Mexico’s Maya Train is destroying ancient caves. Learn about the beautiful ‘cenotes’ under threat

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ACTON TOYUL CAVE SYSTEM, Mexico (AP) — Mexico's outgoing leader quickly built a train system that skirts the country's southern Yucatán Peninsula.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised that the more than $30 billion Maya Train project will connect tourist centers such as Cancun and Playa del Carmen to dense forests and remote archaeological sites, attracting money to long-neglected rural tracts of the country.

But the crown jewel of the populist presidency also overshadows one of Mexico's natural wonders: a fragile system of an estimated 10,000 caves, rivers, lakes and underground freshwater streams.

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As his term ended, Associated Press journalists traveled through part of that cave network, documenting its destruction.

Built on a “fragile” and important ecosystem

The cave system contains one of the largest aquifers in Mexico and serves as the region's main water source, which is critical at a time when the country is facing a worsening water crisis.

The area was once a coral reef beneath the Caribbean Sea, but changing sea levels have pushed Mexico's southern peninsula out of the ocean as a mass of limestone. Water sculpted the porous stone into caves over millions of years.

It has produced open freshwater caves known as “cenotes” and subterranean rivers that are equal parts stunning and delicate, explained Emiliano Monroy Ríos, a geologist at Northwestern University who studies the area.

“These ecosystems are very fragile,” Monroy Rios said. “They build on land that resembles Gruyère cheese, full of caves and hollows of different sizes and at different depths.”

Destruction

The train sparked criticism from environmentalists and scientists, as its construction led to the fall of millions of trees, a piece of the largest tropical forest in the Americas after the Amazon.

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But the caves came to the fore in recent months when experts who have long worked in the caves posted videos of government employees using a massive metal drill to drill through limestone, embedding an estimated 15,000 steel columns into the caves.

The columns were made to raise the train line, something Lopez Obrador said would protect the ancient underground world, which is already under threat from mass tourism.

Instead, what the Associated Press documented was destruction.

Across the cave system, stalactites broken by vibrations from train construction litter the ground like rubble after an earthquake. In other caves, the concrete filling the columns spilled over, covering the limestone floor. The water showed traces of iron contamination with rust coming from the metal.

The devastation extends to the rest of the ecosystem, where the freshwater aquifer connects to the Caribbean Sea, the Associated Press found.

A political promise, but also a political process

Lopez Obrador, who portrayed himself as a champion of Mexico's long-forgotten poor, declared the train “our development legacy in southeastern Mexico.”

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The populist has accelerated construction of the train in an attempt to make good on his promises to complete it before the June election, something that seems impossible.

The government evaded oversight, ignored court orders, employed the Mexican military in its construction, and blocked the release of information in the name of “natural security.” In violation of Mexican law, the administration also did not conduct a comprehensive study to assess potential environmental impacts before starting construction.

His moves have only deepened his ongoing clashes with the country's judiciary, adding to criticism that his government is undermining democratic institutions.

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