Deep in Mexico’s Maya jungle, brilliant white lights blaze improbably in the wilderness: a maintenance depot for a flagship multibillion-dollar train line. But just beyond the perimeter fence, an off-grid village lies in darkness.
Mexico’s Mayan Train, spanning about 1,500 kilometres, was meant to bring development to the country’s impoverished south through improved infrastructure and increased tourism. But, two years after it was inaugurated, it is struggling. Ticket sales cover only a fraction of operating costs and hotels built along the route sit mostly empty.
Meanwhile, despite government promises, the local communities near the line say they have seen little benefit. A Reuters review of census data and interviews with dozens of residents in towns along the track found that poverty remains entrenched and well-paying jobs hard to find.
Mary Sandra Peraza’s home has no electricity, even though power lines for a Mayan Train station run almost directly over her house. Learn more in this mini-documentary about how she and others feel about the train.
Reuters
In Vida y Esperanza – “life and hope” – just steps from a railway maintenance depot, residents had hoped the train would bring change. The village’s lone primary school sits a stone’s throw from the depot but has no grid electricity for fans, computers or even stable lighting.
Its teacher, Lidia Patricia Chan Us – known by her 35 students as “Maestra Pati” – has spent years trying to get power connected. Authorities have told her electricity cannot be installed until the land beneath the school has formal titles.
The red tape issue is a common one for rural communal plots like this, but she had hoped that might change with the arrival of a mega project that the government had vowed would spur development and progress.
“At the beginning, when the project came along, we were happy about it,” Ms. Chan Us said. Some residents sold food to construction workers, which she said was a benefit to the community. “But when the construction ended, just as quickly as it arrived, it was gone.”
In Vida y Esperanza’s home state, Quintana Roo, the share of homes recorded as having electricity actually fell slightly during the period the railway line was being constructed, according to official data, even as new substations were built to power the line.
Mexico’s public education ministry and its defence ministry, which oversees the operation of the train via a state company, did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to a question about this story after it was published, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum defended the line as a success. At one of her regular morning press conferences, she said the project had helped regional development, but added “it’s not something that happens overnight.”
Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promoted the Mayan Train as a way to bring development to Indigenous Maya communities and spread tourism beyond beach resorts like Cancun. But that development is yet to materialize, government data shows.
While federal spending on the Mayan Train triggered a historic 13.2-per-cent spike in economic growth in Quintana Roo in 2023, that proved to be a temporary construction-related boost. The state plummeted into a 9.7-per-cent contraction in the first nine months of 2025, according to the latest data from statistics agency INEGI.
Quintana Roo did cut unemployment and expanded formal hiring, but about 60 per cent of workers in the Yucatán remain in informal jobs without legal or social security protections.
Legal challenges to the train from environmental groups and Indigenous communities ultimately failed as the government pushed the project forward under national security exemptions.
For many Maya, the land over which it runs is their sacred inheritance, central to their identity and linking them to their ancestors.
“I feel outraged by the way they behaved, because they didn’t take us into account,” said Eliseo Ek, 45, an Indigenous activist from the Quintana Roo community of Nicolas Bravo.
In Xpujil, a town close to the train line in Campeche state, Nicolas Moreno Jimenez, a 50-year-old beekeeper and farmer, turns a tap inside his modest concrete home. Nothing comes out.
Mr. Lopez Obrador promised that the town’s chronic water shortages would be addressed when he inaugurated the Adolfo Lopez Mateos-Xpujil aqueduct in January, 2024.
“How do we build a major project like the Mayan Train and not bring in water?” Mr. Lopez Obrador said at the event.
But Mr. Moreno says the taps are still dry. “They were empty words,” he said about the ex-president’s promise.
Each week, he brings in water by car from another community so his son, a university student, can bathe, wash dishes and flush the toilet.
Around 70 per cent of the population of Campeche have access to running water, data shows.
Meanwhile, the train itself has struggled to attract the hoped-for interest.
Legal challenges, environmental rerouting and land constraints pushed key segments inland and left many stations far from city centres and airports. Reuters visited three stations in November, 2025, each largely empty. Fewer than 40 of 230 seats were occupied on a weekday afternoon trip between Bacalar and Chetumal.
Mr. Lopez Obrador projected the train would transport three million people a year once finished, a figure since slashed to 1.2 million. At the same time, the project’s budget has ballooned from US$7-billion to more than US$25-billion, with revenue last year covering less than 13 per cent of operating costs.
The Tren Maya Hotel at Calakmul was built by Mexico's military and run by a branch of the defence ministry.
The train route has also spawned a line of six Tren Maya hotels. One in the Calakmul reserve, surrounded by jungle, features two pools and modern amenities. It was only about 20-per-cent full one night in November, according to a reception worker.
Government data reviewed by Reuters shows those properties averaged monthly occupancy rates between 5 per cent and 24 per cent most of last year.
The defence ministry agency that runs the hotels did not reply to a request for comment.
Ms. Sheinbaum has pushed back against assertions of problems with the train. She has regularly showcased tourist package offerings in her press conferences and suggested that the railway line could also be used for freight.
For Mr. Moreno, the hotels are a particularly painful blow. His family was displaced decades ago when the government created the Calakmul reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site intended to protect biodiversity and ruins of the once mighty Mayan empire. “We had been there since 1980,” said Mr. Moreno. “They removed us in 1993. And now they build hotels where we could not even stay.”
“In the press conferences they say the poor come first,” Mr. Moreno added. “But they take away our rights.”
