A court in Yucatan, Mexico, suspended since Tuesday the unloading of rajón stone from the Cuban port of Cienfuegos for the Mayan Train and prohibited the anchoring of the ship melody, which transported the stone material and damaged the corals in Puerto Morelos. “It is in our hands that the law is respected and that ecocides are punished,” he points out to 14ymedio the activist José Urbina, known as Pepe Shark.
“With this suspension, the reef, the mangrove swamp and the people are provisionally protected from these illegal and ecocidal maneuvers,” underlines the environmentalist. “The Mayan Train started without permits and continues to break the law and violate the environment.”
The diver says that the first district court in Yucatan admitted an amparo lawsuit filed by the groups Voces Unidas de Puerto Morelos and Grupo Gema del Mayab AC. The judge also ordered to “stop logging, mangrove filling and the construction of an alternative road” to take the rajón stone from the port to the Ruta de los Cenotes.
? 1️⃣of 4️⃣ where the machines are heard inside the water destroying the ground of what was #SelvaMaya. #Halocline #White lady #CochinillaYucatecathere is no propaganda that hides the damage, the @TrenMayaMX destroy. #SelvameDelTren pic.twitter.com/LPtYbgbppP
— Pepe Shark (@tiburon_pepe) March 19, 2023
Urbina insists that the construction of the road began without having an “authorization for the use of land in forest lands,” nor was an “environmental impact study” submitted to the indiscriminate logging.
At the beginning of March, Roberto Rojo, a biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), pointed out that the damage caused by the ship’s anchor melody it was a “federal crime” because among the destroyed corals there is a species protected by NOM-059 of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.
Despite not having permits, in the first week of April, the Secretary of Territorial, Urban and Sustainable Development, Armando Lara De Nigris, confirmed the resumption of unloading operations for Cuban material from the ship melodywhich has been in Puerto Morelos since March.
The official explained that the unloading would be done through a barge and more than 150 trucks would be used to transport the material, making between 250 and 300 daily routes.
José Urbina warns that they will be pending the maneuvers of the workers, who in a first instance refused to attend to the judge’s resolution.
#PuertoMorelos count on you #Quintana Roo count on you #SaveTheManglar #SaveTheReef @SEMARNAT_mx @PROFEPA_Mx #selvamedeltren @TrenMaya pic.twitter.com/30yzBGvBU5
— Pepe Shark (@tiburon_pepe) March 24, 2023
Last February, the Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, visited Mexico to supervise, together with his counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the works of the Mayan Train, which passes through Campeche, in the Yucatán peninsula. The infrastructure, turned into a source of money for the Cuban economyis a 1,460-kilometer railway that will connect the main tourist cities in the area, for which it will be necessary to send more than 1,400,000 cubic meters of rajón from the Island.
Despite the availability of stone in Mexico and a cheaper offer from a Mexican company to deliver this material, López Obrador unilaterally decided to do his ally Díaz-Canel a favor with this enormous contract, as he has also done with the payment to several medical missions from the Island whose usefulness has not been demonstrated. The stone is extracted from two quarries located in the province of Cienfuegos and must be transported to the nearest port and taken by ship to the Mexican coast, where there are no conditions for unloading this heavy material.
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