The Train Is not for Us

The Mayan Train Megaproject as a Feature of Mexican Nationalism

Abstract

The “Mayan Train” is the name of Mexico’s left-wing government signature megaproject in the Yucatan Peninsula. It has been purported as a major development for selling the Mayan World as a tourist attraction, in doing so bringing jobs, economic improvement, and establishing poles of urbanization to the rural, isolated communities throughout the region. But the megaproject—started under the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018—has been also criticized as an attempt of cultural erasure. Authors such as Gasparello and Núñez Rodríguez (2021) point out the negative impacts on ecosystems, patrimony, livelihoods, and sovereignty of local Mayans. In this paper, we argue that this rhetoric of appropriation is a feature of Mexico’s contemporary nationalist agenda as a continuation of the post-revolutionary national project which aimed to erase indigenous communities through assimilation and cultural commodification. To do so, we depart from Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s seminal work Mexico Profundo (1987) and expand it to consider Mexico’s indigenous communities not as a monolithic entity, but as several Profundidades which continue to struggle against the normative and appropriative demands of contemporary nationalist developmental projects.