Tulum went from 400 cameras to more than 1,850, and businesses bought the equipment

Tulum's security camera network has grown from 400 to more than 1,850, the municipal government said Tuesday, and Mayor Diego Castañón Trejo put the fall in homicides at up to 80 percent.

Both figures emerged from a visit to the municipal command and control center, known as the C2, where the mayor appeared with public security secretary Edgar Aguilar and municipal treasurer Raziel Ek Cruz. "We have brought homicide rates down by as much as 80 percent," the mayor said, crediting his public security secretariat and what he called citizen participation alongside the other security institutions working in the municipality. He did not say which period the figure covers or what it was measured against.

The cameras did not arrive on a municipal purchase order. Castañón credited the growth to business owners meeting a requirement attached to their operating licenses, which by his own account puts much of the network in private hands and its images in a public control room. For a business in Tulum, a camera is now a condition of staying open. For everyone else, it is a monitoring system that has more than quadrupled while nothing has been published about who reviews the footage.

Tulum security cameras went from 400 to more than 1,850

The municipality's own figures track the climb, and they move fast.

In August 2024, months after the airport opened, Castañón announced that 500 cameras and a new monitoring center would be installed. At his weekly conference in September 2025, he put the number of cameras connected to the C2 and to the state C5 in Cancún at between 320 and 350. By the end of January 2026, he was citing more than 700 business cameras linked to both centers, a figure he repeated in April.

Tuesday's number measures something else. More than 1,850 refers to active cameras across the municipality, not just business cameras, and the municipality has not published a breakdown of how many belong to the city and how many to private establishments.

A revenue law, not a police rule, makes the cameras mandatory

The obligation does not fall under a securities regulation. It appears in the municipal revenue law, and Castañón said in April that the law requires that no establishment obtain its operating license without cameras properly connected to the monitoring system, according to La Jornada Maya.

Verification is routine. Operational personnel carry tablets that confirm in real time whether a camera is linked, the mayor said in the same account. When one is not, the business is called on to fix it, and if it does not, the municipal enforcement office acts under the rules in force.

Cost came up once. In September 2025, Castañón said the requirement carried no extra charge for taxpayers beyond the purchase of the equipment itself, and that public security staff handles the installation and the connection so the systems integrate into the municipal network.

Ek Cruz used Tuesday's visit to urge owners who have not yet installed the systems to comply with their license requirements. He also reminded residents that the 2026 fiscal incentives campaign closes on September 29. The announcement did not specify which discounts are still available.

Federal data credits the national strategy for the drop

The decline the mayor described does appear in federal figures. The federal government has been crediting its own strategy for it.

At President Claudia Sheinbaum's July 17 morning conference, held at Tulum's airport, the head of the national public security secretariat, Marcela Figueroa Franco, reported that the daily average of intentional homicides in Quintana Roo fell by 85 percent between September 2024 and June 2026, from 2 per day to 0.3.

She said Tulum had gone two consecutive months, May and June, without a single intentional homicide, that July stood at zero at that point, and that the municipality had averaged 0.27 homicides a day when the current federal administration began. She attributed the state's results to the national security strategy and reported a 15 percent decline in high-impact crimes such as extortion and kidnapping between 2025 and 2026.

Castañón has used a different number before. In April, at his weekly conference, he reported an 83 percent drop in homicides for the first quarter of 2026, compared with the same quarter in 2024 and 2025. Tuesday's 80 percent came with no comparison period attached.

Three killings reported in August

The run of months at zero did not last the summer.

Regional outlets reported three killings in the municipality during August. Cambio 22 reported a man shot dead near the La Veleta neighborhood on the night of August 5. Por Esto reported a second man killed by gunfire on August 9 in the Carlos Joaquín settlement, and a taxi driver found dead inside his vehicle at kilometer 12.5 of the Tulum to Cobá road on August 22.

Press reports are not the official count. The national public security secretariat publishes its municipal breakdown month by month, and the August figures for Tulum had not been released at the time of publication.

Who watches the footage, and for how long?

Neither Tuesday's announcement nor the earlier ones say. There is no published rule on how long images from a private establishment are stored, who inside the municipality may review them, whether the state C5 in Cancún keeps its own copy, or how a business owner or a customer would find out.

What the municipality has described is operational. Cameras are installed as a licensing condition, security personnel connect them, and inspectors verify the link on a tablet.

Two deadlines now face business owners. One is the license that depends on a working connection. The other is the fiscal incentives window, which closes on September 29. The next independent reading of the security claim arrives with the federal secretariat's monthly breakdown, which will show whether August broke the run of months Tulum spent at zero.

For the wider picture, our report on how Tulum reinforced public security before the holiday season covers the patrol side of the same strategy, our piece on the tourist police unit looks at the force built for visitors, and our earlier explainer on the Blindaje Tulum program traces where this strategy started.

Does a camera on every storefront change how safe Tulum feels to you? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.