Maya Train Landowners Win Legal Battle for Compensation

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo — Ejidatarios from X-Maben will be able to access multi-million peso support for the impact the Maya Train had on their lands in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, after magistrates in Mexico City granted them an injunction.

Magistrates from the Seventeenth Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters in Mexico City granted protection to the ejidatarios, which obliges the Specialized Chamber in Environmental and Regulatory Matters, also in the country’s capital, to modify a ruling that did not benefit the community members.

In 2024, the National Forestry Commission (Conafor) issued a call for the Forest Restoration Support of the Environmental Compensation Program for Change of Land Use in Forest Lands, which included impacts from the Maya Train.

A financial package of 1.28 billion pesos was guaranteed for beneficiaries. Regarding the impact from the Maya Train, help was promised for reforestation and other compensation programs, covering up to two thousand hectares affected by the federal project.

The members of the X-Maben ejido, affected by the mega-project, heeded the call but were rejected by Conafor, which alleged they had internal disputes, one of the points against the agrarian organization.

Dissatisfied, they filed a nullity lawsuit that fell to the Specialized Chamber in Environmental and Regulatory Matters to resolve. In December 2024, Sol Quintana Roo reported that this judicial body did not rule in favor of the ejidatarios, arguing that the call had already closed, so there were no grounds to fight.

Again dissatisfied, the ejidatarios filed a direct injunction, as a final means of appeal. The Seventeenth Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters in Mexico City admitted the lawsuit at the beginning of last year.

The magistrates, in a session held on January 21, declared that the first instance should have ruled in favor of the ejidatarios, since the supports have a five-year deadline to be fulfilled and carried out.

“THE JUSTICE OF THE UNION PROTECTS AND SAFEGUARDS,” reads emphatically in the judicial agreement issued on the 28th by the magistrates, within direct injunction 70/2025.

With this, the Specialized Chamber will issue a new resolution in the following days, through which the ejidatarios will benefit from repairing their lands due to the impact of the Maya Train.