Mexico’s Mayan tourist train sprung into action on Friday, promising prosperity for one of the country’s poorest regions but tainted by allegations of environmental destruction.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hailed his landmark project as a “magnum opus” built in “record time” ahead of the inauguration in which he boarded one of its green and white carriages for the train’s first run between the colonial city of Campeche and the Caribbean resort of Cancun.
Cancun is Mexico’s top tourist destination and welcomed 34 million foreign visitors between January and October, according to official figures.
The section of the railway inaugurated on Friday is the first of seven sections that will cover a total of 1,554 kilometers (965 miles) around the Yucatan Peninsula, an area rich in flora, fauna and archaeological remains. The rest will be operational in the first quarter of 2024.
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The route includes parts of the Mayan Riviera, which covers an area of jungle considered the second most important forest reserve in Latin America after the Amazon, as well as cenotes — freshwater caves — and underground rivers.
Activists and environmental groups said the project caused massive damage to the region’s ecosystem, calling it “ecocide” and won a temporary halt to the work through legal challenges.
But López Obrador issued a decree declaring infrastructure projects a matter of “national security” and construction resumed.
Greenpeace and other NGOs have warned that the train threatens to pollute cenotes and especially underground rivers.
They also point to the risk of the ground collapsing due to the weight of the structure, in addition to affecting flora and fauna.
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The Mexican president called the protesters “pseudo-environmentalists” and defended the project, promising to plant millions of trees in the area.
The train, whose cars were built by French company Alstom in Mexico, is one of the major infrastructure projects of Lopez Obrador’s government, along with an oil refinery in Tabasco, a new airport serving the capital and a transoceanic corridor that charges as an alternative. in the Panama Canal.
López Obrador said the second phase of the rail project would include freight cars and vowed it would lead to a boom in the country’s southeast, which has long lagged behind the more industrialized north.
The inauguration comes six months before a presidential election in which the left is the favorite to stay in power, pitting former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum against former opposition senator Xochitl Galvez.
Source: AFP