One of Mexico's most notorious prisons begins a new chapter this weekend as a Pacific Ocean getaway after a makeover aimed at bringing in tourists to the former penal colony.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday evening opened the Islas Marias Tourist Center, bidding to turn the decades-old federal prison in the Islas Marias archipelago into an environmental attraction and place for history lovers.
"This is tourism for excursions, to explore, to live with nature," Lopez Obrador said this week. "To recreate history, it's something exceptional, extraordinary."
