Ramón Mendoza (L), 41, with relatives at his home in the San Nicolás ranch - where he lives with a dozen family members - in Xpujil, state of Campeche, Mexico on March 2, 2021. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s flagship Maya Train project could slice right through his farmland and home. “I don’t mind if it’s on our land, as long as it’s away from the house and they pay us,” he 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