Mexico’s Maya Train is destroying ancient caves. Learn about the beautiful ‘cenotes’ under threat

By TERESA DE MIGUEL, MEGAN JANETSKY and RODRIGO ABD
Associated Press

AKTUN TUYUL CAVE SYSTEM, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s outgoing leader has rapidly built a train system looping around the country’s southern Yucatan Peninsula. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised the more than $30 billion Maya Train project would connect tourist hubs like Cancún and Playa del Carmen to dense jungle and remote archaeological sites. The government hoped it would draw money into long-neglected rural swathes of the country. But the crown jewel of the populist’s presidency is slowly destroying one of Mexico’s natural wonders: A fragile system of an estimated 10,000 subterranean caverns, rivers, lakes, and freshwater sinkholes.