AMLO’s $7.4 Billion Tourist Train Threatens Rainforests
The 900-mile railway through the Yucatán Peninsula may threaten a fragile ecosystem. It also needs investors.
The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is at the base of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Photographer: Julien Cruciani/Alamy
One day last December, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador donned a beaded necklace and bowed his head reverently before a fire pit, to ask Mother Earth for permission to build a railroad through the heart of Mayan territory.
The line, which will stretch 1,460 kilometers (900 miles) across five Mexican states, may carry more than 8,000 passengers a day. It will serve some of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, including seaside resorts Cancún and Tulum, Mérida and other colonial-era towns, and archaeological sites like Chichén Itzá. For AMLO, as Mexico’s leader is widely known, the Mayan Train is something of a passion project. Critics call it an expensive folly.