travelling-blogger

comments

Video footage of a young woman being led away in handcuffs - allegedly because she was sunbathing on a private beach reserved for tourists - has gone viral in Mexico and sparked a heated debate.

The 26-year-old woman, Laura Alicia Caldero, claims she was sitting under a palm tree on the Mamitas Beach in Playa del Carmen when armed police forcibly removed her.

According to friends of Caldero, guards were preventing locals from going onto the sandy stretch, which is located in the tourist area of Quintana Roo in eastern Mexico.

Lady in bikini arrested... for sitting under a palm tree

The woman's friends said she was arrested when she refused to pay a fine of about £70

Video footage of a woman arrested on a beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico has caused outrage

Her friend Marc Paez Chacon, 27, said: 'We told the guards you were not allowed to privatise the beach and went and sat under the shade of a palm tree.

'But then they suddenly turned up and told us that we had to pay for the use of the palm tree. 

'We thought it was a joke, but when we refused police turned up.

'They told us we would have to pay a fine and move on, but Laura refused and ended up being arrested.'

Laura Alicia Caldero, 26, says she was arrested for suntanning on a beach reserved for paying foreigners

The beach, located in tourist-friendly Quintana Roo, is most popular among those from Europe and the US

The beach is one of the most popular among tourists from Europe and the United States, and the video footage of the young woman's arrest has caused widespread outrage.

'They took me because I was sitting under palm tree,' Caldero, clad in a light blue bikini and being led away by police, explains in the video.

'The palm tree is apparently not for the public although it was a public beach.'

Someone off camera then asks her where she is, to which she replies: 'In Mamitas, I was under a palm tree.'

According to the woman, police told her and some friends that they were required to pay for use of a palm tree

Online commentators included Gabriel Hernandez, who wrote: 'Our beaches are for Yankees and Europeans, get used to it.'

And another named Leviathan added: 'According to the law, you can't privatise a beach. She should issue a complaint.'

Underneath Pedro had added: 'An opportunist who rents palm trees there probably called the police.'

And Adriana Salez Hernandez added: 'Had she been a foreign tourist, they wouldn't have touched her.'

However, police insist that the woman was removed because she had 'assaulted a group of private guards'

Video commentators are visibly outraged, saying that had she been foreign, she wouldn't have been bothered

Police confirmed the arrest of the young woman, who was with three male friends.

While they had all opted to pay a 1,600-peso fine (£70), the young woman had refused, and was then arrested.

But Juan Carlos Pereira Escudero, secretary of the Playa del Carmen Council, denied that the local was taken because she refused to pay for the shade from sitting under a palm tree.

He said the young woman 'assaulted a group of private guards'.