Second Stop on the Tren Maya: Perspectives from Local Mayans After a Century of Mass Tourism
In our Travel Page’s introductory article First Stop on the Tren Maya, we discussed the proposed 900-mile rail project that will cut from the ancient ruins of Palenque in Chiapas up and across the Yucatan Peninsula to Cancun. The Tren Maya is one of the biggest pet projects of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“AMLO”), who slashed funding from other tourism activities across the country to fund the train.
The project is very controversial from the perspectives of the indigenous locals and environmentalists. On the one hand, the Mexican government touts the $6.5 billion project as a huge economic opportunity for the region, which will bring numerous jobs and foreign dollars to one of the most impoverished areas of Mexico. On the other hand, many local residents have a word to describe the mass tourism of the region: Xtabay, the name of a mythical demonic woman who seduces men from their communities to the cities where the men are corrupted and lose their traditional values.
The local beliefs about Xtabay and foreign influence existed long before a more modest version of the Tren Maya was proposed by President Enrique Pena Nieto in 2012. More than a millennium ago, the Yucatan Peninsula was the home of two dominant empires, Tikal and Calakmul, which fell centuries before the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan. Even before the Spaniards arrived, indigenous people from Palenque to Cancun clashed with outside forces like the Toltecs and the Aztecs. Since the European conquest, the Mayan people have held tight to their traditions through successive foreign interventions, the French invasion, the Liberal Regime that began with Benito Juarez, and more recently, to the neoliberal Mexican regimes that are associated with American intervention.
In our Travel Home Page, we discussed Mexico’s early efforts at the turn of the 20th Century during the Porfirio Diaz regime to attract international tourists and investment by showcasing the country’s ancient heritage. This process included the Yucatan Peninsula, which not only have popular sites like Chichen Itza and Tulum but also some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
An early wave of tourism to the region came in the 1920’s, when Yucatan Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto liberalized the state’s divorce laws and invited foreigners for a “quick divorce and an exciting vacation,” which was successful in attracting North American and European tourists.
After a brief hiatus around the time of the Great Depression and World War II, modern mass tourism began to snowball. By mid-century, Mexico’s largest cities were facing urbanization crises as countless people from rural areas migrated to places to Mexico City, straining local governments’ abilities to deal with growing crime and limited natural resources. The development of Yucatan presented an alternative for the Mexican government to divert rural laborers to the new tourism developments rather than to Mexico City. With this goal in mind, construction of Cancun began in 1971.
In her essay “Cancun and the Campo”, M. Bianet Castellanos discusses the mixed impact of tourism on indigenous communities. She cites a study of how the Tulum development deprived Mayans in the periphery from natural resources necessary for their survival. Castellanos focuses on Kuchmil, which is located deeper in the Yucatan jungle and far from the Cancun Corridor, and evaluates the effect of tourism on the migration circuit between this town and the tourist centers.
Until the early 21st Century, many areas of Yucatan like Kuchmil were so isolated by jungle and lack of infrastructure that the natives tended to stay close to home, maintaining ancient traditions like Mayan agricultural practices and donning their own hand-made attire like huipil.
Beginning in the 1970’s and 80’s, people from Yucatan’s interior increasingly migrated to places like Cancun to work in the service and construction industries. They were actively recruited by Cancun businesses like hotels seeking cheap labor. While this was initially a huge economic boom for these communities, the Cancun region eventually became so saturated with people that it resulted in lower wages, inflexible hours, and worsened labor conditions. The influx of working migrants also grew poor neighborhoods, allowing for exploitation by gangs who control the flow of drugs and prostitutes to the tourist sectors.
By the mid-1980’s, a combination of the population boom and changing tourist tastes led the Fondo Nacional de Fomiento del Turismo (“FONATUR”) to shift from large resorts to more “authentic” experiences, including more remote eco-experiences that extended southward out of Cancun. This growth has continued to this day, engulfing previously isolated enclaves like Isla Holbox into the development frenzy.
