Mexico’s Mayan Train: Will it hurt those it’s meant to help?

Maria Moreno promised her mother she would always take care of their family home. After her parents died, Ms. Moreno and her husband painted the house’s walls gleaming white and planted a shady grove of coconut trees in the yard.

But the care that went into the home didn’t seem to matter to Mexico’s national tourism agency, Fonatur, when a representative told her last spring that it would need to be demolished. The government is making way for a massive infrastructure project called the Mayan Train, which it wants to build along the power lines that rise beside Ms. Moreno’s home in this steamy village about 170 miles west of Cancún.

The Mayan Train is a pet project of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who won the presidency on a populist ticket to create jobs and improve the lives of Mexico’s rural poor and Indigenous populations. But how the project has been carried out so far – with complaints of limited community consultations, incomplete environmental studies, and threats to displace many of the president’s most vulnerable supporters – has soured some voters against the president, including Ms. Moreno, who voted for him back in 2018.

“He has really deceived us,” says Ms. Moreno, who works as a nurse. “We were excited about change, but now things are going from bad to worse.” Ms. Moreno currently lives in nearby Campeche, but always planned to move back to her family’s home in retirement.

The Mayan Train is meant to extend around the Yucatan Peninsula in a roughly 950-mile loop that links tourism centers like the colonial city of Mérida and the hipster paradise of Tulum. Mr. López Obrador promotes the train as a way to reduce poverty in the Yucatan: The government estimates it will increase tourism revenue by 20% and create more than 1 million jobs.

Most of the train will run on existing tracks that need modernizing. The government plans to construct the rest on public and private land, which means eviction for some in Mexico’s Yucatan. The government, which broke ground on the project in 2020, would not provide specific numbers on how many households it will relocate, saying the estimate of homes that could be affected is constantly changing. But Kalycho Escoffié, a lawyer who assists families facing displacement, estimates more than 2,000 homes will be demolished to clear space for the train.

That’s hit at the hope some in Mexico felt in voting for Mr. López Obrador, who has built his personal brand on fighting for the little man and rejecting corruption. But Mr. López Obrador is convinced any resistance to the train won’t translate into a significant dip in support at the polls, says Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst whose podcast “Un Poco de Contexto” featured an episode about the Mayan Train.

“Construction started without securing the buy-in of Indigenous communities,” says Mr. Bravo. “Indigenous resistance to the project was never an issue [for this administration].”

Divided communities

The Mayan Train has become so contentious it’s divided some friends and family over how to address Mexico’s stark inequality.

The largely rural south has historically experienced higher rates of poverty and unemployment than the more industrialized north. And some take issue with the project’s very name, calling it an act of cultural appropriation, commercializing Mayan culture without including Indigenous communities in the plans.

Francisco Colle, a member of the Mayan community in the town of Hóctun, likens the president’s ambitious focus on infrastructure to the United States’ New Deal. He foresees construction jobs that will allow disadvantaged communities to put food on the table.

“Now a lot of rich people [in Mexico] are mad because they’re no longer getting a piece of the cake,” says Mr. Colle.

But others say it’s just another project dreamed up by the powerful, who will reap all the benefits. The train has backing from Mexican scion Carlos Slim, one of the richest people in the world.

“We’re living in the modern colonial era,” says Juan, who is Mayan and declined to give his last name because he fears retaliation for his opposition to the train. He calls it a continuation of the Spanish conquest, in which outsiders plunder Indigenous lands. “None of the profits from the Mayan Train will stay in our communities.”

The government is obligated to consult Indigenous communities prior to building new projects on their land, according to Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, which Mexico has ratified. Fonatur has repeatedly come under fire for not holding these consultations.

Javier Velázquez Moctezuma, Fonatur’s scientific coordinator for the Mayan Train, says the government complied with their obligations, organizing meetings in 15 regions along the train’s route with interpreters who translated into Indigenous languages.

“Many people [told us] they wanted the train, they wanted development, they wanted to have opportunities,” Mr. Velázquez says, acknowledging the government hasn’t held consultations in every town where the train will operate.

With the end of Mr. López Obrador’s term looming in 2024, Mr. Velázquez says Fonatur must work to finish the train quickly. The train is expected to cost nearly $10 billion. He maintains any disadvantages of speeding the project’s construction are overshadowed by benefits.

But the collapse of Line 12 of Mexico City’s metro last spring casts doubt on a rushed project. Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer, a political science professor at El Colegio de México, says authorities rushed to complete that metro line – and the project was carried out by a company owned by Mr. Slim that is also involved in constructing a section of the Mayan Train.

“You can’t help but think the same type of problems with the metro could be replicated,” Dr. Sánchez-Talanquer says.

Recently Mexico’s government took the bold step of passing a measure that would expedite infrastructure projects in the name of “public interest and national security.” Critics say the move undermines regulatory measures and makes public spending less transparent, while allowing AMLO, as the president is often referred, to steamroll into existence big projects like the Mayan Train or a new Mexico City airport. He has more than 60% approval.

“Despite some local disapproval of the train, I think the president is calculating that his popularity gives him no reason to change course,” says Dr. Sánchez-Talanquer.

Resisting the train

On a Sunday morning last summer, nearly two-dozen residents from the town of Kimbilá gathered in the shade of the municipal palace. They brainstormed ways to organize their community in order to gain greater say in the train’s construction. Locals sat in a circle across from an aging colonial church and shops selling the region’s colorful embroidery. Organizers say one strategy they’re using to appeal to AMLO supporters is to try and underscore that their discontent isn’t blanket opposition.

“I voted for López Obrador, and I’ll probably vote for [his party] Morena again, but that doesn’t mean that I agree with how they’re implementing the Mayan Train,” a software engineer named Juan Mex told the small crowd.

Chief among Mr. Mex’s concerns is the fact that Fonatur has not held a local consultation with his community in Kimbilá. The government plans to build part of the train in the local ejido – collective farmland.

Representatives from Fonatur did come to Kimbilá, but Mr. Mex says the government only met with select members of the ejido in a series of closed-door sessions. Everyone else was excluded, even though the entire community would be potentially affected.

Mr. Mex and others decided to fight for their right to attend, spending the summer pressuring authorities to give them a seat at the table. Despite their efforts, they remained sidelined: The government paid the ejido members 5,000 pesos each – about $250 – for the right to construct the train, locals say. 

“They’ll spend [that] in one month,” says Jorge Fernández Mendiburu, a lawyer with the human rights group Indignación, which has won several injunctions to stop construction on parts of the train. “It’s an insult for those who live in poverty.”

Still, the rollout has done little to dissuade Mr. López Obrador’s core supporters.

Mr. Colle, a former immigrant living in California, decided not to try to return to the U.S. after Mr. López Obrador became president. For the first time in his life, he says he feels he has a future here. He wants to open a business near the train and take advantage of the increased foot traffic he expects to come with the train line.

“If Mexico keeps going in the same direction,” Mr. Colle says, “then in 20 years, we’ll probably be like Canada.”