In an Hermosillo hotel event room packed with Sonoran business people last week, state tourism official Luis Nunez touted Rocky Point as Sonora’s “principal tourist destination.”
“Today, Puerto Peñasco generates [$450 million] annually, thanks to the 2,270,000 tourists that visit it every year,” he added.
The city suffered due to the Great Recession, and again during a period of intense violence around 2013. Since then, Rocky Point’s Mayor Kiko Munro said signs of growth abound.
“From 2017 to date, 751 additional condominiums have been built beyond the previous inventory,” he said. “Through 2019, 410 new hotel rooms and 899 houses.”
Munro cited a study that found that the city could support significantly more hotel space.
The mayor also said social peace has been achieved since the city’s more turbulent times, but unmentioned during the hour of presentations was the recent discovery of 52 bodies in mass graves near town. A group of volunteer searchers also claimed that they were chased away from the site by a group of armed men.
Munro said, since the vast majority of the remains were fully skeletonized, it’s likely the crimes date back years. The city has had one of the lower murder rates among major Sonoran cities in recent years, according to federal statistics.
“If Puerto Peñasco weren’t safe, we wouldn’t have those growth rates,” he said, asked about the grave discovery after the event.
