President Andrés Manuel López Obrador yesterday expropriated 15,047 hectares of communal land in the municipality of Calakmul, Campeche, which includes 5,749 hectares that will be delivered to the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena), without the respective decree clarifying exactly what are they going to use them for?
This is, by far, the largest expropriation that has been decreed for the Mayan Train project, and the Sedena will have to pay 603 million pesos as compensation to the Ejido Plan de San Luis, which was only constituted in 2002, and since 2022 the ejido had negotiated with the Government to hand over the land.
The decree, published in the evening edition of the Official Gazette, merely mentions that the Sedena will allocate its 5,749 hectares “for the construction of complementary works, related to military activities in general.”
This area is equivalent to 57 square kilometers, an extension greater than that occupied by municipality of Miguel Hidalgo, which covers 47 square kilometers.
Another 32 hectares will be used for the Mayan Train tracks, for which reason they were also assigned to the Sedena, while the remaining 9,261 will be for the conservation and improvement of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, and will remain in the hands of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat).
According to the maps included in the decree, the Sedena polygons will be contiguous to the right-of-way of the Mayan Train and close to federal highway 186, which goes from Chetumal to Escárcega, on a route similar to that planned for Section Seven of the Train.
Prior to this decree, the largest expropriation for the Mayan Train had been 119 hectares of communal land in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco, in Quintana Roo, published on June 12, while the largest temporary occupation was 236. hectares of private lots in four municipalities of Quintana Roo.
Previously, to ensure the viability of the Mayan Train, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has also decreed the “immediate temporary occupation”, without a prior expropriation procedure, of some 25 private properties in Quintana Roo.
The argument for ordering immediate occupation is that the addresses of the owners are unknown and, therefore, they cannot be summoned to an ordinary expropriation procedure.
Citizens and companies affected by some of the massive expropriations have challenged these measures before the Federal Judiciary.
Adrián Zepeda Novelo, first district judge in Yucatán in charge of all protections against this project, admitted between May and December 2022 at least 16 demands that reject the expropriation decrees, declarations of public utility, presidential orders, immediate occupation of properties , or simple verbal orders to vacate land.
Source: Sipse
