On the official Mayan Train website, a countdown marks only a couple of hours until what is already considered the flagship infrastructure project of the Government of President López Obrador begins. The start of train operations will be partial and only on the first completed section (which includes from Campeche to the city of Cancún, in the State of Quintana Roo). In addition, the tickets to go up are at a price that ranges from 1,166 Mexican pesos to 1,862 (68 and 108 dollars), different from what was initially proposed and which would be about 60 pesos (about four dollars) for national visitors. Not only the tickets, the budget allocated to the infrastructure has also increased, multiplying almost threefold, according to forecasts at the closing of the work. With a completely public cost, the expense is close to 500,000 million pesos.
The president moved this Thursday to the place where he will launch this mega-project, still involved in several disputes over the resources and natural areas through which the route passes and after the effects that the construction work has had on the territorial dynamics and of several surrounding communities.
One of the most anticipated days by the current Federal Administration has arrived. With the inauguration this Friday, the president also begins to navigate the last months of his Government, and fulfills what he announced in 2018 when he assured that the Mayan Train would connect “one of the most culturally important regions in the world.”
The inaugural trip that the president will carry out in the early hours of this Friday and after his usual morning conference, will begin in San Francisco de Campeche and will continue to Mérida, Yucatán, to end in Cancún, according to General Óscar David Lozano, the in charge of the work. It will be until Saturday the 16th when the first train with passengers will begin its journey at 7:00 a.m. and there will be a second train that will leave both points on that route—Campeche and Cancún—at 11:00 a.m. On January 15, a third train will be added to complete three schedules: 7:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. And on January 31, the route from Palenque to Cancún will be operating, at those same three times. “The inauguration of the entire rail transport system will take place until February 29,” said Lozano. The convoy that has been presented in preliminary security tests is of a standard type and has capacity for 230 passengers.
At the 14 stations of the first route, the train will stop at each one of them and there will be the possibility for users to purchase their tickets at each stop as well. In total there are 473 kilometers of the entire system distributed in three States: Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, of a project that includes more than 1,500 kilometers. Those 14 stations out of 34 will initially open, but even in that partial premiere not everything is ready; In section 4 the works are not yet completed, and in Chichén Itza and Cancún the finishing and roof stage has begun. The sections that are inaugurated have been, from the beginning, the simplest to prepare and build. Unlike section 5, which crosses the complex soil where the cenotes are formed and which has changed its route three times, or section 7 that cuts through the Calakmul reserve. It is planned by the president that the inauguration of section 5, 6 and 7 will be at the end of February 2024.
Resistance to the megawork
There are already hundreds of civil organizations that bring together activists, citizens, academics, artists, and other members of society, such as Sélvame del Tren, Selva Maya SOS, La Selva Salva, Voces Unidas Puerto Morelos, sustainable Puerto Morelos, Voto por el Clima , The Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA), or the global campaign El Sur Resiste, which continue in open opposition to the train. More than 25 protections are active promoted by these organizations and by citizens who denounce ecocide and indifference to the imposition of tourist work that has begun to transform not only the landscape but the social dynamics of the surrounding communities.
Just a couple of days before, one of those organizations, the global campaign The South Resists, sent President López Obrador and public opinion the following questions: “We people ask ourselves: What are you going to inaugurate? The deforestation of the peninsula? The destruction of the cenotes? The greatest destruction of cultures? The increase in femicides, disappearances of people, crime and insecurity?” they published in a statement this Wednesday.
Groups of search mothers in Cancun, for example, have reported for a couple of months an increase in the disappearance of people in areas close to where citizens who have moved from states such as Tabasco, Veracruz and the State of Mexico—to mention just a few of the places of origin—towards the different construction sections of the train.
Furthermore, people, activists and organizations have denounced the militarization of all the areas surrounding the sections, because they are in the hands of the Ministry of Defense (Sedena), an example of this is the recently inaugurated Tulum military airport, located in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto and which had an investment of 3.2 billion pesos, which according to activists “is functioning as a military base.”
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