Tren Maya

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History

Designed in service of the tourism industry, the Tren Maya is an intercity railway line stretching 950 miles around the Yucatan Peninsula, in a rough loop around the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo, connecting beach resorts with ancient Mayan sites. In total, the project entails the development of seven different tracks and 21 stations, and has been hailed by the government as an economic “detonator” for Mexico’s southeast, a historically poor and marginalized region.[1]

Environmental Impact

"Workers clear trees for the construction of section 4 of the new Mayan Train route, near Nuevo Xcan, Mexico on March 3, 2022. Credit: Jose Luis Gonzalez—Reuters"[2]

Intensive land development in the "Riviera Maya" region of the Yucatan Peninsula has led to increased contamination of groundwater systems that eventually discharge into Caribbean coastal ecosystems. The increased land development is largely attributed to the tourist industry.[3] The train project will increase the chances of water contamination adding to already increased levels of pollutants. Over the past two decades fresh water sources have decreased by 59 percent.[4]

Among the environmental impacts that the Mayan Train could cause include deforestation, noise pollution and the affectation of water reserves. The construction of the Mayan Train could result in the felling of 2.500 hectares of humid and dry forests, representing approximately 8 million 736 thousand trees. Mexico occupies one of the first places in deforestation worldwide, noise pollution can have an impact on ecosystems and the fauna that inhabits them, affecting the ability of animals to listen to their predators and causing interference in their mating. The Yucatan Peninsula region is an important water reserve, especially of underground origin, which increases concern.[5]


Many environmental groups say that the Obrador administration has rushed through environmental impact assessment studies:

"Inadequate soil and geophysical studies fail to consider the fragility of the Yucatan Peninsula's karst and soil, resulting in elevated risks of infrastructure sinking and fuel transportation accidents," said the statement by the groups. They made the submission under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).
On Tuesday, Lopez Obrador said the project had been deemed a matter of national security, which could allow development to proceed despite a series of legal injunctions stalling construction.[6]


Cenotes

Outside of the university, the railroad has caused a flare-up of emotion from local engineers and biologists, as well as U.S. scientists. “We should all worry about building a train near a cenote,” says Jorge Manuel Mezquita Garma, an engineer from Mexico’s National Council of Engineers. The geology of the Yucatan is laced with limestone at the surface. Its permeable nature means it can easily break down; when limestone caves in, a cenote is born. Cenotes are revered by the Maya and are considered spiritual places.

Northwestern University professor and environmental scientist, Patricia Beadows, a cenote and cave explorer, has spent decades studying the Yucatan’s aquifer and underground network of cenotes. She fears that the structural integrity of the limestone cannot withstand the railroad and the trains running on it, and that collapse is not a matter of if, but when. “A collapse will happen,” Beadows says.[7]

Tram Five

"A house stands on the edge of forest which has been cleared for construction of section 5 of the new Mayan Train route, in Solidaridad, Quintana Roo, Mexico on Nov. 6, 2022. Jose Luis Gonzalez—Reuters"[8]

The construction of the train threatens the longest known underground river[9] in the world, flowing through the Sac Aktun cave system, by potentially causing cave collapses and contamination from steel piles and diesel.[10] Furthermore, deforestation has been happening in this section of construction to clear land for the railway.[11] The Mexican government has admitted that 300,000 trees have been cut down in section five alone.[12]

And that’s a fraction of the likely real damage; observers estimate that the real number is 9 million. “Of course, it depends on your definition of tree,” says Rodrigo Medellín, a researcher at the Institute of Ecology at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “The soil there is nutrient-poor, plus they’re smack bang in the middle of hurricane territory, so they don’t grow as high or as wide as in other areas, but at 10-15 meters they’re already significantly higher than the botanical definition. Perhaps you’d get to 300,000 if you only count trees measuring at least 25 meters in height. But it’s categorically false.”[13]


The cave systems house the largest aquifer in the world flowing under the Yucatan Peninsula and is a water source for about 5 million people.[14]

Beyond the environmental impacts the construction of the train system in this area will likely cause destruction to ancient Mayan archeological sites.

