Mexico City, Nov 7 (AP) Mexico's government laid out hurricane reconstruction plans on Tuesday for the resort of Acapulco that seem to give as much priority to building military barracks as re-opening hotels.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he hoped owners would be able to reopen as many as 35 of the resort's 377 hotels by March or April, following the destruction of Hurricane Otis, the Category 5 storm that smashed into the city on October 25.

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But his administration plans to build 38 new barracks in the resort for the quasi-military National Guard, in addition to five that already exist there. Each barracks will house 250 Guard troopers, who are recruited from or trained by the army.

That would mean between 9,500 and 10,000 Guard troops would be stationed permanently in the resort, about the same number sent there following the hurricane, which caused at least 48 deaths.

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In the days following the storm's October 25 landfall, Guard troops proved incapable of stopping days of ransacking that stripped every large- and medium-sized store in Acapulco to the walls.

Lopez Obrador has promised a barracks in every neighbourhood of the resort, which has also been hit by nearly 20 years of drug cartel violence. The president has given the armed forces almost exclusive control of the fight against the cartels and has proposed placing the National Guard under army command.

Lopez Obrador has refused to consider government loans or grants to the hotels, most of which had windows or walls blown out. Many were reduced to their skeletal concrete or steel frames.

Instead, he said the government would pay half the interest on reconstruction loans from private banks. But with no cash flow, many hotel owners doubt they can qualify for big private bank loans.

Lopez Obrador has also refused to earmark specific funds in the 2024 budget for reconstruction efforts, a move that has led to demonstrations by a protest caravan of Acapulco residents who drove to Mexico City this week.

Evodio Velazquez, an opposition party member and former mayor of Acapulco, said the demonstrators were demanding a rebuilding programme roughly four times the size of the USD 3.4 billion plan the president announced last week.

“We want dignified treatment for Acapulco in the federal budget,” Velazquez said on Monday.

The protesters camped out Tuesday in tents outside Mexico City's National Palace, where López Obrador lives and works.

Much of the USD 3.4 billion aid programme will go to making payments of USD 2,000 - USD 3,000 per damaged home, setting up temporary job programmes and providing free electricity for residents for several months. The government is also handing out 250,000 appliances like refrigerators and fans and providing weekly food packages for each family.

Some stores in Acapulco began tentatively re-opening this week, but they reportedly stocked only basic goods and let in only 20 customers at a time.

The federal civil defence agency tallied 220,000 homes that were damaged by the hurricane, which ripped the tin roofs off thousands of homes. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)