MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday suggested that Monday’s Maya Train derailment could have been intentional, while the candidate to succeed Lopez Obrador from the coalition including his party said the derailment will not affect her campaign.
In his morning press conference, López Obrador said the incident was “strange,” Publimetro.com reports.
“There was a human error at the station,” he said. “… A change was not carried out in a track device, and a search is underway to see if it was intentional or it was if it was intentional or if was an error by those responsible for managing the tracks.” A safety system prevented any injuries, he said.
The last car of a four-car train bound for Cancún derailed at a switch entering the station at Tixkokob on Monday morning. The train was moving about 10 kilometers per hour (6 mph) at the time, the Maya Train operating company said in a statement [see “Maya Train experiences low-speed derailment,” Trains News Wire, March 25, 2024.]
Meanwhile, in a campaign appearance in Oaxaca, Claudia Sheinbaum, candidate of the three-party “Let’s Keep Making History” coalition, was asked about the derailment’s role in the campaign, La Silla Rota reports.
“I don’t think it will impact us in the campaign,” she said. “The president has already said that he will investigate whether it was a human error or whether there was any fraud in this. We are going to wait for the results, but I do not consider that there will be any impact on the campaign.”
The Maya Train project is increasingly a campaign issue. On Monday, La Silla Rosa reports opposition candidate Xóchitl Galvez filed a complaint against relatives of López Obrador for alleged corruption regarding ballast contracts for the project. She claimed the cost for those contracts increased from 120 billion pesos to more than 500 billion pesos ($7.2 billion to $30 billion), and also filed a criminal complaint, saying the ballast does not meet safety requirements.
