Within three months, tourists could soon be setting foot on the Islas Marías (or Marietas), the group of four islands located 60 miles off the coast of Nayarit, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on a visit to the archipelago this week.
More than two years ago, just a few months after taking office, the president ordered the closure of the 114-year-old penal colony on the islands. Over the next few months, around 8,000 inmates were transported to other federal penitentiaries throughout Mexico.
With the project to reopen the islands as a cultural and tourist center now reaching its conclusion, this week Lopez Obrador appointed Mexican Navy Captain Jesús Salvador de Olaguibel Domínguez as the new “governor” of the Islas Marías.
A key component of the tourism plan is the “Muros de Agua” cultural center, named for Durango writer José Revueltas, who, in his early 20s, spent two prison terms on the islands between 1932 and 1935.
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