More importantly: despite the decrease in the military budget, the Armed Forces will manage dozens of companies, especially related to ports, airports and the Mayan Train. Likewise, they will continue to control customs, which are not formally a business, but they are in practice, since it is easy to divert resources with total opacity and discretion, either for the benefit of certain military leaderships or for the operation of other institutional projects. the Armed Forces.
Furthermore, the military control of the Mayan Train, several airports and even hotels and tourist centers in the Yucatan Peninsula and its surroundings is a perfect opportunity for the formation of a new political economy associated with tourism in the region. More than 60% of the contracts linked to the construction of the Mayan Train were awarded directly and another important percentage was awarded through restricted competitions for certain companies chosen at the discretion of the Ministry of Defense.
With this background, it is easy to imagine the emergence of a new type of crony capitalism in the region connected by the Mayan Train. Companies and business people close to the military domes will be able to obtain facilities to build hotels, operate restaurants, bars and recreational centers or exploit the ecotourism potential of the area. In exchange, the Army as an institution or certain groups of the military elite will benefit from these contracts or will be able to build formal and informal partnerships with these companies.
The same could happen with the exploitation and industrial processing of the region’s natural resources. Companies close to the Ministry of Defense or to the military leaders well positioned around the Mayan Train will be able to easily obtain concessions and contracts, and the military themselves will be able to benefit from them.
I have been referring to this for a long time when I say that a business-military elite is consolidating in Mexico. The non-governmental organization CAN has accounted for some of the dynamics that I have described in the previous paragraphs in several reports that are worth reviewing. An issue that PODER has highlighted on several occasions is that the Mayan Train will not only benefit the Army directly, but also its partners in the private sector, since this megaproject is, above all, an attempt to reconfigure the territory of the Yucatan Peninsula to inaugurate a new model of capitalist exploitation in the region.
I think that the majority of traditional media has been wrong in arguing time and again that the Mayan Train will not produce profits or be profitable. This is true if it is said in a vacuum, in the abstract. But, in concrete and material terms, the Mayan Train is a great business for the Army, which has all the incentives and facilities – considering the impunity, opacity and discretion with which the Army can operate under the protective mantle of the national security—to build a network of alliances with companies and business people, in order to exploit the tourist potential and natural resources of the area for the benefit not necessarily of the State, but of the military-business elite that has been established in the last years.
Thus, although the Mayan Train is not profitable as an infrastructure project and although it is burdensome for the Mexican State, it will be an important source of political, economic and symbolic capital—as the train is an insignia of the “fourth transformation”— for the Armed Forces.
