Daniel Chávez is a businessman close to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador . Not only has he accompanied him at key moments, such as the dinner at the White House organized by Donald Trump in 2020, but he has also participated, either as an advisor or benefactor, in two of the Mexican president’s flagship projects: the Mayan Train and the construction of a CFE photovoltaic plant in Sonora, the largest in Latin America.
The founder of Grupo Vidanta is part of the business advisory council, where some of the richest and most powerful men in the country participate, such as Carlos Slim Helú and Carlos Hanks González, with whom the Tabasco president holds regular meetings, every three or four months. The last one occurred in November 2021 and Daniel Chávez was in it.
Although the businessman is not the only one who has been close to the president during the first three years of his administration, the relationship between the two characters was placed in the public eye this week, after the president announced that the links he has with their adviser also intertwine their families. The eldest son of the president, José Ramón López Beltrán , works as a legal advisor at KEI Partners , a company created by Érika Chávez and Iván Chávez, sons of Daniel Chávez .
The revelation made by López Obrador occurs amid media pressure to clarify the origin of the income of his eldest son, who, according to an investigation by Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) and Latinus , owns two residences to the north of Houston, Texas, with a commercial value close to one million dollars.
Last Friday, the president asked his son to explain “what he lives for” and on Sunday López Beltrán reported that his income comes from his work as a legal advisor in the United States and assured that he has no interference in his father’s administration. This Monday, López Obrador confirmed that his son works in the company created by the children of Chávez and assured that there is no conflict of interest derived from the relationship between the two families.
Who is Daniel Chavez Moran?
Daniel Chávez is part of its advisory council of businessmen, he is an honorary supervisor on the Mayan Train and in mid-2021 he donated a 2,000-hectare piece of land in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, for the construction of a CFE solar park. The president assures that “he does not charge” and that there is “no business relationship”. “He does not have any business in the government, there is no interest problem.”
Chávez is an unusual businessman. He has long hair, is outgoing and those who know him say that he feels more comfortable wearing a white robe than a suit and tie. He created an empire out of nothing: he grew up in a house with adobe walls, without water and without light; He studied civil engineering at the University of Guadalajara and when he was only 21 years old he began his professional career. It began with the construction of lodging houses in Mazatlán, Sinaloa and in 1974 it inaugurated its first hotel called Paraíso Mazatlán.
Today, his company is one of the largest hotel groups in the country: it operates 30 tourist developments, golf courses, theme parks, an airport, construction companies, and bills between 15,000 and 17,000 million pesos (mp) annually.
When López Obrador assumed the presidency of Mexico in 2018, he invited him to be part of his business advisory council. Since then, Chávez and the Tabasco politician have exchanged compliments and have coincided in official events.
The businessman from Delicias, Chihuahua, accompanied López Obrador, along with a dozen other Mexican businessmen, to the dinner that his then American counterpart Donald Trump offered at the White House in 2020. The central theme of the meeting was the relocation of the investment in the region and several of the Mexican businessmen who attended the dinner presented the investment plans they had in North America at the time.
Grupo Vidanta’s investment portfolio is one of the largest in the sector: in the last five years, the company with developments such as a theme park in Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, in partnership with the Canadian Cirque du Soleil, or the launch of a chain of luxury cruise ships that will start operations in April.
Daniel Chávez, honorary supervisor of the Mayan Train
The company arrived in the Caribbean in 2008, when it began to focus more on attracting foreign tourism, building hotels under brands such as The Bliss, The Grand Bliss and Grand Luxxe in the Riviera Maya, Riviera Nayarit and Los Cabos. Now it sells 90% to foreigners.
The arrival of international tourists to Mexico grew by about 10% per year before the pandemic, but the economic impact they generated in the country was still low. Chávez opted to create tourist attractions in the destinations and also made an effort to facilitate access to his complexes.
Grupo Vidanta has a private airport within its complex in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, and when López Obrador presented a project to build a train that will connect, the Mexican businessman showed his enthusiasm. “The Mayan train is a great idea that has to be realized in the short term because it will help increase the country’s tourist income,” said the president of Grupo Vidanta, Daniel Chávez in October 2018.
The Mexican businessman, who then said publicly that he was willing to invest in the project, estimated that in its first year of operation, the work would help double the foreign exchange of the sector, which was then around 21,000 million dollars.
Two years later, in June 2020, López Obrador appointed Chávez as his representative in supervising the Mayan Train works. “I am going to have a representative, with a businessman who, honorably, without charging anything, just because he wants to help, is going to represent me in supervision: Daniel Chávez,” López Obrador said during the start-up ceremony.
Benefactor of the CFE
4,000 kilometers from the Riviera Maya, is Puerto Peñasco, another of the investment poles of the Mexican businessman. There is the complex with the largest territorial extension of Grupo Vidanta – it measures twice the size of the island of Manhattan, says the company itself on the complex’s website – and has its own airspace, the Mar De Cortés International Airport, which offers guests immediate access to its resort hotels, The Grand Mayan and Mayan Palace.
This same place will also be the headquarters of the new photovoltaic plant of the CFE, which will satisfy the demand for electrical energy in northwestern Mexico; a region that uses fossil fuels to generate electricity or that imports it from the United States.
The plant, which will have a capacity of 1,000 MW, will be built on a 2,000-hectare plot of land donated by Chávez.
Governor Alfonso Durazo Montaño said last December that in mid-2021 he presented the final project to the president and that a commitment was made to finish it before December 31, 2023.
“Where were we going to get that land in Puerto Peñasco, which has a (privileged) location to connect with Baja California… The truth is that meeting businessmen with such generosity is extraordinary,” Durazo said in mid-2021.
