Emir Olivares, Alonso Urrutia and Juan Ricardo Montoya
Reporters and Correspondent
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, May 3, 2022, p. 6
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported that legal action will be taken against the company Calizas Industriales del Carmen (Calica) – a subsidiary of the US company Legacy Vulcan – because he mocked
from the government and continues to extract minerals in an area near Playa del Carmen.
The president said that during the tour he made last Friday to Quintana Roo, he flew over the site and he himself verified that the company – one of the most important construction companies in the United States – continues to operate, generating severe environmental impacts. This despite the agreements with the federal administration to stop excavating and exploiting gravel and other elements in the area.
I had been misled that they were no longer extracting material. Indeed, everything was stopped when I flew around (on previous tours), the cranes stopped, everything stopped. But now (on Friday) I passed, flew over and realized that they are working with everything, extracting material. I saw how they were loading a ship. I have given instructions to proceed immediately. It is going to proceed legally, because there is a violation of the laws and it is a tremendous destruction of the environment
emphasized yesterday during the morning conference at the National Palace.
The theme of Calica came up in the middle of the presentation in the morning of the advances of the Mayan Train.
There, the head of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), María Luisa Albores, acknowledged that there are environmental impact studies for sections one to three of the railway project, while in the rest –including the controversial Section 5– progress in the works thanks to decrees that gave provisional permits. Although she, she clarified, is working to have the necessary environmental studies.
López Obrador said that he could not believe it when he was informed that the mining company was continuing with the extraction work, but he assured that now they have all the evidence for Semarnat to proceed legally. He assured that these excavations are already being done, even at depths of more than five meters and showed images to show what he saw from the flight.
Calica received the concession to exploit the soil and extract the minerals in the area on the last day of the six-year term of PRI member Ernesto Zedillo.
The President stressed that none of the pseudo-environmentalists
who today oppose the Mayan Train have expressed their rejection or anger. The destruction of the environment is tremendous, without precedent, they continue to do it, and the environmentalists never said anything
.
The rejection of the Mayan Train, he asserted, has to do with the economic interests of groups reactionaries
Y conservatives
. He exemplified not only the case of Calica, but also the irregularities and damages in the region of the Xcaret tourism group, which is working on another project near Valladolid, Yucatan.
The same (they are) joining cenotes below, already announcing that they were going to inaugurate at the end of the year. So, since they are unemployed now, they have already intensified the campaign against the Mayan Train with the pseudo-environmentalist pimps.
The president stressed that the project is a work for the benefit of the southeast, so his administration will not allow it to stop just for the protection of interests of economic groups that rent or buy pseudo-environmentalists, communicators, columnists, media. Influencing is over
.
He demanded that the United States government stop financing the groups of the, between quotation marks
civil society who oppose the project, considering that it is an act of interference
.
He censured part of the Judiciary that has granted injunctions against the project. Not all the judges, but the majority come from the old regime, and they do not take justice into account, they do not see the public interest, no, it is the pure protection of economic interests
.
The head of Semarnat stressed that Xcaret he prefers to ask for forgiveness to ask for permission
, since it has never carried out environmental impact studies. He pointed out that the group’s project in Yucatan has been temporarily cancelled.
convoy contract
Later, López Obrador visited the Alstom plant in Ciudad Sahagún, in the municipality of Tepeapulco, Hidalgo, where he signed a contract with that company, associated with Bombardier, for the acquisition of 42 trains with 210 wagons for the Mayan Train.
Twenty years ago (when I was the head of government of the capital of the country) we made a contract with Bombardier, now associated with Alstom, to buy 45 trains and 400 cars for the Mexico City Metro
recalled the president on his social networks.
The construction was done and will be done in Ciudad Sahagún, always thinking about employment for Mexicans
he underlined.
to the cry of President, brother, give us your hand!
a group of one hundred retirees and pensioners of the Mexican Institute of Social Security demonstrated peacefully during the visit of López Obrador, who received a petition before entering the facilities.
