I'm glad folks like it. I still regret that deception was used to obtain the money for this venture when we have so many other more pressing priorities being neglected, such as the Madera walkway, the PIERS (all of them), the roads (most of them), the existing green areas that already are poorly maintained. Really there is almost an endless list of higher priorities and age-old problems that remain neglected. Locals are disgusted at the neglect and decay that Zihuatanejo finds itself in under the current city administration. So it is doubly insulting to the great majority of us that this project was built with the money that was destined for a real park much more urgently needed than this embellished walkway beside a drainage canal that oftentimes is described not entirely incorrectly as an open sewer.

Calling the walkway a park is an insult to anyone who's actually seen a real park, IMHO.

We've avoided walking there on our way from La Madera to La Comer for the reasons you list, and have instead walked on the road on the other side of the canal. On our last visit in September we found that road virtually impassible on foot, due to large puddles, dead toads, dogshit and strewn garbage. We reluctantly now walk in the "park".
I can't believe that the population of any town in the US, Canada or Europe would stand for getting screwed by incompetent and corrupt politicians such as seems to be happening down there.

There was a recent incident where two men riding bikes were arrested, beaten, taken to jail, brought before a judge and fined, all for getting off the dangerously narrow and busy street with their bikes and taking what USED TO BE an alternative way to transit that length of road. The road has been made narrower in parts and water drainage has once again been an afterthought, if contemplated at all.

I'm glad folks like it. I still regret that deception was used to obtain the money for this venture when we have so many other more pressing priorities being neglected, such as the Madera walkway, the PIERS (all of them), the roads (most of them), the existing green areas that already are poorly maintained. Really there is almost an endless list of higher priorities and age-old problems that remain neglected. Locals are disgusted at the neglect and decay that Zihuatanejo finds itself in under the current city administration. So it is doubly insulting to the great majority of us that this project was built with the money that was destined for a real park much more urgently needed than this embellished walkway beside a drainage canal that oftentimes is described not entirely incorrectly as an open sewer.

Calling the walkway a park is an insult to anyone who's actually seen a real park, IMHO.

What is el Parque Lineal?

It's the 19 million peso boondoggle of our illustrious mayor. A "public work project" designed to make most of its budget disappear without a trace, some of which is now being used in illegal campaigning by one of the local candidates for mayor, with the help of some foreigners who think they're helping schoolchildren.

For several years one of our local ecological groups known by its acronym ROGAZ had been calling for the land around Las Salinas Lagoon to be designated as a public park that included a drainage feature to allow easier drainage of the rainwater so the adjacent lands wouldn't flood as much as they currently do. The group had some wonderful detailed blueprints made up and after years of lobbying finally got considerable public support, so much that finally the local and state governments gave their public support to the project, although there had peviously been some shenanigans by both governments that had resulted in an influential well connected person who doesn't live here somehow getting title to lands whose titles were questionable and had been in conflict for years. It's not supposed to be possible to get public title to land gained from the sea, such as the lagoon and its adjacent areas are.

Then last year the state's local representative for tax collecting (currently a mayoral pre-candidate for the PRD) solicited the federal government and miraculously got 19 million pesos in funding awarded for the Parque Ecológico "La Boquita" project. We were all of course ecstatic to see this long-wanted project finally moving forward.

But there was a hitch. As I mentioned before there are some title disputes regarding the land around the lagoon. This in spite of the fact that several years ago Governor Aguirre supposedly signed a legal document expropriating the land by means of the state's Protur office. However, it turns out that was all a show, and somehow an influential political insider gained control of some of the land. So because there were ongoing legal claims regarding title of the land, the land could neither be expropriated nor bought.

The local state tax collector and the local municipal administration knew all this long before ever soliciting the 19 million pesos from the municipal government. They had no plan of ever seeing any of that money spent on an ecological park adjacent to Las Salinas Lagoon.

The local administration had just finished remodeling Plaza Kioto at a cost that was never made public but rumored to have been budgeted at around 3 million pesos, an incredible price for such a tiny piece of land and for such minimal work beyond removing some beautiful flowering shade trees, adding lighting, and placing a dozen park benches around a cement walkway that no one has ever used, though many of the park benches have since been removed and some of them placed in Zihuatanejo's main waterfront plaza after many folks joked Plaza Kioto had more benches than the town's main plaza, which was true.

The local administration was on a roll. The current mayoral pre-candidate for the PRI was at that time working for the municipal government and "winning" local public contracts for his cement company. What conflict of interest? This is GUERRERO! If the former Governor of Guerrero Zeferino Torreblanca could get away with "awarding" his own construction company contracts for shoddy public work projects then certainly local governments could do the same among their own members, especially when the local cement company guy with the public office had "donated" so much to the current mayor's campaign when he was running for mayor. He had to get his money back and make a profit. That's how crony-capitalism works, isn't it?

So the local administration took the 19 million pesos and said that since technically it had to be used for a park, though it couldn't be used for land under legal dispute, they just happened to have a plan. They would build a "park" alongside the canal from Plaza Kioto down to the CEUSJIC school, a little less than 2 km long but only about 10-to-15 meters wide. Though many locals fought against and severely criticized this project as a waste of scarce resources and of dubious priority, the government went ahead with the project and recently Governor Aguirre was here for the "official" inauguration.

According to local construction experts no more than 9 million pesos could possibly have been spent on the project, which is already deteriorating due to lack of maintenance. Leaving quite a bit of its 19 million peso budget unaccounted for by the cement company owner who as a local public administrator oversaw the project and who stepped down from public office to launch his campaign to become the PRI's mayoral candidate before the actual completion of the so-called park.

Local advocate groups for public transparency and citizens have asked for an accounting of this and other public projects with no success. Yet in the recent Segundo Informe the mayor of course touted the Parque Lineal as one of his great achievements, along with the 30 million pesos that was never spent on rebuilding the municipal pier.

So, like the Partenon, we have another "monument to corruption". This one is called El Parque Lineal.

And it is worth mentioning that bikes have now been banned from the "park".

While it may indeed be an improvement to the area, someone still probably belongs in jail. Instead they're running for another public office.

But when I see what we now have for a pier due to the short-sightedness of the local government I feel like screaming in rage and weeping for Zihuatanejo. We deserve better than this. This isn't an "accident". The collapse of the pier was long foreseen.

But hey, we have the Parque Lineal, right?