A 200-million-peso (US $10.5-million) ranch owned by former Veracruz governor Javier Duarte will become a research center.

It will be a place where scientists from Mexico and abroad can gather and generate new ideas, said the head of the National Science and Technology Council (Conacyt) yesterday at the ranch called El Faunito in Fortín de las Flores.

“Scientific public outreach will be a priority,” said Enrique Cabrero Mendoza at a ceremony in which the state government officially handed over the ex-governor’s property.

The five-hectare property will be managed by Conacyt and the state Institute of Ecology (Inecol).

Governor Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares explained that their work will focus mainly on basic ecology and agro-ecology, particularly in coffee production.

The governor explained that the ranch will also house a botanical garden where the state’s endemic cloud forest plant species will be showcased.

“A dark history of corruption ends today . . . ” he said. “All the excesses a bad government is capable of materialized at El Faunito . . . not only in buildings like the ones behind me,” he said of the 15-bedroom property and its gardens and two tennis courts, “but also in parties, excesses, wine, alcohol; a moral and ethical disaster where the government lost all its limits.”