The Maya train inaugurated in Campeche, Mexico, on December 15, 2023, in an image released by the Mexican presidency (Mexican Presidency/AFP/Handout)
A first section of the Maya Train, President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s controversial tourism project, was inaugurated Friday in the Yucatán Peninsula with the promise of developing one of the poorest regions of Mexico, despite opposition from defenders of the ‘environment.
The first section of this colossal project connects over 473 km the colonial city of Campeche and the seaside resort of Cancun, the country’s main tourist destination with 34 million foreign visitors between January and October, according to official figures.
In total, the seven sections of the project will cover 1,554 km around the peninsula, a region rich in flora, fauna and Mayan archaeological sites such as Chichén Itza. The others should be operational in the first quarter of 2024.
“It’s a gigantic project,” welcomed President Lopez Obrador, stressing that the work had been completed “in record time” five years before the end of his mandate (2018-2024).
This inauguration comes six months before the presidential election, for which, according to polls, the left is favored with the candidacy of the former mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum, who will face the former opposition senator Xochitl Galvez.
The Maya train is “a strategic work which represents the rebirth of deep Mexico”, welcomed Claudia Sheinbaum on
Tickets were put on sale. A Cancun-Merida trip (300 km) costs between 735 and 1,173.50 pesos (or between 43 and 68 dollars).
The government had initially planned a budget of nearly nine billion dollars for this project, which began five years ago, but the Mexican Competitiveness Institute (IMCO) estimates that it has risen to $30 billion.
– “The first time in 70 years” –
Dozens of people participated in the ceremony in Campeche, where the train will be open to the public on Saturday.
(AFP/Archives/Rodrigo Oropeza)
“It allows us to go to Campeche to continue our studies,” argued Lisandro Belén, originally from the municipality of Calkini, explaining that many of his classmates “have no means of transportation.”
Coming from the State of Mexico (center), neighboring the capital, Cresencio Rosales was moved. “This is the first time in 70 years that I have seen a train inaugurated,” he said.
The administration of the train was entrusted to the Secretariat (Ministry) of Defense by the president who is counting on the army to fight corruption in the financing of these major projects which also include a new airport inaugurated in 2022 in the north of Mexico.
The train, whose carriages were built by the French company Alstom at its factory in central Mexico, Ciudad Sahagun, represents one of the main infrastructure projects of Mr. Lopez Obrador’s government.
Mexico’s first left-wing president says the project, which in a second phase will include freight wagons, will boost the economy of the country’s southeast, a region lagging behind the industrialized north, on the border of UNITED STATES.
Before the inauguration, the president said the project, which will combine electric and biodiesel trains, will have a multiplier effect on the rest of Mexico, noting that several inputs were manufactured locally.
The train route includes parts of the paradise Riviera Maya, which encompasses a jungle region considered the second largest forest reserve in Latin America after the Amazon, as well as underground rivers and cenotes, networks of wells underground freshwater reservoirs of great historical and tourist value.
(AFP/Archives/RODRIGO OROPEZA)
Environmentalists say the project damages the ecosystem and threatens “ecocide.” They took legal action, which temporarily suspended the work, carried out by the army and private companies, on a 130 km section linking Cancun to Tulum.
Greenpeace and other NGOs have notably warned that the train threatens to contaminate cenotes and underground rivers and affect flora and fauna.
President Lopez Obrador responded to these accusations with a decree declaring that this infrastructure work was a matter of “national security”, and the construction work resumed.
He also promised to plant millions of trees in the affected areas, while the Animal Politico site revealed in February that 3.4 million trees had been cut down.
© 2023 AFP
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