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Mexico’s train to somewhere
Mexico’s mammoth project, the Tren Maya, is a tourist magnet, politicians say – and an eco -notcher, say environmentalists. In the footsteps of a route that tells a lot about the country.
The Tren Maya, the Century project Mexico, leads in the middle of the second largest rainforest in Latin America. Is progress or megalomania?
Nature guide Elias Siebenborn has been living in Mexico for a long time, we know the special features of the natural juwel. “There are still many untouched treasures here in the rainforest,” he says. “But probably not long.”
Because now the Maya train drives through this area and lets the earth shake. Countless grottos were filled with concrete during the construction work. Widths were beaten through the jungle, 15,000 pillars rammed into the ground, more than nine million trees fell. “But destruction is not even the biggest problem,” says Siebenborn. “It is worse: the train route will bring further housing estates, industrial areas, investors attract, real estate sharks.”
The government calls progress, an “act of social justice”, the necessary development of a impoverished region. Siebenborn calls it eczid.
The Tren Maya is the latest government’s latest prestige object, a construction of superlatives – and super problems. The Maya train should now bring millions of tourists, tens of thousands of jobs-and the politicians involved a lot of fame and votes. So far there is little to see. The sun -hungry American tourists prefer to spend their vacation in the concrete castles of Cancún than in a express train. Only the rainforest already feels the effects, awakened by the rattling of the machines instead of howling the howling of the roar monkeys.
Mexicos Tren Maya is above all a demonstration of power
The left -wing populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had just divorced from office, had the idea for the Tren Maya. Last but not least, he followed her to immortalize himself, an obsession of so many populists, right and left. He put so much pressure on completing the route during his tenure that was botched down on the building.
The Tren Maya currently only runs three times a week on a section of the route, so far it is a huge loss of loss. Siebenborn believes that the real interest of the rulers is another: the industrialization of the entire, so valuable, still less developed Selva Maya.
Read the entire report on the controversial railway line here.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
