A Sinaloa lawmaker has proposed creating the world’s largest nudist beach in Navolato, a municipality with a coastline on the Gulf of California.

Serapio Vargas Ramírez, a state deputy for the Morena party, said late last week that the plan was to allow nudism on a 2.1-kilometer stretch of beach on the peninsula of Altata Bay. Altata is a popular beach getaway spot for residents of the state capital of Culiacán, but is less well-known among international tourists.

“We’re going to make a 2.1-kilometer nudist area, 100 meters longer than Zipolite,” Vargas said, referring to the nudist beach on the coast of Oaxaca.

Vargas told the Sinaloa Congress that the aim was to attract tourists from Europe and the United States.

The beach will be a “magnet for people from Sinaloa, Mexico, Europe and North America,” the lawmaker said in a video that circulated on social media last weekend.

Speaking on the proposed stretch of coastline after emerging from the water, Vargas said the beach would be called Playa de los Bichis, or Bichis Beach. Bichi means nude in Sinaloa slang.

“We are owners here of an area of more than four kilometers … right over there is the Bay [of Altata],” the Vargas said. “We’re going to make an avenue right here, at least 1000 meters long.”

The semi-clad lawmaker said he and his associates planned to create exclusive sections of the nudist beach for the gay community and people aged over 60.

“It’s not discrimination. The LGBT+ folks or those older than 60 could mix in the free areas or they could coexist in a special area for them,” he said.

Vargas said that municipal laws would have to be changed to allow creation of the nudist beach.

“We’re going to ask the Navolato council to allow nudism; nudism is to be able to walk without clothes, … nudity makes us all equal,” he said.

The deputy also proposed the construction of a one-kilometer-long beachfront avenue and the sale of coastal parcels of land. He rejected any suggestion that his proposal wasn’t serious.

“We already have the sea, we already have the beach, we already have the area to develop, we already have the bay and we have the expectation that a project like this will catapult Altata [to tourism success],” Vargas said.

If the proposed nudist beach were to be created it would be Mexico’s fifth after Zipolite, Bahía de Matanchén in Nayarit, Maruata in Michoacán and Playa del Secreto in Guerrero.

Asked about the proposal, Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, who also represents Morena, said he didn’t have an opinion but hoped Vargas’ idea was a joke.

With reports from ADN 40, El Universal, NVI Noticias and Los Noticieristas