Portrait of Antonio López Cen, a regional manager for the Maya Train in Escárcega, state of Campeche, Mexico on March 1, 2021. “The train is not just an infrastructure project, it’s a development project,” he says. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says the 1,554-km route around the Yucatán peninsula will bring jobs, tourism and growth. The Maya Train project is one of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s flagship development projects. Its 1,554-km route will run through five states, linking Maya temples like Palenque, Chichen Itzá and Calakmul, the colonial city of Mérida, beach resorts of Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum and protected Sian Ka’an and Calakmul nature reserves. The government says it will create more than 1m jobs in 10 years but local residents whose homes and shops lie on the path of the train, and activists in rural communities say it will destroy pristine tropical rainforest that is home to the endangered jaguars. Existing tracks on 40 per cent of the route have to be removed and upgraded; the remainder is new construction that has been awarded to private construction companies and the Mexican army. Photograph by Bénédicte Desrus