The Maia Train, as the project driven by the government of the so-called Fourth Transformation (4T) by Andrés Manuel López Obrador is known, presents itself as an alternative to move towards a supposedly sustainable development.
However, it is nothing more than a deepening of the extractive capitalist model, which reproduces the same colonial logic that seeks to bring development to those who have historically been excluded from “progress” and modernity.
The reconfiguration of the territory of southern Mexico is a turning point in the deepening crisis of civilization.
Late last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the latest grim warning about the state of the climate.
The report indicates that global emissions are expected to peak by 2025 at the latest; otherwise, the effects of climate collapse will be catastrophic.
At the crossroads of civilization, that is, at a time when the addiction to economic growth and the production of fossil fuels should decrease, the Maia Train is going in the opposite direction.
It is a tourism and goods transport megaproject that, according to the government, seeks to “improve people’s quality of life, care for the environment and trigger sustainable development.”
The project – which, as the Mayan communities say, is more than a train and has nothing Mayan about it – consists of 1,525 km of track and the creation of rail infrastructure with tourist, housing and transport, storage and trade developments. in five states in southeastern Mexico, making it the largest development project in Latin America.
Under the logic of sustainable development, the train appeals to tourism as the most effective way to promote economic growth and protect nature.
However, no environmental impact assessment was carried out to effectively mitigate the cumulative impacts of the project.
To date, only some manifestations of the environmental impact of certain sections have been carried out, while others have not been analyzed despite threatening highly vulnerable ecosystems, such as the cenotes zone and underground aquifers of the Yucatan Peninsula.
The project is, in fact, a territorial reorganization, as it seeks to create, together with the transistmic train, which will cross from Salina Cruz in Oaxaca to Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz, a new interoceanic trade route and an integration of the territory to world trade.
Following the argument that southeastern Mexico is a space abandoned or ignored by the development model, these trains seek to integrate the region with global capitalism by facilitating the transit of goods, fuel and tourism, opening the territory to extractivism, thus integrating new territories. to capitalist logic.
The government rejected the criticisms, calling them conservative or neoliberal. But the development model on which it bets is not and cannot be sustainable.
The train is part of the great project of territorial transformation of the south-southeast region of Mexico.
And on the peninsula, many know that it is nothing more than a recycled project from previous administrations that will benefit transnational companies and that will serve to articulate the megaprojects that already exist in the territory, such as transgenic soy monocultures, swine megafarms or the large projects to generate renewable energy.
Thus, the government of López Obrador is redefining and reorganizing the territory as a legible space for capitalist investment based on a dialectic between the idea of productivity and what is considered waste.
This model implies marginalizing other ways of being, existing and inhabiting these spaces.
The train has other problematic aspects, such as creating a hub for international trade, as well as contributing to the capture of migrants in the flow to the United States.
The latter occurs, in part, by the tourist transformation of the train routes that migrant people (La Bestia) have used for decades, forcing them into increasingly dangerous paths.
But perhaps its most controversial aspect is the way it uses indigenous Mayan culture and identity to justify the imposition of “sustainable development”.
It is worth remembering the alleged “error” of the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources that revealed the way in which the government seeks to perpetuate an ethnocide in the name of its own development.
According to the secretariat, “ethnocide can have a positive turnaround, ethnodevelopment. This can be possible if indigenous populations are involved in the development process and in the administration of benefits.”
Despite the criticism, and although the government acknowledged that it was a mistake, so far no indigenous consultation has been carried out that adheres to the international frameworks of Convention 169 of the ILO (International Labor Organization) and that allows the supposed ethnodevelopment to be supported.
On repeated occasions the project presented itself as a decision made and that such consultations would not change the project.
This plan also contributes to perpetuating the colonial order. The prominent intellectual Yásnaya Aguilar already said that “Mexico’s independence was not a break with the colonial order, but implied its perfection”.
We could add that the development of megaprojects like this is a deepening of this colonial order, in which the Mayan identity is reduced to a tourist service, transforming it into an experience or commodity that can be explored and extracted.
The model promoted by 4Q perpetuates colonial violence, since it consists of eliminating the possibility of the other to exist according to their own ways of being, knowing and understanding.
On the other hand, the use of the indigenous, as Guillermo Bonfil Batalla said, serves to perpetuate Imaginary Mexico (of development and progress), but condemns indigenous identity to the past (Deep Mexico).
Under the vision of “development” and “progress”, the traditional ways of sowing, of subsistence, of relating to the territory and, therefore, to the Mayan cosmovision itself, are often discounted or even seen as obstacles to developing the region. .
The Sembrando Vida project, which seeks to recover the deforestation caused by the train, illustrates the rejection of biocultural heritage by replacing it with species of “value” and “services” that can be commercialized.
It is difficult to talk about ethnodevelopment or sustainable development in the region. Even more so if we understand this project as a continuation of the colonial and capitalist model that has been promoted in Mexico for the last 500 years, which once again imposes a unique vision of the future.
Betting on such a project, even taking into account the possible short-term economic benefits, is to perpetuate the logic that led to the crisis of civilization and the collapse of the climate that we are facing.
Promoting true ethnodevelopment would imply learning to listen to the development alternatives that already exist in the territory.
