Megaprojects put in "cross-fire" to the Mayan jungle; They ask to stop devastation

“The Mayan train is a Trojan horse”

Since the beginning of the construction of the Mayan train in 2018, the defense of the jungle warned what would come: extraction of natural resources, deforestation, pollution and displacements. Problems that, in their words, have worsened year after year.

“We knew that as soon as they talked the first tree, they would build roads or contaminate the aquifer and treat a cenote as if it were a pool, ”he said Pepe Sharkwho is also Member of the Sélvame del Train collective.

Pedro Uc Be, Mayan Defender of the Right to Earth and a member of the Assembly of Defenders of the Mayan Múuch ‘Xíinbal territory, also reproached that this megaproject has meant just the opposite of the official development promise.

“With its entrance, cenotes are destroyed, it sweeps the jungle, the animals are heartbreaking and a negative impact on nature is generated. The government says that it does good, but as Arjona sings, it is not good here that helps, but the one who does not fuck,” he said.

The panorama, lamented the defender, is critical. “We have found devastated jungles, destroyed cenotes, insecure peoples, forced disappearances, violent women, unemployment and displacement. That is what we have today,” he said.

The construction of the Mayan Train began in December 2018 and was inaugurated in its entirety in December 2024. By April 2025, President Claudia Sheinbaum launched the construction of train load infrastructure with the aim of transporting goods and strengthening the development of the southeast.

The megaproject travels 1,554 kilometers in Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. It includes six hotels already in operation and it is expected that by 2028 it has a load system composed of 10 complexes and five intermodal terminals.

Pedro UC so described that the Mayan train is a “Trojan horse”, which disguised as a work that would supposedly bring well -being and benefits to the Mayan communities, actually attracted devastation and socio -environmental effects.

“They said that all the communities of the Yucatan Peninsula were going to be benefited by the train with better health, better housing, better jobs, better schools. Where is that? That they show me a single community, I do not want many, just one, that I have improved their life at 100% since 2018,” he reproached.

For the poet the devastation has a political and economic background that transcends the Mayan train itself.