The federal government is making progress in the construction of the Maya Train development project amid judicial suspensions, complaints, protests and without authorizations regarding environmental impact, activists denounce.
Pedro Uc, a member of the Assembly of Defenders of the Múuch' Xíinbal Territory, said in an interview with Journalism CN that the federal government has blocked justice for indigenous peoples.
According to Uc, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has responded to those who disagree with the project not only with disqualifications and insults, but with actions to prevent them from relying on Mexican laws.
According to the civil organization Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (CEMDA), the Federal Judicial Council (CJF) —the body that administers the Judiciary— decided that all matters related to the Maya Train should be heard by the First District Court in Yucatán.
The lawsuits brought against the Maya Train have taken more than a year just to be admitted, Uc said.
This situation with the Judiciary has also been denounced by the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil (Cripx) and the organizations of the Peninsula, Indignación A.C. and Kanan Human Rights A.C.
The Mayan Train will cover 1,500 kilometers in southeastern Mexico. So far, most of the legal remedies that have been brought against the work are concentrated in the first three sections, between Palenque, Chiapas and Mérida, Yucatán.
One of the protections promoted by the Múuch' Xíinbal Assembly claims that the federal government failed to comply in a timely manner with the Environmental Impact Manifestation (MIA) requirement in the first three tranches, a requirement set out in the General Law on Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection.
In the lawsuit, he also argues that there is no comprehensive executive project for the construction of the Train.
Recently, the Collegiate Court for Labor and Administrative Matters of the Fourteenth Circuit, based in Mérida, Yucatán, eliminated the suspension that had been granted to Múuch' Xíinbal and Indignación A.C., and which, in legal terms, kept the works on sections 1, 2 and 3 paused.
However, although there was a suspension, the works were never stopped, as the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur) has presented each week the respective advances in these sections.
“It's very clear to us. The federal government has been blocking justice for indigenous peoples,” said Pedro Uc, also a teacher and poet in the Mayan language.
Another way to obstruct justice for those who disagree with the project, he said, is the Decree published by the Presidency of the Republic declaring infrastructure works to be of national interest, which has allowed progress in their execution without complying with legal criteria, in environmental terms.
Ángel Sulub, a member of the National Indigenous Congress, based in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo, affirms that communities in the southeast are legally “defenseless” in the face of what they consider to be a violation of their human rights.
“With the pandemic, while megaprojects continued to advance, we couldn't access legal tools, such as amparos, because the courts were closed,” he said.
For Sulub, violations of the rights of indigenous peoples began at the Public Consultation stage, as he said that it did not meet the minimum standards of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, as reported by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico.
An amparo against this consultation was filed by the National Indigenous Congress in June 2020 and admitted by a court for review until December 2021.
“This protection, like others we have against the Maya Train project, has not advanced. If we had access to justice, the project would be stopped, for all the violations of environmental regulations, the rights of indigenous peoples and all the illegal actions that are being committed in the public light,” added Ángel Sulub.
Pablo Montaño, a teacher in Environment and Development, who in recent weeks has accompanied the protests against the Train, stated that the federal government's strategy to defend the project is not based on technical and legal arguments, but on discrediting or invalidating opponents, including indigenous people, academics, environmentalists, artists, and others.
According to Montaño, the Train represents the continuity of massive development in the region, based on exploitation for the benefit of the few.
“It is presented as an economic development project, in addition to the Train. Projects that could be maquilas, could be hotels, casinos, and that already gives us a pattern that we are not planning from the territory, but from a vision that ignores what is there,” he added.
There are other sectors in the region that have expressed their positions in favor of the project, such as the hotel and business sector, ejidatarios from the different areas where the Train will run, as well as the general population that sees potential for economic growth and employment in the work.
Growth, at the expense of resources
Ángel Sulub said that the Mayan Train proposes a form of growth and development that is detrimental to the area's natural resources, which are already impacted by tourism and real estate growth, as well as the expansion of industrial crops and renewable energy megaprojects.
“There is an environmental threat to natural resources and to the quality of life of those who inhabit this territory,” he said.
Roberto Rojo, a member of the Mayab Speleological Circle and one of the main opponents of the changes to Section 5, said that the federal government has acted outside the law to complete the works on time.
The deadline set by López Obrador is December 2023, before the end of his six-year term.
Rojo pointed out that, in addition to the lack of authorizations regarding Environmental Impact, in the case of sections 4 and 5, there are no land use change authorizations or construction licenses.
“The Maya Train proposes the creation of urban centers in a region where we have been in a climate crisis for a long time. This project has three stages of impact, one that is previous, where there has been a lot of speculation about land and has generated a buying and selling frenzy for developments; the second is the construction of the route, which from what we have seen is generating deforestation, fragmentation of wildlife ecosystems and violation of the underground aquifer; the third moment of impact, the most serious of all, is in the future, with more cities, more people, more need for water, more generation of waste. With what is being done wrong, it does not guarantee environmental or social benefits”, concluded the biologist as well.
Comentarios (0)