After stirring controversy by hiring many Cuban doctors, the Mexican president on Friday appeared in a position to irritate critics by announcing his intention to buy ballast of crushed rock for a tourist exercise mission in Cuba.
Many others in Mexico already have doubts about President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Mayan exercise project. There are doubts about its environmental impact and a dubious call for the service of the exercise.
But Lopez Obrador also faces a huge logistical challenge in his rush to complete the exercise in a year. It takes millions of tons of ballast to stabilize railway sleepers, but there is no rock suitable for many kilometers. be transported by truck from the Gulf Coast, about 900 km away.
Lopez Obrador said the crushed rock could be brought in large quantities by ship from Cuba, but said he was aware it would draw criticism.
“I’m going to say anything to make our belligerents us,” Lopez Obrador said. Pointing to a map of Cuba, he said: “It is very likely that for this stretch we will bring ballast from here.
Even then, ships carrying Cuban ballast had to disembark at the port of Sisal, on the other side of the Yucatan Peninsula, and be trucked about 300 km (180 miles) to some exercise structure sites.
There’s a personal shipping dock on Playa del Carmen’s Caribbean coast, right on the proposed rail line, that may only deal with Cuban shipments, but Lopez Obrador can’t use that dock because he ordered the U. S. company that owns it to close. that.
“This (port) would be ideal, it is deep, but relations are not good” with the company, López Obrador acknowledged.
In May, the Department of Environment closed the limestone quarry owned by Alabama-based Vulcan Materials, the pier.
López Obrador the water-filled quarry that will be used as a theme park to compete with the nearby XCaret park. Also Vulcan to build a cruise ship dock in the shipping terminal. He pressured the Alabama-based aggregate company to sell the assets to the government or open a water park itself.
The concept of the water park is almost impossible. The water-filled sections of the quarry, while probably attractive, are populated with crocodiles.
The 950-mile (1,500-kilometer) Mayan exercise line is intended to travel a rough loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting resorts and archaeological sites.
Lopez Obrador touts the train’s merits as a way to bring a portion of Cancun’s big tourism profits to inland communities that haven’t shared the wealth. But there are no credible feasibility studies indicating that tourists will need to use the train.
In addition, without previous environmental studies, the president will cut a strip of low jungle between the resorts of Cancun and Tulum.
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