Maya Train Sparks Ecocide, Greenpeace Warns

Cancún, Quintana Roo — Greenpeace has denounced that Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) approved the deforestation of hundreds of hectares to construct a new freight section of the Maya Train on the Yucatán Peninsula, despite the severe environmental impact representing an "ecocide" for the jungle.

Carlos Samayoa, director of the "México al grito de ¡Selva!" campaign for Greenpeace Mexico, highlighted the incongruity of Semarnat approving the devastation of 259 hectares of jungle for the construction of a Maya Train freight terminal in Cancún. This comes shortly after the head of the federal agency, Alicia Bárcena, admitted that the Maya Train had caused damage on the Yucatán Peninsula.

“That is the ambiguity: on one hand there is talk of reparation, and on the other, the devastation is being authorized,” Samayoa said in an interview with journalist Carmen Aristegui. “If the government truly wants to repair damages, the first thing it must do is stop the expansion of the freight infrastructure of the Maya Train, which is foreseen to be impactful for the environment, because it entails the establishment of new extractive projects.”

This newspaper reported in detail on June 11 of this year that the Maya Train had submitted the Environmental Impact Assessment (MIA) for the "Cancún Multimodal Terminal" project for public consultation. The project proposes the clearing of 259 hectares of jungle to build the freight terminal with a budget of $7,777,000,000.00 (seven billion, seven hundred seventy-seven million pesos). Only 15% of this cost is allocated for prevention, mitigation, and/or compensation measures; the rest is distributed with 16% for site preparation, 60% for construction, and 9% for operation and maintenance.

“The investment, as has been said, is equivalent to the entire budget of the municipality of Cancún (Benito Juárez), and it promotes dispossession and destruction by funding an ecocide in the name of development,” stated Carlos Samayoa. He added that “large extensions of jungle are being sacrificed, in this case in the name of a development that has been widely questioned, and whose benefits are ending up in very few hands.”

However, Semarnat has already given its approval to proceed with the clearing of this area of Mayan jungle, according to the environmental activist, which puts the region's biodiversity, indigenous territories, and ecological balance at grave risk.

Impact on Protected Species in the Region

The construction work will also affect 12 protected species, including birds, reptiles, and amphibians, such as the ocellated turkey, which is endemic to the region, warns the Greenpeace representative. Other species at risk include the leopard frog, the black vulture, the pale-billed woodpecker, the brown-breasted parakeet, the black howler monkey, the scarlet tanager, the least grebe, the Mexican tiger heron, the boa constrictor, the black spiny-tailed iguana, the green iguana, among others.

The project, published in the Gaceta Ecológica, will be built on a total surface area of 261.8821 hectares, belonging to the government of Quintana Roo, of which 99.13% requires the felling of trees and varied vegetation, damaging the habitat of several species.

Furthermore, the environmentalist lamented that the Maya Train is not only conceived for passenger transport and tourism promotion but also for the freight and mobilization of natural resources and merchandise on a large scale, which is its true nature.

“The Maya Train is not only a passenger train; it does not only respond to tourist purposes. That facade is fading more and more, and we see what it is: a train designed to move merchandise, to move natural resources on a large scale, and a threat that consolidates an extractivist model that is putting the entire Yucatán Peninsula region at risk, along with its biodiversity, indigenous territories, and ecological balance.”

Samayoa emphasized the incongruity in the official discourse, following the signing last August of the agreement that created the Great Maya Forest Biocultural Corridor (CBGSM) between Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, and on the other hand, Semarnat's endorsement for the construction of the "Cancún Multimodal Terminal," which contributes to the ecocide in the region.

Maya Train to Clear 104 Hectares in Yucatán for Freight Train in Progreso

But the deforestation does not stop there, he added; it extends to Yucatán, and he mentioned the work in the municipality of Progreso.

“It doesn't end there: we are seeing that in Progreso, Yucatán, there is already the intention to alter more than 104 hectares with the construction of another logistics center of this type, because there are going to be several intermodal terminals. And this is just the initial framework for establishing other industries throughout the region and a deforestation that is growing alarmingly,” he noted.

Additionally, he said, it adds to real estate speculation by developers, the dispossession of lands in Mayan communities, and promotes violence in an increasingly militarized environment.

Greenpeace also issued a statement pointing out that “Semarnat once again acts as an environmental endorser of ecocide, instead of stopping the devastation.” They are therefore demanding “a grand agreement to protect the Mayan jungle on the Yucatán Peninsula from all the threats that assail it day after day.”