PULSE NEWS MEXICO

Just hours after a federal judge ordered a definite suspension of all construction on Section 5 of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial Tren Maya tourist train on Monday, May 30, the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur) declared that work on that segment of the railway would continue anyway.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, Fonatur said that since the judicial suspension on work was due to the fact that there had been no Environmental Impact Statement (MIA) presented, the problem could be resolved by obtaining the MIA.

“Fonatur considers that there are sufficient elements for the MIA on Section 5 to be authorized, which in due course will allow the ‘definitive’ suspension to be overturned, so the work of the Tren Maya to continue in that area,” the statement read.

The Fonatur statement was released shortly after a judge from the First Court of Yucatan granted the definitive suspension of the construction because the government had not presented an Environmental Impact Assessment, which had to be presented before starting the work.

López Obrador has contentiously insisted that the train will be built despite warnings from environmentalists that it will destroy the region’s cenote underground waterways and irradiate half of the Yucatan’s natural flora and fauna.

The train is one of his three major pet projects, along with the Dos Bocas refinery and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), both of which have also been riddled with controversy.

Section 5 of the Tren Maya project, which will run from Playa del Carmen to Tulum, in the Mexican Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, has been particularly contentious since the cenote network in that area is extremely fragile.