The Mayan Train has become one of the most emblematic projects of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government. The current Mexican president will hand over the group to Claudia Sheinbaum on October 1, without being able to complete the pharaoh project that aims to open Mexico even more to tourism. This is because progress on a significant part of the network has been halted after months of debate.

There are now miles of constructed roads running through many states, and different teams of archaeologists in Mexico are completing preservation and outreach efforts to make the Mayan culture more accessible.

Mega projectWith an initial investment of 150,000 million pesos from a public-private investment, the Maya Train aims to facilitate access to tourism. There is no discrimination here and the train has stops in areas that benefit greatly from tourism, such as the Riviera Maya, but it also wants to facilitate access to towns and sites that are harder to reach.

The aim was to attract 8,000 tourists a day to the Yucatan Peninsula alone and continue to promote the archaeological sites of Chichén Itzá and Tulum, but also highlight dozens of other sites such as Campeche, Playa del Carmen, Palenque or Calakmul. In total, the train will cover about 1,500 kilometers across five states and will stop at 15 stations.

Discoveries. The majority of the route uses infrastructure that has already been built, but there was a certain percentage that needed to be completed, and it was also the duty of archaeologists to both oversee the construction to ensure that the heritage was not damaged (something that has caused controversy) and to investigate if they found anything. And boy did they find it.

Mexico seems to be an inexhaustible source of treasure, both visible (you can find some when you try to expand your farm) and underground. During the construction and adaptation of the Maya Train, INAH researchers came across more than 1.4 million ceramic pieces and more than 50,000 movable and immovable properties such as palaces and buildings. This is the largest archaeological treasure found in Mexico in recent years; they even found a 25-meter-high pyramid on an 80-meter-long acropolis.

Access to inheritance. As we mentioned, INAH’s mission is to improve the Archaeological Sites that coincide with the route, beyond searching for new Mayan traces, in a way that makes it easier for tourists to pass. INAH director general Diego Prieto Hernández stated in a recent statement that after completing archaeological rescue efforts in seven sections of the train route, they are focusing on specific archaeological sites to make the most of the train route resources.

In Section 1 of the Maya Train (from Palenque to Escárcega) they are renewing both the paths and the signs in different places and in these missions they continue to record the finds, such as a tomb with multicolored plaques. INAH’s aim is to preserve these treasures and exhibit them in both existing and new museums (the Museum of Yucatan History, which will open soon). The idea is to fine-tune the paths and signs of Section 1 between August and September.

Controversial. Ultimately, the Maya Train will be a new way to visit Mexico and perhaps less touristy places. Palenque, for example, may not be the first choice for many, but as INAH emphasizes, it was “one of the centers where the interpretation and understanding of Maya writings was regained.” The debate seems far from over.

This is precisely because throughout the construction process, it has not stopped discovering treasures and archaeological remains of great value. This is something that causes a conflict between the rush to complete the entire route and the protection of the national heritage, a large part of which we call undiscovered.

The environmental impact has been a strong point of contention, with researchers clashing and The Washington Post publishing an article titled ‘Mayan treasures destroyed to build tourist train’. INAH defended itself by ensuring the country’s heritage was protected, but the same institution sent letters in 2020 and 2021 stating that “an unspecified number of national assets” had been destroyed.

Images | INAH, Maya Train

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