The Jaguar Park spreads a living culture by uniting material heritage and tourism

Tulum, QR., The Jaguar Park, located in Tulum, links the Tulum-Tankah area of ​​archaeological monuments and the Museum of the Eastern Coast in a tourist environment. It is not restricted to the protection of nature, but to the dissemination of cultural heritage, he told The Day Margarito Molina, director of the INAH Quintana Roo Center.

Since September 2024, the Jaguar Park integrates the protected natural area of ​​Tulum, which is under the jurisdiction of the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas, and the Tulum-Tankah area, in charge of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). .

The space of 2,913 hectares is managed by the Olmeca-Maya-Mexica Airport, Railway, Auxiliary and Related Services Group (Gafsacomm), a company created by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), which in this place is in charge of transport in electric trucks visitors who arrive at the Mayan Train station and who want to go to the park, the museum, the archaeological zone or a viewpoint with 163 steps.

Molina maintained that with such an integrated infrastructure, which includes a Sedena hotel, The archaeological zone is the anchor of the entire Jaguar Park, the main attraction, in addition to the Museum of the Eastern Coast, which becomes a very attractive combination for tourists..

The anthropologist said that the museum is the most recent of the 1,250 that exist in Mexico. Our country is the second with the largest number of museums on the entire planet, and the one with the most in Latin America.

The museum has the particularity that it represents the archaeological region of the Eastern Coast and is an aorta that directly links the visitor with the archaeological zone, like a large introductory room for the site of Tulum, but at the same time expands the knowledge of that around.

The Eastern Coast is a region that was defined in the Late Postclassic, from 1200 to 1521, whose main characteristic is its architecture. There are about 30 archaeological sites that make up it, from Holbox, passing through Isla Mujeres, San Miguelito, El Rey, Xcalacoco, Xamanhá, Xcaret, Xelhá, Tulum and Muyil.

The great attraction of the Jaguar Park, Molina continued, They are the archaeological zone and the beaches, without neglecting the importance of the mangroves and the surrounding low jungle. Around there has been accelerated urban growth, such as in Playa del Carmen in the 90s and early this century..

The great challenge is that today The spaces and objects allow a dialogue with the local population, with the living culture and with visitors, both national and foreign; that they know that a people existed, because it is history, but that it is still alive.

Margarito Molina highlighted that for the INAH, “the most relevant thing is how material heritage, whether museum or archaeological, is linked to tourism to disseminate, exhibit and inform about a living culture.

Talking about the past of the Mayans is always fascinating, but also about the knowledge they have today about agriculture, about that relationship with nature.

The archaeologist concluded that many of the pre-Hispanic elements survive, such as the deities in the cornfields. It is fascinating what an archaeological museum and a Mayan resident of that important metropolis in the Mexican Caribbean have to say..