Mexico City, Mexico — After a two-day public consultation, the Maya Train project was voted in favor of moving forward.
The consultation was held in 84 regions where the construction of the railway will affect residents. In a press conference, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced the results of the public consultation noting that 92.3 percent of Mexicans who participated voted in favor of the project.
Of the participants in the state of Quintana Roo, 82.5 percent voted in favor of the train megaproject. Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported 99.1 percent voted in favor of the project in Tabasco, while in Chiaps, the yes-vote was 97.2 percent. For Campeche it was 96.3 percent and Yucatán, 87.8 percent.
The general director of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, Adelfo Regino Montes, delivered minutes of the regional assemblies to President López Obrador outlining the agreements of the peoples and communities.
“They have proposed that their demands, their demands in terms of development, basic infrastructure, in the matter of land tenure and the protection of their cultural and intellectual heritage be met. (…) They have also proposed that they be the beneficiaries of this important development project,” he explained.
The vote in favor of the train project came in exchange for needs being met.
The general director of the National Fund for Tourism Promotion, Rogelio Jiménez Pons, announced that a tender will be launched in the first week of January with the aim of starting work in early April.
López Obrador explained that the tender will be for the sections where there are already basic engineering studies. According to the basic engineering studies that were delivered to the federal government on December 13, the Cancun-Tulum section is the first phase to tender.
Source: https://www.riviera-maya-news.com/public-consult-votes-in-favor-of-maya-train-project/2019.html
