Marco Legal Tren Maya

The fund “hides behind the fact that no new roads are being built at the moment; However, this is only partially true as the tracks are extended along their entire length and the rails are built and activated for a new train that requires new sleeper and rail systems. The absence of this assessment violates the national and international legal framework, which in this case obliges Fonatur to submit the megaproject to an environmental assessment. The General Law on Sustainable Forest Development stipulates that changes in forest land use are approved only on an exceptional basis and with the approval of the State Forest Advisory Boards. This requires the submission of studies showing that biodiversity is preserved and that there is no deterioration in water quality, in addition to a program to rescue and relocate affected species of flora and fauna. The Ecology Act also stipulates that work must be refused if it may result in one or more species being declared threatened or endangered; or if any of these species are affected. In the transit area of the train, there are already species of flora and fauna in these categories, such as the Ramon tree, the jaguar, the ocelot, the tapir or the spider monkey. Each city with its toponymy, each toponymy with its origin, each origin with its myth. They are the sources of the diversity of the Mayan peoples, each with its historical identity forged by oblivion, omissions, memories and memories; with their unique inertia that manifests itself in some collective actions, which in turn reflect forgotten past actions. That is how I imagine the communiqué of the 16th. It was signed by several residents of the Mayan village of Kimbilá in which they denounced the actions of the Mayan Migration Project team and agricultural authorities.

And yes, I signed too. It states that “according to the calculations of the passengers and the cargo of the train, they could mean the irreparable destruction of possible cultural relics, physical damage, falsification or excessive tourist use”. As part of strategies to crush opposition to the project, the government presidency began disqualifying and discrediting civil human rights and environmental organizations that accompanied residents of the affected areas and demanded information on environmental impacts. The president`s response has been to point to the leaders of these organizations as opponents, reactionaries who have foreign funds to jump on the bandwagon (Stevenson 2020). Paradoxically, these are the same arguments that the opposition and the ruling party at the time advanced against AMLO when he was fighting for the presidency of the Republic. These statements by the President have contributed to creating a climate of hostility and polarization against communities and social actors who oppose the project and have submitted amparo in the exercise of their right, demanding guarantees of non-pollution of the environment. In order to allow the development of the megaproject, the indigenous inhabitants of the region are deprived of their land, either because they are expropriated or bought at low prices, or because they are threatened and accused of opposing the plan of the President of the Republic. We documented these types of expropriation strategies in the cases of Maxcanú, Yucatán, where residents effectively shut down machinery because it was unclear how it would be compensated or their land replaced (Escalante 2020; Write for this 2020). This is also the case in Kimbilá, municipality of Izamal, where people do not have complete information and where only promises of economic impact have been made without a written commitment, neither FONATUR nor private offices responsible for “convincing” farmers to sell their land (Oropeza 2021). In this sense, the interview with a resident of Kimbilá reflects a clear allusion to colonial history and its current expression with the misnamed Mayan train.

This testimony accounts for the process of deep reflexivity before which organized sections of the Mayan population resist the imposition of the megaproject: Given the silence of official historiography, which had excluded the participation of indigenous peoples in independence struggles, ethnohistorians have devoted careful historical research to document the importance of this population in independence processes (e.g., De Jong and Escobar Ohmstede 2016; Escobar Ohmstede, 2011b; Machuca 2011; Mendoza Garcia, 2011; León Portilla and Meyer, 2010; Ruiz Medrano 2010; García de León 2010; Tutino, 1990). This ethnohistorical literature has come up against a nationalist historiography that has emphasized the role of Creole leaders and documented their lives (Alamán 1942; Altamirano, 1960; Amaya, 1952; Bustamante 1953, to name but a few) and key moments of the eleven-year struggle (Alperovich 1967), analyzing the political agreements expressed in documents such as the Act of Independence of the Mexican Empire or the Plan of Iguala (Soberanes 2010). However, these studies hardly mention those who, by bringing their bodies to the battlefield, allowed the triumph of the independence forces. Thanks to the work of ethnohistorians, we know the names of indigenous insurgents such as Albino García, Pedro Asencio Alquisiras, Pedro Bernardino, Encarnación Rojas, Ignacio Casimiro or the indigenous captain María Manuela, member of the Morelos army from the Taxco region (León Portilla 2010). In the Mexican context, this type of discursive construction has contributed to making cultural diversity invisible with the notions of “mestizo nation” and “bronze race”. Later, in the face of indigenous movements` criticism of the post-revolutionary integrationist project, the discourse of neoliberal multiculturalism (Hale 2005) was used to praise diversity, but without respecting peoples` right to indigenous autonomy. With AMLO`s government, there is a perceived return to integrationist state rhetoric that portrays indigenous peoples as ignorant of what development should be, so they are “impoverished.” At the same time, this discourse projects continuity with the appropriation of the indigenous past as a “national heritage” in order to recall a common past and oppose it to foreign interests that “seek to derail the train of progress”, materialized in the megaproject of the outgoing president.14 With regard to the displacement of indigenous people and communities, article 16 of Convention 169 and article 10 of the Declaration stipulate: that peoples shall not be transferred from their families. immovable property, unless their consent, given voluntarily and with full knowledge of the facts, has not been obtained.