Tram Six

Maya Forests

Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System

Indigenous Communities

... the railroad is ripping through jungles and farmland. All of this is transpiring in the shadows of a region that has a painful history of colonialism and conquest, which has deeply affected Maya communities. “Right now, we are experiencing a new invasion,” says Alvaro Mena, a Maya leader of a seed-keeping and territorial defense group, Ka Kuxtal. “This is a historic moment in the Yucatan Peninsula. It is one of the worst [atrocities] against the Mayan People.”

According to a study examining the territorial rights of the 14,900,000 Indigenous people in Mexico, there have been three other recent cases of dispossession and displacement: the Mining Law of 2005, the energy reform of 2013, and the National Water Law in 2015. Nearly 120 years after the Maya Wars, or “Caste Wars,” ended, the Mexican government is rolling full steam ahead with its 1,550 km rail line that will carry passengers and cargo throughout 5 states at speeds ranging from 120-160 km per hour. The train has six different lines with a projected 15-18 stops, and a missing Environmental Impact Assessment.[15]


Effects on Agriculture

“The project doesn’t have a clear line of development,” said Juan Rodriguez, a Mayan journalist who covers the Maya Train. “In the long term, we fear the project won’t leave any benefit for the community.” He explained that the economy in the very southern part of Mexico is primarily based on agriculture. When the train starts offering other jobs involving railroad construction and tourism, the focus of the region will move away from agriculture, and farming will suffer.

In fact, it already has. Juan Manuel Jaerez Campos, a representative of an agricultural cooperative in the Chetumal state, explained that 50 percent of sugarcane workers – around 1,400 people – switched jobs to help construct the Maya Train. Since the Chetumal state produces 90 percent of the sugarcane grown in Mexico, this loss of farmers slowed down the growing and harvesting process. The railroad route also lengthened the time and distance of how farmers get to and from their fields, further slowing harvest, Campos said.[16]

Cost of Project

Over the past five years the train's cost has increased substantially; in 2019 the budget was 8 billion USD increasing to 14 billion USD in 2022 and up to 20 billion USD in 2023.[17]

López Obrador

Obrador is Mexico's current president and was anticipated to be one of the country's most left-wing administrations and part of this was his commitment to environmental causes. In an interview[18] Obrador promised "not a single tree" would be cut down in the name of the Tren Maya project.[19] To date the government has admitted to felling 300,000 tress for the construction of the train in section 5 alone. Experts say that the true number is closer to 9 million trees.[20]

Military Collaboration

In April of 2023 Mexico's Chamber of Deputies passed legislation giving control over the construction of the Tren Maya to the Defense Ministry (Sedena.)[21]

Deputy Julieta Mejía, of the Citizens Movement (MC) party, opposed the reforms because it gives the military further control over public works projects.

“We cannot turn Sedena into the builder of Mexico,” she said. “They are going to give the armed forces total and indefinite control of the infrastructure projects in our country.”

Under President López Obrador, the military’s participation in public works and infrastructure projects has broadened. On Friday, the Lower House approved a reform to the Civil Aviation and Airport laws that allows the formation of a state-owned airline operated by Sedena. This followed another reform passed in February giving the military control over Mexican airspace.

Sedena will also oversee the construction of six hotels near the Maya Train route through the state-owned company Olmeca-Maya-México.[22]

Resistance to Construction

Mena thinks naming this train with the word Maya is wrong. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Maya other than territories that they are stealing,” he says. “It’s important to recognize that these Indigenous communities are disempowered and not able to confront this type of invasion because the social, economic, and political conditions prevent us from mobilizing. It is not easy for the outside world to recognize the resistance process taking place at the local community level.”[23]


https://schoolsforchiapas.org/why-we-oppose-the-mayan-train/

Jinko Solar

Chinese giant Jinko Solar is involved in disputes with Mayan communities in its attempt to build photovoltaic cell parks in Cuncunul and Valladolid. The constitutional challenge (amparo) filed by the communities halted the project (consisting of 313,140 panels over 246 hectares) until early January, when the federal courts cleared the way for it to proceed.[24]


Forced Relocations

But, while most Mayans I encountered across the state of Quintana Roo seemed initially supportive of the President’s signature project, after digging a little deeper, several admitted they had concerns. One couple, owners of a popular eatery, said many people were scared to voice any opposition because local politicians were López Obrador supporters. “To question is to ask for trouble,” they said. As small business owners, they said they feared reprisal in the form of extortion—on the rise in Quintana Roo—and sought to avoid making enemies of those in power.

