14ymedio, Havana, 12 December 2022 — A total of 20,000 tons of rajón stone — a type of gravel — is ready to travel to the Yucatan peninsula, in Mexico, for construction work on the controversial Mayan Train, one of the emblematic projects of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Administration.
As explained by the head of the operations group of the Central Port Services Company, Andrés Díaz Guerrero, and reported by the official press, the 20,000 tons correspond to an upcoming first shipment and is in open-air warehouses in the port of Cienfuegos.
When commercialization begins, added the official, 90,000 tons of stone must be handled in the first month, a figure that will increase in stages, until reaching a rate of 200,000 tons per month.
The stone that will be exported to Mexico comes from the Arriete quarry, in the Cienfuegos municipality of Palmira, the article specifies, and it is transported by rail to the yard of the maritime terminal.
The use of Cuban gravel for the Mayan Train megaproject — a railway line of some 1,550 kilometers that will cover the three states that sit on the Yucatan peninsula (Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo), connecting them with Tabasco and Chiapas — was announced by López Obrador himself last month.
The project is surrounded by intense controversy in Mexico. Numerous activists accuse the Government of ignoring environmental legislation for its execution, and accuse it of alleged irregularities in the management of the budget, which exceeds 15 billion dollars.
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