A.D. Nachalo
The reactionary old-state of Mexico in 2020 began shelling out approximately $20 billion to fund the so-called Mayan Train, whichharms the Mayan people and other indigenous poor peasants in Mexico. Despite the project being wholly paid through taxes by the Mexican people,it is entirely owned by French imperialist monopoly Alstom, who will reap the profits. With the inauguration date set for the end of this year, the train line, located in the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico, aims at promoting tourism to the region while also creating jobs and bringing economic growth. However, the Mayans and other poor farmers and peasants in the region see it differently: the train line has already displaced more than 3,000 people and has caused massive damage to the environment, including the second-largest tropical rainforest in Latin America and an aquifer that millions of Mexicans rely on for drinking water.
While the reactionaries in power claim that megaprojects such as the Mayan Train and the Interoceanic Corridor will bring infrastructure and jobs to impoverished regions, the poor peasants of Mexico are coming together in greater unity to oppose such projects. The Interoceanic Corridor, like the Mayan Train, has a particularly devastating effect on the poor peasants and indigenous peoples of southern Mexico, not only by taking their land but also by eroding their very means of subsistence.
The Mexican revolutionary new-democratic newspaper Periódico Mural has pointed out that these projects are engendered by bureaucratic capitalism, the stunted capitalist system in place in Mexico headed by imperialist powers and superpowers—in this case France and the United States. Speaking of the Mayan Train, they state that:
“This example helps to understand the phenomenon of bureaucratic capitalism in the oppressed countries since, subject to the domination of imperialism, the line of development it follows in industrial production is centered on directing its efforts in favor of imperialist capital while reducing the participation of the oppressed country to its commercial aspects. In other words: science, technology, the means of production, production itself, imports and capital are the property of imperialism and for its private benefit, while export and commercialization will be Mexico’s task in a megaproject linking the “Mayan Train” and the Inter-Oceanic Corridor with a more extensive rail network throughout Central America, again lowering costs for its masters. Thus, no matter how much AMLO [the president of Mexico] boasts that the ill-named “Mayan Train” is 100% made in Mexico with Mexican hands (and Mexican public money), the final profit is exclusive to imperialism, leaving the mercantile crumbs for our country, and more concretely for the big bourgeoisie.”
The comrades give sound direction to the masses who fight these projects by calling the people to organize themselves against their oppressors: “Against the imperialist megaprojects of plunder and death, Combat and Resist!” The people in the southern and southwestern US especially, comprised of large populations of Latin Americans, will also come to raise such slogans in solidarity with the people of Mexico. The fight against the Interoceanic Corridor and the Mayan Train is a global fight against imperialist plunder and death; the companies based in the US and France must reap what they sow upon the world, and their home turf cannot stand as an exception. The fight must come to their gilded offices.
Photo: Twitter, AMLO welcomes “Mayan Train” to Cancún