One of Tulum’s most popular tourist attractions, a cenote park called Dos Ojos (“Two Eyes”), is managed by the Jacinto Pat community. Although the government agreed to divert the railway away from the main Dos Ojos cenotes, the new path will still pass over several other cenotes within the park.

“Do I personally want the Maya Train? No,” says one Jacinto Pat family figurehead, speaking anonymously out of concern for reprisal. “It will destroy the jungle, our home, and contaminate the cenotes, our life source.” But, he felt like he had no other choice. While the government has played down reports of forced evictions, insisting they were “consensual relocations” many families felt compelled to compromise to avoid a similar fate, he says. “And now we’ve taken the money, there’s nothing we can do.”

Deep inside Dos Ojos park, Gabriel Mazón is one of the few residents who refused to part with his portion of land. “I say this with all due respect: as a people, we have allowed ourselves to be bought,” he says. “But there is no support from indigenous people [for Maya Train]. If our ancestors could see what is being done in their name, they would die of sadness, knowing how they have been profaned, prostituted, and their culture and traditions used,” says Mazón. “We are little more than a brand or marketing slogan for the government. The people have already been paid off. There will be no more benefits. All we have left to wait for now is the invasion.”[25]

Sources

  1. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  2. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  3. ↑ Chris D. Metcalfe, Patricia A. Beddows, Gerardo Gold Bouchot, Tracy L. Metcalfe, Hongxia Li, Hanneke Van Lavieren, Contaminants in the coastal karst aquifer system along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Environmental Pollution, Volume 159, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 991-997, ISSN 0269-7491, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2010.11.031.
  4. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  5. ↑ https://latinamericanpost.com/43441-mayan-train-overshadowed-by-environmental-damage-and-impact-on-communities
  6. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/activists-say-mexico-not-enforcing-environmental-laws-related-mayan-train-2022-07-21/
  7. ↑ https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/train-maya-partitions-yucatan-peninsula-and-maya-peoples-each-other-and-their-lands
  8. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  9. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-environment-train/
  10. ↑ https://www.uw360.asia/the-destruction-of-sac-aktun-underwater-cave-by-the-tren-maya-project/
  11. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  12. ↑ https://fermoctezuma.news/2022/05/03/talaran-300-mil-arboles-para-construccion-del-tren-maya/
  13. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  14. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
  15. ↑ https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/train-maya-partitions-yucatan-peninsula-and-maya-peoples-each-other-and-their-lands
  16. ↑ https://climatechange.medill.northwestern.edu/maya-train-raises-questions-about-maya-land-people-and-rights/
  17. ↑ https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/train-maya-partitions-yucatan-peninsula-and-maya-peoples-each-other-and-their-lands
  18. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gLNPhCKIWg
  19. ↑ https://politica.expansion.mx/mexico/2022/04/21/amlo-aseguro-no-tirar-ningun-arbol-para-el-tren-maya
  20. ↑ https://www.heraldo.mx/protestan-y-evidencian-devastacion-por-tren-maya/
  21. ↑ https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/deputies-approve-defense-ministry-control-of-the-maya-train/
  22. ↑ https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/deputies-approve-defense-ministry-control-of-the-maya-train/
  23. ↑ https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/train-maya-partitions-yucatan-peninsula-and-maya-peoples-each-other-and-their-lands
  24. ↑ https://grain.org/en/article/6423-the-misnamed-mayan-train-multimodal-land-grabbing
  25. ↑ https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land/
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