June 21 is a very important day for the Mayas of the Mexican [Yucatan] Peninsula. It’s the date on which the Saq’ Q’ij, known as the Summer Solstice among the mestizo population, an epoch that denotes clear, bright and resplendent days, when father sun stops his journey to announce the N’imla’j, the longest day of the year. Among the Mayas, the event is the occasion for big ceremonies and fiestas to thank the Sun God for all the wealth he has given, but above all so that the peoples are aligned with the stars and the energy they radiate and the world’s balance can continue. Perhaps that’s why, the peninsula Mayas say, three different events converged there last June 21 around an issue on which their future depends: the construction of the Maya Train.

One of those events was led by the President who, on a tour through the peninsula visited the three states that comprise it promising public works and delivering fiscal resources to beneficiaries of his social programs. It started on June 21 through the Yucatán and ended two days later in Quintana Roo, just the three days on which the Maya Saq’ Q’ij. In Yucatán he participated in a meeting called to inform the public about the benefits that construction of the Maya Train will have, only about its benefits, nothing about its negative impacts. That day 18 productive, cultural and ejido organizations and different collective made publics a manifesto, the product of two days of deliberation in the city of Merida, to analyze the Fourth Transformation government’s policy. In its conclusions, among other things, they noted:

“Waves of promises of change flow in the paths of our peoples, in our assemblies and our families; stories that talk about a bright future, about the arrival of development and the benefits to our communities with the Maya Train. The land of the Mayas on the Yucatán Peninsula is being, more than ever, offered and auctioned to the highest bidder, the one who deceives our people and ravishes and dismembers our territories with the zeal to increase their capital. Agro-industry, mass tourism, wind and solar megaprojects and the real estate developments grow enormously, repeating the dispossession and insatiably devouring life, our life.