The statue of Poseidon in the surf just off the coast of Progreso, Yucatán, has been “closed” by Mexico’s Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa).
The 3-meter-tall statue of the “king of the seas” was erected at El Playón beach in May to promote tourism, but Profepa announced Thursday that the Progreso City Council completed the project without obtaining environmental impact authorization from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat).
“Profepa inspectors in the entity have imposed the temporary total closure of the work,” the agency said in a statement.
Neither the statement nor media reports mentioned exactly how one “closes” a huge statue that is located in the water 5 to 15 meters off the beach, depending on the tide level.
All Profepa said was that its office in Yucatán state “will continue with administrative procedures to determine the appropriate actions.” An authorization from Semarnat was necessary because the structure was installed in marine waters off the coast.
A photo of the statue with the word “CANCELADO” in big, red font “stamped” over it ran in the newspaper El Financiero, which also used the cheeky headline “Chaac 1, Poseidon 0.”
That was in reference to the hullabaloo that followed a fake event listing on Facebook calling for the statue of Poseidon, a god from ancient Greek mythology, to be torn down because it was an affront to the Maya god of rain, Chaac.
More than 6,000 people said they would attend the destruction on July 15, an event that never occurred. The listing did, however, spark an avalanche of social media posts.
Many pointed out that the recent onslaught of heavy storms in the Yucatán Peninsula had not coincidentally occurred since the Poseidon statue was installed in late May — because an angry Chaac was unleashing his wrath. Chaac is said to strike the clouds with his lighting ax to produce thunder and rainstorms.
Many of the posts went viral, and there was a lot of newspaper and TV coverage.
Although the social media eruption was mostly tongue-in-cheek, there was actually a formal complaint filed on behalf of an Indigenous person in the area, according to La Cadera de Eva.
The digital site reported that the civil association Indigenous Strategic Litigation filed a petition to have the statue removed because it “violates the human right to a healthy environment.” The suit cites an environmental law “that says that our environment cannot be modified.”
With reports from Reforma and El Financiero
