A huge gap of about forty kilometers splits the luxuriant vegetation of the Yucatan peninsula. Seen from the sky, this straight line of uprooted trees has become the emblem of opponents of Mayan Train megasitepresented by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“AMLO ”) as one of its flagship projects to fight against poverty. This scar in the jungle is located on the most controversial stretch of a 1,500-kilometer railway route linking five states in southeastern Mexico. The politico-legal standoff has only just begun in a region with ecological and archaeological treasures unique in the world.
Two bulldozers sit enthroned on the ground eroded by deforestation, west of the city of Playa del Carmen, tourist jewel of the state of Quintana Roo. “Suspend”, can we read on the posters that line these motionless diggers. A judge decreed, Monday, May 30, the stoppage of work on the fifth of the seven sections of the site.
A group of ecologists has lodged a complaint against the Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur) responsible for this pharaonic project. The plaintiffs allege “irreversible damage” on the biodiversity of the peninsula, the continent’s second largest forest lung after the Amazon. The judge agreed with them in the name of the “precautionary principle”, in the absence of a local environmental impact study.
In the midst of this desolate landscape, José Urbina, one of the plaintiffs, does not cry victory for all that: “We just won one round. » The 50-year-old diver has been exploring for more than twenty years the limestone subsoil of the peninsula, which hosts the largest network of underground rivers on the planet. The day after the judgment, “AMLO” announced appeals to other courts. The center-left nationalist president had issued a decree in November 2021 which elevated the site to the rank of “national security”. Since then, he has taxed the plaintiffs with “pseudo-defenders of the environment in the pay of private interests”ensuring that the project will be completed ” no matter the cost “ end of 2023, one year before the end of his mandate.
Exceptional geological terrain
The train will cross the states of Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco and Yucatan, which are home to the remains of the Mayan civilization, which appeared more than two thousand years BC. This rail loop will connect the archaeological sites, far beyond the resorts of the Caribbean Sea. In the hinterland, poverty affects more than half of the population, excluded from the effects of mass tourism.
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