In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, the 966-mile Maya Train mega-railway has deforested swaths of Latin America’s second-largest tropical forest, driven steel piles through the nation’s largest aquifer, and forcibly displaced indigenous Maya communities from their lands in order to expand energy projects, industrial agriculture and mass tourism. Deforestation, water overuse and contamination associated with the project is compounding the already drought-prone region’s vulnerability to climate change-related water scarcity, while land dispossession has altered indigenous Maya people’s ability to realize traditional livelihoods. In response, Maya territorial defense movements are organizing in resistance to the Train with the hopes of preserving their resource access, territorial rights, and biocultural heritage for future generations.
I propose to conduct a participatory action research study in collaboration with three Maya territorial defense organizations to document how Maya land defenders and communities perceive the effects of land dispossession associated with the Maya Train on their cultural survival. I will complement this study with a documentary film that incorporates Maya poetry from the activist Pedro Uc, oral history interviews and still photography by Maya artist Haizel de la Cruz. As Maya communities face widespread cultural loss and environmental devastation as a result of land dispossession and climate- and extractive-industry related water scarcity, my project will serve as a testament to and archive of land defenders’ struggle for territory and life.