Maya village’s water, future threatened by Mexican train

Mexico's ambitious Maya Train project is supposed to bring development to the Yucatan Peninsula, but along the country's Caribbean coast it is threatening the Indigenous Maya people it was named for and dividing communities it was meant to help.

One controversial stretch cuts a more than 68-mile (110-kilometer) swath through the jungle between the resorts of Cancun and Tulum, over ancient, complex and fragile underground cave systems.

It is one of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's signature projects and has drawn protests from environmentalists, who have blocked backhoes from knocking down trees.

But for the largely Maya inhabitants of the village of Vida y Esperanza, a clutch of about 300 people and 70 houses whose name means "Life and Hope," the train is going to run right by their doors. They fear it will pollute the caves that supply them with water, endanger their children or even cut off their access to the outside world.

A few miles down the corridor of felled trees where the train is supposed to run, archaeologist and cave diver Octavio Del Rio points to a cave that lies directly beneath the train's path. Its thin limestone roof would almost certainly collapse under the weight of a speeding train.

"We are running the risk that all this will be buried, and this history lost," Del Rio says.

Lopez Obrador dismisses critics like Del Rio as "pseudo environmentalists" funded by foreign governments.

As with his other signature projects, the president exempted the train from environmental impact studies and last month invoked national security powers to forge ahead, overriding court injunctions. Critics say that threatens Mexico's democratic institutions. The president counters that he just wants to develop...