It is difficult to measure whether the locals are better or worst off due to mass tourism. The economic growth and job opportunities are unmistakable, but so are the crime, pollution, and loss of indigenous identity. As Castellanos discusses in her essay, there is a consensus among locals that the migration circuit over the past few decades has caused people to lose their traditions and sense of community, and not everybody agrees that this is worth the opportunities for work in places like Cancun.
To address the concerns about labor mass migration, proponents of the Tren Maya argue that the project will actually reduce labor migration across Yucatan because the tourists will essentially come to them. According to the Quintana Roo Department of Labor, as many as 300 people move to the northern part of Quintana Roo every day in search of employment.
Many locals already voiced mixed thoughts about the project at a series of town halls in late 2019. An open letter to the president in November stated: “This project isn’t planned for us, the common people. It’s a tourism project that will only benefit the wealthy and foreigners. We, who are the owners of the land, will only see it pass by, because there aren’t stations planned for most of our communities.”
There are also concerns about the environment and the feasibility of constructing the train through the difficult terrain of the peninsula. On February 19, the National Polytechnic Institute (“IPN”) announced it would be carrying out a feasibility and environmental impact study for the train. The Environmental Impact Statement must show that the train does not violate Mexico’s environmental regulations. According to the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (“CEMDA”), the train will traverse 15 federal-level Natural Protected Areas and 20 state-level protected areas. The government gave somewhat mixed messages about its environmental plan when AMLO proclaimed that not a single tree would be uprooted, whereas FONATUR says that reforestation projects will accompany the train’s construction.
Environmentalists remain skeptical, voicing concerns about the effect of local flora and fauna (e.g. the imminent extinction of jaguars) and the difficulty of building through the region’s cenotes, subterraneous limestone caverns that will require expert engineering to traverse safely. Cuauhtémoc León, director of the Center for Environmental Specialists (“CEGAM”) in Mexico City, is concerned that the tourism agency FONATUR is directing what could be the largest infrastructure project in Mexico in the coming years. “Where are the engineers?” he says. “This project can’t be taken on by the tourism sector alone.” Given the current administration’s questionable budgetary decision, including slashing important tourist funds for other parts of the country and throwing out a $13 Billion airport project after a rushed referendum, Leon’s concerns about the project’s feasibility are very real.
Once the government completes the Impact Statement, it must consult with and gain approval of local indigenous communities under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization. “What we have to avoid is another Atenco,” FONATUR’s Rogelio Jiménez Pons told Mexican online news site Animal Político, referencing a violent government crackdown of protests against a new airport in 2006. “We’re not going to foolishly try and displace people or pull wool over their eyes…. We’re going to do things totally differently.”
As Mexico has seen throughout its history, locals have not gone down quietly in the face of outside interference. The Mayan people living around Palenque were instrumental in the 1994 Zapatista uprising directed at NAFTA and its required breakdown of communal land called ejidos. Along the proposed train route, 11 ejidos continue a decades-long protest to receive fair compensation from the federal government for the land seized to build federal highway 307. In a January meeting with a FONATUR representative, the communities made their position clear: “Pay us what’s fair according to the law, or the train won’t go through.”
To be clear, Camino Aztlan is not anti-development and recognizes the importance of tourism to many working people and to Mexico at large. However, this site is committed to ensuring that new developments are not merely benefitting foreign tourists and Mexican oligarchs while leaving locals behind or worse than they were before. Please subscribe to our newsletter for future updates about the Tren Maya and to help you use your power as tourists or cross-border entrepreneurs for the greater good.
Sources:
M. Bianet Castellanos, “Cancun and the Campo: Indigenous Migration and Tourism Development in the Yucatan Peninsula,” in Holiday in Mexico: Critical Reflections on Tourism and Tourist Encounters, eds. Dina Berger and Andrew Grant Wood (Duke University Press 2010).