Does the Mayan dream fall?
Deputy Rubén Moreira launched an alert that should set off all alarms. The Mayan Train, that pharaonic project, has its columns literally bursting. It’s not a metaphor.
Engineering and caving experts have been documenting the disaster for years. Cracked columns, corroded steel, concrete falling into the cenotes of the peninsula. The image is nightmarish: what is sold as progress is rotting from its foundations.
“What could be profitable at the top is failing at the bottom”,
Moreira warned during the program Con Peras, Manzanas y Naranjas. The phrase is perfect. It sums up the essence of the matter: the official photo versus the underground reality.
Selective memory
The most irritating thing, for anyone with two functioning neurons, is that the alerts were there. Activists and speleologists have shown how the steel plates open and the cement contaminates the sacred water of the cenotes. They were ignored. As usual.
And here comes the pattern, that déjà vu that haunts us. Moreira connects the dots: This adds to the chain of failures in federal rail projects. He mentions the Interoceanic Train, where there were already deaths due to a derailment. Research? Clear results? Aha.
The lack of cost transparency and lack of accountability are not bugs, they are features of the system.
The deputy’s conclusion is textbook: stop the works with flaws to evaluate them urgently, supervise what works with a magnifying glass. That is, apply the most basic common sense.
But in this country, common sense is usually the most revolutionary proposal. The question is not whether the structures will hold. The question is how long the official version will last before the truth, stubborn and corroded like steel, comes to the surface.
