Mexico City, October 16.- Southeast Mexico is a region structurally marginalized from national socioeconomic progress, so the Maya Train project "is a great opportunity" to solve this problem through infrastructure development , said researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Carlos Bustamante Lemus, of the Economic Research Institute (IIE) , noted that the expansion of the current federal government's flagship project is estimated to benefit a population of around 2 million inhabitants in the Yucatan Peninsula and the microregional portion of Chiapas and Tabasco.
In the videoconference New Approaches to Infrastructure and Well-being Projects in Mexico: The Case of the Mayan Train , the researcher indicated that the population of that region would make up the potential workforce for the various activities carried out there.
He welcomed the government's decision to turn its attention to large territories and regions "that have been marginalized by growth interests for more than 70 years."
In turn, Javier Velázquez Moctezuma, scientific coordinator of the Maya Train , commented that the challenge will be determining where to focus the infrastructure for services, health, and transportation, among others, in an area where the inhabitants are dispersed.
He specified that in the Mayan Train construction zone, there are 30,500 towns with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants each . "This dispersion makes it a major challenge." He also noted that another challenge for the project is biodiversity. "The region has been forgotten, and this has resulted in environmental deterioration that we cannot ignore; we have endangered several species at risk of extinction, including flora and fauna, and the great Mayan aquifer that lies beneath the peninsula."
