Maya Train Derailment: Track Quality Under Scrutiny

MEXICO CITY — During a press conference on Wednesday, the director general of Tren Maya, Óscar David Lozano Águila, announced that the causes of an incident on August 19 at the Izamal station in Yucatán will be thoroughly investigated.

While the administration insists on classifying it as a "track mishap" and not a collision or derailment, the event has raised concerns due to a series of prior reports related to the quality of the ballast supplied for that section of track.

Lozano Águila explained that a switch point changed position unexpectedly as train 304 passed over it, causing one of its bogies to leave the track slightly and scrape against a unit stationed at the platform. "This should not have happened in the design… it is an anomaly that we have to analyze," he stated, assuring that the safety of the 261 people involved remains the priority.

He also confirmed the activation of the Commission for the Investigation of Railway Accidents and the participation of the Attorney General's Office, which will provide specialized experts. He added that they will review with suppliers such as Voestalpine and Alstom the implementation of additional mechanical locking mechanisms on the track switches.

Concern over this incident is heightened by journalistic investigations indicating that the section where the mishap occurred is the same one where ballast—the foundational stone placed beneath the tracks—was supplied by a network known as "El Clan," linked to Andy and Gonzalo "Bobby" López Beltrán, sons of former president López Obrador.

Reports from Latinus document that this group, through intermediaries such as Amílcar Olán, placed thousands of cubic meters of ballast without undergoing quality certification processes. They are also alleged to have bribed the laboratory responsible for evaluating the stone to avoid physical and chemical testing.

In a leaked phone call, Pedro Salazar Beltrán, a cousin of the López Beltrán brothers, cynically referred to the risk of derailment, stating, "Once the (Maya) train derails, that’s going to be a whole other story."

Latinus also revealed that the bribes were approximately 80 thousand pesos for each ballast review, paid in installments to ensure the material was not subjected to the required tests.

It is especially relevant that the affected section is part of Segment 3, an area previously implicated in another mishap that occurred last March in Tixkokob, just minutes before Izamal.