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Guadalupe Cáceres, 64, portrayed in the middle of her living room at her home in Campeche, state of Campeche, Mexico on March 1, 2021. Her grandfather donated land for the railway line outside her property to be laid in 1938. But the Maya Train, one of the insignia development projects of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, would require the old route to be widened and her home to be demolished. Guadalupe Cáceres has mobilised local opposition to the train’s route through land where her family has lived for 127 years. “I was born here and I hope to die here,” she says. 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