At Mexico’s narrowest point, linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the government is building a railway rival to the Panama Canal with promises of economic bounty, but amid fears of environmental and social harm.
The Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes already dreamed of such a crossing for humans and goods in the 16th century, but most plans came to naught and a prior, rudimentary connection was all but abandoned with the opening of the canal cutting through Panama in 1914.
Then, in 2020, work started on a new coast-to-coast link under the government of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Photo: AFP
It comprises a 300km railway line from the Pacific port of Salina Cruz to Coatzacoalcos on the other side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec — a region rich in biodiversity and Indigenous heritage.
The government has announced an investment of US$2.85 billion.
Project coordinator Adiel Estrada said it has created 800 direct jobs and about 2,400 indirect ones — a much-needed injection for that part of the country.
Officials expect that once fully operational, by 2033, the “interoceanic corridor” would boost GDP by 3 to 5 percentage points.
“We will go ... from one ocean to the other in seven hours,” Lopez Obrador boasted of the project in a recent video recorded aboard a brand-new train.
Service is expected to start in December with two daily round-trips for passengers, and three for cargo.
By 2028, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor (CIIT) should have 300,000 cargo containers transiting every year, with 1.4 million by 2033. The 80km Panama Canal moved about 63.2 million tons last year.
Lopez Obrador has said the CIIT comes at a time that “our brothers in Panama are having difficulties due to water shortages” in the canal through which three percent of global maritime trade passes.
The Panama Canal Authority has had to reduce traffic to 25 ships per day starting Nov. 3 — down from 39 per day on average last year. By mid-February it would be down to 20 per day.
The Mexican corridor would be accompanied by the development of industrial parks, which the government hopes will attract about US$7 billion in investment.
However, the corridor has had a mixed response.
“It’s a magnificent project,” said Angelica Gonzalez, a 42-year-old craftswoman from Ciudad Ixtepec, one of the stops on the new route she hopes will boost sales to tourists.
Gonzalez was five years old when she last took a passenger train linking the two coasts.
That line was fully operational from 1907 to the 1950s, then declined until the 1990s when it finally closed, leaving only one cargo train on the route.
The cargo service has long been in urgent need of an update as Mexico upgrades capacity at its Atlantic and Pacific ports and the CIIT is meant to do just that.
Salina Cruz green activist Rafael Mayoral said that people along the route are “very motivated” for its opening.
Yet he said that “does not erase its environmental and social impact.”
According to another activist, Juana Ramirez of the Union of Indigenous Communities in the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI) non-governmental organization, the isthmus was likely to become polluted and downgraded by the project, with trees felled and vegetation uprooted.
The UCIZONI says communities were not adequately consulted on the project, and that several people have been displaced.
Ramirez said locals were being “harassed.”
She herself faces a large fine — yet to be determined by a court — for taking part in a protest against the CIIT.
Activists also fear a rise of violence in the area with organized crime likely to grow as access improves.
By the middle of next year, the train is meant to link up to another line to the border with Guatemala via Mexico’s Chiapas state — a gateway for US-bound migrants without travel documents who frequently fall victim to smuggling gangs.
Observers also say that gangs are seizing land near the railway lines — uprooting residents — as they expect its value to rise.
The Mexican Center for Environmental Law non-governmental organization recorded three murders of land activists between October last year and July that it said were linked to the corridor.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
BIG BUCKS: Chairman Wei is expected to receive NT$34.12 million on a proposed NT$5 cash dividend plan, while the National Development Fund would get NT$8.27 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday announced that its board of directors approved US$15.25 billion in capital appropriations for long-term expansion to meet growing demand. The funds are to be used for installing advanced technology and packaging capacity, expanding mature and specialty technology, and constructing fabs with facility systems, TSMC said in a statement. The board also approved a proposal to distribute a NT$5 cash dividend per share, based on first-quarter earnings per share of NT$13.94, it said. That surpasses the NT$4.50 dividend for the fourth quarter of last year. TSMC has said that while it is eager
‘IMMENSE SWAY’: The top 50 companies, based on market cap, shape everything from technology to consumer trends, advisory firm Visual Capitalist said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) was ranked the 10th-most valuable company globally this year, market information advisory firm Visual Capitalist said. TSMC sat on a market cap of about US$915 billion as of Monday last week, making it the 10th-most valuable company in the world and No. 1 in Asia, the publisher said in its “50 Most Valuable Companies in the World” list. Visual Capitalist described TSMC as the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry operator that rolls out chips for major tech names such as US consumer electronics brand Apple Inc, and artificial intelligence (AI) chip designers Nvidia Corp and Advanced