An INAH archaeologist says tourism is winning over science at Tulum and Cobá

A researcher at Centro INAH Quintana Roo has accused the institute's leadership of putting tourism ahead of conservation science at the Tulum archaeological zone, at Cobá and at a new memorial park in Chetumal.

Jaime Garduño Argueta set out the accusations in a document dated August 31, which was reported on September 2 by 24 Horas Quintana Roo. He describes three interventions as falsehoods presented as heritage protection: a services area built against the perimeter wall at Tulum, a wooden staircase laid over the original steps of Nohoch Mul at Cobá, and the dismantling and relocation of 47 Maya structures to the Parque de la Memoria Balam Tun in Chetumal.

The three sites sit within the most-visited archaeological circuit in Quintana Roo, and two of them, Tulum and Cobá, are the day trips that fill tour vans from the Riviera Maya every morning. Whether the changes visitors now walk through are protection or damage is the question Garduño has put to the institute, and the third case is already in the hands of federal prosecutors.

A services area built against the wall of the Tulum archaeological zone

At Tulum, Garduño's objection is to a services zone constructed adjacent to the ancient perimeter wall, the stone enclosure that defines the walled city on its three landward sides. According to the researcher, the new infrastructure obstructs the view of the monument from the main entrance and severely affects the historical setting of one of the site's most representative architectural elements.

The wall is what a visitor first encounters on the walk-in from the ticket area, and it is the feature that distinguishes Tulum from most other Maya sites on the peninsula. Garduño's document does not describe the dimensions or the exact function of the services area, and INAH has not published a response to this specific point.

The Nohoch Mul staircase that ended a six-year closure

The Cobá case is the most visible of the three. On December 7, 2025, Culture Secretary Claudia Curiel de Icaza inaugurated a wooden staircase on Nohoch Mul, the 42-meter pyramid that is the tallest structure in the northern Maya area. INAH's bulletin on the opening described the staircase as built with regional woods, tzalam, mahogany, parota and chicozapote among them, at a cost of about five million pesos, constructed by ejidatarios from Noh Bec and approved by the institute's Consejo de Arqueología.

Climbing Nohoch Mul has been suspended since 2019 due to wear on the original steps from heavy tourist traffic. The staircase reopened the ascent after six years. INAH presented it as a measure that protects both visitors and the monument.

Garduño reads it differently. He argues that a modern structure placed over the original steps alters the monument and contradicts the consolidation criteria applied at Cobá since 1975, which he attributes to archaeologist Norberto González Crespo. In his account, the staircase is another example of tourism access being imposed on the authenticity and integrity of pre-Hispanic structures.

Both readings are on the record. The institute's position is that the wood protects the stone underneath it. The researcher's position is that nothing should be built on the stone at all.

Forty-seven monuments moved to a Chetumal park, and a complaint at the FGR

The most serious allegation concerns the Parque de la Memoria Balam Tun in Chetumal, a park built with Maya structures relocated from the path of the Tren Maya. According to Garduño, 47 monuments were dismantled and moved from areas near Francisco Villa, Juan Sarabia and Jesús González Ortega, localities west of the state capital. He maintains that the structures stood outside the train's direct route, were not under threat, and were stripped of their facades and reassembled with new fill.

That claim did not originate with Garduño. In July, the heritage protection commission of the national union of INAH research professors, the SNPICD-INAH, filed a criminal complaint with the Fiscalía General de la República over the same 47 monuments. Excélsior and Infobae reported that the complaint was lodged on July 7 and 8 and announced publicly on July 14. It asks prosecutors to establish whether the heritage was damaged and to determine the responsibility of INAH officials.

The complaint names Diego Prieto Hernández, the institute's former general director, along with Manuel Pérez Rivas, who directed the archaeological salvage for the Tren Maya, and Laura Ledesma Gallegos, current head of the Consejo de Arqueología. According to Infobae, the researchers asked for at least 26 officials to be investigated and listed six alleged offenses, including destruction of archaeological monuments, falsification of monuments, and improper exercise of public service.

Archaeologist Jesús Evaristo Sánchez, one of the complainants, told Excélsior that the 47 monuments were not only mutilated but destroyed, and that the leftover stones were used to build what he called false monuments. The researchers have demanded that INAH release the georeferences and registration records that would prove where each structure originally stood. As of the July reporting, the park had not opened to the public.

INAH answers that the Archaeology Council approved every project

The institute rejects the accusations. In its response to the July complaint, INAH stated that all work connected to the Chetumal park was approved by specialists of the Consejo de Arqueología, and that the relocations complied with Mexican regulations and international criteria for the treatment of archaeological heritage. The same council's approval appears in the institute's account of the Cobá staircase.

Garduño's document, as reported by 24 Horas Quintana Roo, does not carry a new institutional reply, and INAH had not issued a public response to the August 31 text at the time of publication.

None of the accusations has been tested. The FGR complaint is a request for investigation, and the offenses it lists are allegations by the complainants, not findings. The officials named have not been charged.

Garduño's demand for an outside review

The researcher has asked for an assessment by international heritage experts of the damage he alleges at the three sites, and for what he calls the restoration of scientific rigor in Mexican archaeology. His argument rests on a point that the union complaint also makes: the original context of a Maya monument, once altered or destroyed, cannot be recovered, so the dictámenes and procedures behind each decision should be made public before the next intervention rather than after.

For Tulum, the immediate consequence is that the wall visitors photograph on the way in is now part of a documented dispute inside the institute that manages the site. For Cobá, the staircase that reopened the climb in December is defended by the ministry that inaugurated it and challenged by a researcher on its own payroll.

The FGR complaint over the 47 monuments in Chetumal remains open, with no public timeline for a decision on whether to open a formal investigation.

Should the Tulum wall and the Nohoch Mul climb be adapted for visitors, or left exactly as archaeologists found them? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.