It is not surprising that the first district judge in Yucatan, Adrián Fernando Novelo Pérez, has ordered a provisional suspension of the construction of section 5, southern section, of the Mayan Train. This section does not have an environmental impact statement, which is required by law. We also know that the change in the project, which was originally to be built on the median of the Cancun-Tulum highway, but which is now advancing on a parallel route, has created new and important environmental risks. What is surprising is that the government has persisted in logging and building without complying with the law.
President López Obrador tried to avoid injunctions against his infrastructure projects with his “decree” of November 22, 2021, which declared them “priority and/or strategic for national development.” In his morning talk that day, he explained that the “agreement” sought to “expedite bureaucratic procedures so that the works do not stop,” but he acknowledged that he was also trying to prevent the trials that had suspended them on several occasions: “Ah, but the protection falls in one of those courts where if we skewer it we lose and if we don’t skewer it too, and well, we’re not done”.
One of the biggest obsessions of the president is to finish the works in the times that he himself has set. That is why he inaugurated the Felipe Ángeles International Airport when it was not finished. For the Mayan Train he has established a deadline with no more support than his own will: “In December of next year we are going to inaugurate the Mayan Train -he said on January 25 of this 2022–, despite the regrets, although put obstacles in our way. In addition, we are specialists in jumping obstacles”.
This unnecessary rush has led to some of the most damaging decisions on the Mayan Train. This is the reason why an executive project was not prepared that would have made it possible to detect problems in advance and resolve them. It is also due to her the decision to change the project on the road, which had an elevated part over Playa del Carmen, for a new line next to the road. It is also the explanation that the government has not presented an environmental impact statement on this section 5, as it did in sections 1 to 3.
A district judge is not a specialist who can define whether the new section 5 route is ecologically acceptable or not. This requires the work of the specialists who prepare the environmental impact statement. The responsibility of the judge is to apply the law, and this requires that a project of this magnitude have this study before work begins. That demonstration should have covered the entire railway project, but the government preferred to present partial documents, in part because the first sections were easier to approve, since a right of way had already existed since the times of Porfirio Díaz. Today, however, the resistance of the authorities to comply with the law, and to prepare and publicize a demonstration for section 5, which is already being built, reveals that there is environmental damage that the government wants to hide.
It remains to be seen if the judge orders a definitive suspension. The government has put enormous pressure on judges who have acted independently, even ordering them to be investigated. But the subject should not even be the subject of discussion. The law mandates an environmental impact statement, and this does not exist.
racing car
Just on Sunday, April 17, the president sent the initiative to “nationalize” lithium, which passed like a fireball through both houses of Congress. Yesterday it was published in the Official Gazette. It’s clear where the president’s priorities lie. What if he had put the same effort to get medicines?
“The preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge; It’s common sense.” ronald reagan
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