A labor strike at Hotel Los Arcos in La Paz has now lasted more than 17 years, leaving a deteriorating building on the city’s most photographed waterfront. The dispute has outlived its original owner, outlived some of the striking workers, and now sits tangled in federal court appeals with no resolution date. Paul Valdiviezo Pérez, president of COPARMEX (the national employers’ confederation) in Baja California Sur, said the conflict became so politicized that demolition and sale to a new investor may be the only realistic path forward.
Hotel Los Arcos La Paz Strike Began as a Political Fight in 2009
The Hotel Los Arcos opened in 1954 and for decades operated as one of La Paz’s landmark waterfront hotels. The property sits on Álvaro Obregón, the boulevard that runs along the Malecón boardwalk, surrounded by restaurants, boutique hotels, and the shops that line La Paz’s tourism corridor. At its peak, the hotel offered more than 100 rooms and served as a gathering point for both locals and visitors.
The strike began around 2009 when the hotel’s owner, Luis Coppola Joffroy, was serving as a senator for the PAN (National Action Party). Valdiviezo said the labor dispute became entangled with partisan politics after a left-wing government took power in Baja California Sur. “I think it was more a matter of suspicion, a political resentment, than anything that could have been negotiated,” he told reporters. That resentment, he said, caused the situation to “escalate to the point where it got out of hand.”
Coppola Joffroy died during the course of the dispute. His family, Valdiviezo noted, has “other interests” and has not prioritized resolving the hotel’s status. Some of the original striking workers have also died in the intervening years. The legal case has moved from state jurisdiction to federal courts, where both sides are pursuing appeals and judicial reviews.
Omar Zavala, the state Secretary of Labor, confirmed that his office and the local Conciliation Board have tried repeatedly to broker a deal. “Rulings have been issued, but the parties involved have rights and must exhaust their legal procedures,” Zavala said. He added that offers have been made and some partially accepted, but no final agreement has been reached. “I believe that this conflict is very close to being resolved,” he said. That phrase, by multiple accounts, has been used before in prior years.
17 Years of Vacancy Created a Malecón Eyesore
The practical result of the standoff is visible to anyone walking the Malecón. The Hotel Los Arcos building sits empty and aging in the middle of a stretch that La Paz has worked to develop as a tourism anchor. The Malecón runs roughly five kilometers along the waterfront, drawing joggers, cyclists, and tourists to its sculpture installations, seafood stands, and sunset views. The shuttered hotel breaks that stretch with a fenced, decaying structure.
Valdiviezo argued that the building’s condition damages La Paz’s image as a tourism destination. He said the most viable option now is demolition, followed by sale to an investor who can build something new on the site. But that step, he stressed, requires “significant political support” and goodwill from all parties, including the Coppola family’s heirs and the remaining workers or their representatives.
He also pointed to a broader pattern in La Paz’s Esterito neighborhood, near the hotel’s location, where inheritance disputes and contested wills have discouraged outside investment. “Either sell it or let it rot” is the prevailing attitude in some of those cases, he said. The hotel dispute fits that pattern: a valuable piece of waterfront property locked in a legal and political stalemate that no single party can break.
La Paz has roughly 350,000 residents and a growing community of foreign homeowners, many of whom hold property through fideicomisos (the bank trusts required for foreigners to own land within 50 kilometers of the coast). The city’s tourism economy depends heavily on the waterfront corridor where the hotel sits. Nearby properties include Hotel Perla, also on the Malecón, and several restaurants and bars popular with both locals and the expat community concentrated in the Centro Histórico and El Mogote areas.
COPARMEX has called on the state government to take a more active role, suggesting that expropriation could be one mechanism to clear the legal deadlock. Valdiviezo said the government may be “the most interested” party in finding a resolution given the negative publicity. Still, he acknowledged that without cooperation from the heirs and the labor side, a deal remains unlikely.
The federal court proceedings have no published timeline for a final ruling. Zavala said his office remains open to facilitating dialogue between the parties at any time. The original reporting was published by El Sudcaliforniano.