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López Obrador returns to the fray with the Mayan Train

López Obrador returns to the fray with the Mayan Train

The Mexican government has invoked special national security powers to push ahead with a tourist train along the Riviera Maya, which threatens caves that have found some of the oldest human remains in North America.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is striving to complete the Mayan Train in the two years remaining on his term, against the objections of environmentalists, archaeologists and cenote divers.

The government put a pause on the project this year, after a court ruled in favor of activists who questioned the route, because it crosses the jungle without an environmental impact report having been filed.

But on Monday he invoked powers associated with national security to resume work. López Obrador said on Tuesday that the pause had been very costly and that the decree will prevent the interests of a few from prevailing over those of the common good.

In November, his government had issued another decree ordering state agencies to automatically approve all public works that the government deemed “of national interest” or that affected “national security.”

Activists say the project, with its heavy tracks for a high-speed train, will fragment the coastal jungle and run over the fragile limestone ceilings of caves known as cenotes, which, because they are full of water and sinuous, already often very narrow, they can take decades to explore.

Within the cenotes there are archaeological treasures that have not been touched for millennia.

“I don’t know what could be more important than this,” said Octavio del Río, a diver and archaeologist who has been exploring the region for three decades. “We are talking about the oldest remains on the continent.”

The Mayan Train will travel 1,500 kilometers of the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting resorts, beaches and archaeological sites.

“The problem is not the layout. If the route is changed, there will still be many discoveries,” explained Diego Prieto, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, an official body in charge of protecting the relics on the train route. “The problem is the archaeological accompaniment to be able to recover the material that is found and to preserve the structures that must remain on the site.”

The caves along the coast were probably dry 13,000 years ago, during the last ice age. When the sea level rose at the end of that era and they were flooded, they acted like very fragile time capsules.

To support the rails, the government plans to sink concrete beams and columns that will penetrate the ceilings of the caves, likely causing them to crumble, along with any relics.

The government archaeologist responsible for ensuring that the project does not damage those artifacts, Helena Barba, told local media that her team will catalog the dozens of archaeological sites in the few weeks or months that remain before the heavy machinery arrives.

Divers and cave explorers say that is absurd.

“They probably don’t know any” of the sites and “they don’t have experience in these matters, to be able to do this type of submersion in flooded caves that are the largest on the planet,” said del Río.

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