“Chinese-backed Mayan train chugs ahead despite environmental fears”, 24 July 2020

… it was announced that the Mota-Engil Mexico Consortium had won the tender to build the first section of the Mayan Train, and would work with China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), Grupo Cosh, Eyasa and Gavil Ingeniería…

Pierpaolo Bottini, a criminal lawyer who has defended construction company executives accused of corruption, recently told Diálogo Chino when asked about CCCC's record that past indiscretions don’t mean a company can’t change and that a structured internal compliance mechanism is what really matters…

As well as the controversy stirred by CCCC’s past, the president has faced strong opposition from civil organisations and communities in the area, who claim they don’t benefit from foreign investment in tourism projects…

For [Sergio] Madrid [director of the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS)], megaprojects in the Yucatán Peninsula have been accompanied by the dispossession of land from indigenous communities.

Salvador Anta Fonseca, head of forestry at NGO Policy and Environmental Legislation (POLEA), said:

“The train itself is not the most complicated part of the project, but rather what is behind it, which are several new towns … that are going to generate strong pressure on some areas that still have important biodiversity.”…

There has been a lack of transparency on the impacts of the Mayan Train, according to Jorge Fernández, a lawyer at Indignation, a human rights NGO.

“It has always been an opaque project, where pertinent public information has not been provided, from the outline and its environmental impact to the implications of the project itself…” he said.

… indigenous communities and residents of Palenque, Salto de Agua and Ocosingo had filed an appeal challenging two agreements that allowed work on the Mayan Train to continue despite the pandemic. On 22 June, local courts suspended the first of the railway’s seven sections.

Fernández said the trial revealed three new points that led communities to expand demands for protection: “The first is the assertion by Fonatur that there is no environmental impact statement, something that has already changed because the agency presented the document. The second is that Fonatur has no legal authority to carry out tenders. And the third is the peoples who were not consulted, violating their right to self-determination.”

On the last point, the Mexican office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) said that the indigenous consultation process on the Mayan Train carried out in 2019 failed to comply with every international standard relating to the rights of indigenous peoples. This includes the right to prior consultation. UNHCHR emphasised that neither the call for the project, the consultation process, nor the information that the government gave to the community had complete information on the potential impacts on the area.

Moreover, some environmentalists and activists who have openly opposed the project have received anonymous death threats…

[Also referred to China Harbor Engineering Corporation]