ship’s anchor melodyfrom which 20,000 tons of rajón stone from Cienfuegos (Cuba) are unloaded, damaged the corals in Puerto Morelos, denounced the activist José Urbina, Pepe Shark. According to the diver, when dropping the herringbone, the crew did so over a “coral reef” that takes years to grow and mature.
As the damage to the corals became public, the melody It was removed from the affected area and is currently near the island of Cozumel, where there is a larger sandbank to anchor.
The biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), Roberto Rojo, said that he committed a “federal crime” because among the destroyed corals there is a species protected by NOM-059 of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. The biologist and speleologist pointed out that the ship dropped the anchor and chain inside the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve, an area established to protect marine ecosystems and preserve biological diversity.
red explained in their social networks that “in this area the anchor cannot be buried because it is laja” and doing so “violates the management program of the reserve that establishes that anchoring is only allowed in sandbanks and only in emergency situations and that does matter to me seems serious.” The activist warned of the damage that is occurring and “it is hardly the first ship of many that will be bringing the rocks from Cuba.”
The diver José Urbina shared with ’14ymedio’ the image of the anchor chain and pointed out that the “damage due to ignorance again harms us all”
The diver José Urbina shared with 14ymedio the image of the anchor chain and pointed out that the “harm from ignorance again harms us all”. From the boat, he stressed, they are unloading “little by little” the Cuban stone that will be crushed to obtain the ballast for the construction of the Mayan Train, the emblematic project of the Government of Andrés López Obrador. “They already realized that this landing is not so simple,” he stressed.
This Thursday, the president of the Ocean Futures Society, Jean-Michel Cousteau, sent a letter to the Mexican president in which he reiterated his concern about the damage to the reefs of Puerto Morelos with the landing of stones from Cuba. To which is added the “destruction of mangroves and their habitat” to draw a path for the daily traffic of 300 trucks that will transport the material from the ship to the storage warehouse.
He recalled that more than a year ago the Supreme Court of Justice of the Mexican nation ordered “to stop the extraction of basalt.” Through the “Don’t touch a stone” campaign, environmental movements stopped the destruction of the Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve, in the state of Veracruz, where dozens of excavators and trucks removed rocks from the Balzapote hill, classified as a Natural Area Protected and “all because stone was needed for the Mayan Train.”
The activist and member of the Sélvame del Tren collective uploaded videos on his Twitter account with which he shows that in the construction of the Mayan Train the Environmental Impact Statement is not respected, the instrument of environmental policy to “prevent, mitigate and restore the damage to the environment, as well as the regulation of works or activities to avoid or reduce their negative effects on the environment and on human health”. In the official letter number SGPA/DGIRA/DG-03703-22 from the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, it is indicated that it is prohibited to “cover cenotes, caverns, streams or rivers”, and that is what they are doing.
More georeferenced evidence that they do not respect the law, not even the one that @TrenMayaMX signed on your MIA. The judge already has enough evidence and @PROFEPA_Mx You must arm yourself with courage and confront those who impose the ecocide project, however powerful they may be. #SelvameDelTren pic.twitter.com/aU4q0EZKhG
— Pepe Shark (@tiburon_pepe) March 14, 2023
Between March 9 and 12, the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature, made up of environmental defenders, heard the testimonies of at least 20 communities in the states of Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, through which the Mayan Train, and after touring the work area, they urged the Government of López Obrador to stop the landing of Cuban stone and the construction of the track.
The human rights defender Fray Raúl Vera, the Argentine researcher and sociologist Maristella Svampa, the Ecuadorian politician and lawyer Yaku Pérez, the Italian activist Francesco Martone and the defender of the rights of indigenous peoples Alberto Saldamando concluded that the megaproject represents a ” ecocide” and “ethnocide” where the “politics of fear” prevail to intimidate those who oppose it.
“What they are doing with this Mayan Train project is an aberration,” warned Fray Raúl Vera, one of the court’s judges. The destruction of “wet and dry forests”, which currently extends to cenotes, caves and underground rivers, will be greater in the long term.
Maristella Svampa underlined the “devastating scope in terms of dispossession and destruction of natural ecosystems” when noting that in addition to the train, there is the construction of the Tulum airport, the Trans-Isthmic Corridor that includes the rehabilitation of the ports of Salina Cruz and Coatzacoalcos, a railroad track, and the construction of 10 industrial parks in Oaxaca.
“The government of López Obrador has a developmental, extractivist blindness, which implies enormous contempt for the Mayan communities and enormous contempt for the expert knowledge of scientists,” said Svampa.
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