Mexican Maya Train Project Endangers the Environment The Associated Press
go to original September 15, 2022

Mexico's ambitious Maya Train project is supposed to bring development to the Yucatan Peninsula, but along the country's Caribbean coast it is threatening the Indigenous Maya people it was named after.

One controversial stretch cuts a more than 68-mile (110-kilometer) swath through the jungle between the resorts of Cancun and Tulum, over some of the most complex and fragile underground cave systems in the world.

A few miles down the acres of felled trees where the train is supposed to run, archaeologist and cave diver Octavio Del Rio points to the Guardianes cave system that lies directly beneath the train's path. The cave's limestone roof is only two or three feet thick in some places, and would almost certainly collapse under the weight of a speeding train.

A pre-historic human skeleton has been found in a cave system that was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago, according to an archaeologist and cave diver on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

Related: Ancient Skeleton in Mexico Cave Threatened by Train (Associated Press)

Related: 8,000 Year-Old Human Skeleton Found by Cave Divers Near Tulum (Mexico News Daily)

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