us with that. If something happens, they go. I am not going to allow that anymore."
Business owners say the cases have not stopped.
A destination absorbing several crises at once
The extortion complaints land on a town already under strain. Sargassum is arriving on the beaches in volumes residents describe as unlike anything they have seen, driving visitors away from the coastline that sells the destination. Residents have also linked the drop in tourism to the presence of the Mexican Army, which administers Parque del Jaguar at the Tulum Archaeological Zone, and have demanded its withdrawal.
Layered on top is the one variable a destination cannot recover quickly. Steve and Claudia will not return, and they will tell others not to come. Multiply that by every traveler who paid a card reader at a checkpoint and left without a receipt.
What happens next depends on whether the removals announced by the mayor extend beyond individual officers, and whether business owners are willing to file the formal complaints the Anticorruption Commission says it needs. For now, fear is winning. Most of those describing what is happening in Tulum will only do so without their names attached.
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