Experts Slam Maya Train’s “Rescue” of Ancient Ruins

Mexico City — The Parque de la Memoria Balam Tun, a project underway by the state of Quintana Roo, is said to "rescue" 36 archaeological monuments that the same government had previously put in danger, according to condemnations from experts. This heritage, discovered in sections 6 and 7 of the Tren Maya, will now form part of a new development in Chetumal that has stripped Mayan structures, 1,500 years old, of their original context.

Although the displacement and relocation of archaeological, historical, and artistic monuments is a regulated practice endorsed internationally, specialists consulted argue that the construction of the railway project did not justify this action. In Mexican law, for example, a project of this type is not contemplated in any form; under international standards, the infrastructure megaproject would not meet the conditions to carry it out.

Announced this past July by the Morenista governor of Quintana Roo, Mara Lezama, the relocation project is being celebrated as an achievement of archaeological conservation. "Thanks to the joint work with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and as part of the Tren Maya project, we managed to rescue and relocate 47 Mayan monuments in this, the new Chetumal Archaeological Park," announced the local official, with a figure for the monuments that was later reduced to 36 in an INAH bulletin.

For historian Felipe Echenique, a senior research professor at the Institute's Directorate of Historical Studies, Lezama's statement exemplifies why the relocation is not justified. "For the governor to state that publicly is a confession that there was indeed destruction of monuments," he said in an interview.

Along with anthropologist Juan Manuel Sandoval, Echenique filed a statement of facts with the Attorney General's Office of the Republic (FGR) in May 2020, with georeferenced maps of the monuments discovered up to that point, to alert about the heritage at risk. In subsequent years, both specialists have expanded the complaint with photographs, testimonies, and interviews that show that, contrary to what INAH has reported, there was destruction of monuments.

In addition to the complaint to the FGR, which remains unanswered, both researchers have compiled a working document, updated until December 2023, where they document their tours along the Tren Maya route and provide evidence of the mistreatment given to archaeological sites.

According to a video in which Lezama announces the Balam Tun Park, the Mayan structures that form it come from the localities of Juan Sarabia, Jesús González Ortega, and Francisco Villa. The 2023 working document on this area is clear that the researchers found destruction with the passage of machinery.

"The mounds that are within the Tren Maya route, after being registered and some of them explored to see what they contained, are razed by the construction company's machinery, which levels the ground to later cover it with stones and compacted earth to build the embankment," it reads regarding the work in that area.

The working document, signed by Sandoval, also includes an interview with a farmer involved in the INAH salvage work, the son of an ejidatario from the area, who recounted his perception. "He said that he also did not agree with the destruction of the archaeological monuments, saying that they should leave that structure that was in the middle of the route, along with the other one that was outside of it, and that the Tren Maya should go around them so that the ejidatarios could also benefit from tourism," the researchers cite in their journal.

This account is corroborated by archaeologist Fernando Cortés de Brasdefer, who has criticized the government's actions in Quintana Roo. In sections 6 and 7 of the Tren, the specialist collected testimonies and evidence about the conduct of construction workers, sometimes in opposition to that of the archaeologists.

"When the archaeologists were doing the archaeological salvage, they worked and received orders from their bosses, but when, on occasions, they returned, according to the researchers themselves comment, when they returned the next day, the structures were no longer there, because the Army had razed them, or had given the order for them to be razed," he recounts.

Cortés de Brasdefer, who has been called to appear before the INAH's Internal Control Unit as a result of his criticisms, maintains that in the area of Quintana Roo where the structures for Balam Tun were found, damage to monuments is fully documented.

On July 31 of this year, Echenique and Sandoval—who have also collaborated with Cortés de Brasdefer on the complaints—presented a reiteration and new scope of their 2020 complaint to the FGR, in which they include arguments for why the development in Balam Tun is being erected from the destruction of the area's heritage.

On August 13, due to the lack of response from the Attorney General's Office for more than 5 years, they presented their complaint to the General Directorate of Citizen Attention of the Presidency of the Republic, which promised a response.

According to Echenique, there is no article in the Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic, and Historical Monuments and Zones that regulates the relocation of archaeological heritage. "That is why we are now presenting another document to the Attorney General's Office, saying that this is not possible because it is demonstrated that there was destruction, and there was so much destruction that they are going to put it in an 'archaeological park'," he denounces.

INAH's Justification Rejected

After the researchers' complaint to the FGR was disseminated in the media, INAH issued a bulletin justifying the relocation of the archaeological monuments to Balam Tun.

"The measures applied have been endorsed, since 2023, by the INAH Council of Archaeology, and comply with what is stipulated in instruments such as the 1964 Venice Charter, and in recommendations from UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), which recognize the viability of relocating monuments when their in situ preservation is not possible," the agency stated.

Saúl Alcántara, a member of Icomos, states that the justification for the relocation is weak. According to the specialist, international instruments signed by the country, such as the Venice Charter, establish that the relocation of a monument can only occur as a last resort, when the heritage is in imminent danger or in a matter of grave national importance.

"Here what fails is the original project," says Alcántara, former president of the Mexican Chapter of Icomos. "The planning of that railway line was prioritized over the archaeological heritage and over the landscape heritage, so there, really, is where I consider the justification to be very weak."

As an example of its procedure, INAH cites the relocation of the Abu Simbel Temple in Egypt, but without detailing that this project was due to the construction of a dam to combat floods and famines. It also mentions the move of the Tláloc monolith to the National Museum of Anthropology, without delving into the fact that this occurred before the current federal law was in effect.