One of the most powerful news organizations on the planet has delivered its verdict on Mexico’s Mayan Train: the multi-billion-dollar rail project that was supposed to lift the Yucatán Peninsula’s poorest communities out of poverty has largely failed to do so.
Reuters — whose journalists work from more than 200 locations worldwide and whose stories reach billions of readers every day — published a photo-driven special report this week under the headline “In Mexico, flagship Tren Maya leaves trail of broken pledges.” The combination of documentary photography by Daniel Becerril and on-the-ground reporting by Cassandra Garrison makes for a damning portrait of a megaproject two years into its operation.
The story opens in a village called Vida y Esperanza — Life and Hope in English — deep in the Quintana Roo jungle. A Mayan Train maintenance depot blazes with light just beyond the tree line. A few steps away, the village lies in darkness. Mary Sandra Peraza, a 30-year-old mother of four, cooks breakfast before dawn on a propane hot plate. Power lines installed for the train run almost directly above her house, but she rents a solar panel and generator to keep her family going. “There’s no real benefit for us,” she told Reuters.
The village’s only primary school sits next to the depot. Its teacher, Lidia Patricia Chan Us — known to her 35 students as “Maestra Pati” — has spent years trying to get electricity connected. Authorities tell her that can’t happen until the school’s communal land has formal title. “At the beginning, when the project came along, we were happy about it,” she said. “But when the construction ended, just as quickly as it arrived, it was gone.”
Becerril’s photographs — aerial drone shots of deforested jungle, families collecting rainwater in plastic buckets, a National Guard soldier standing watch on an almost-empty train car — bring that gap between promise and reality into sharp focus. The images were distributed globally through Reuters’ wire service, which supplies content to media organizations on every continent.
In Xpujil, Campeche, near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Nicolas Moreno Jimenez, a 50-year-old beekeeper and farmer, turns a tap in his home. Nothing comes out. Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had stood in that town in January 2024 to inaugurate a new aqueduct, asking publicly: “How do we build a major project like the Mayan Train and not bring in water?” The taps are still dry. Moreno drives in water from another community each week. “They were empty words,” he said.
Reuters visited three train stations in November 2025 and found each largely empty. On a weekday afternoon trip between Bacalar and Chetumal, fewer than 40 of 230 seats were occupied. López Obrador had projected the line would carry 3 million passengers per year at full operation; that figure has since been slashed to 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the project’s budget has ballooned from US$7 billion to more than US$25 billion, with revenues last year covering less than 13% of operating costs.
Six Tren Maya hotels have been built along the route, operated by a defense ministry company. Government data reviewed by Reuters shows those properties averaged monthly occupancy between 5% and 24% for most of last year. One hotel in the Calakmul reserve — surrounded by jungle, with two pools and modern amenities — was roughly 20% full one night in November, according to a reception worker.
For Moreno, the hotels carry a particular sting. His family was displaced decades ago when the government created the Calakmul reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site. “We had been there since 1980,” he said. “They removed us in 1993. And now they build hotels where we could not even stay.”
The economic data tracks the human stories. Federal spending on the train triggered a historic 13.2% spike in Quintana Roo’s economy in 2023, but that was a construction-phase effect. By the first nine months of 2025, the state had contracted 9.7%, according to Mexico’s national statistics agency INEGI. About 60% of workers across the Yucatán remain in informal jobs without legal or social security protections.
President Claudia Sheinbaum, responding after the story was published, defended the train as a success and said regional development “is not something that happens overnight.” She has regularly promoted tourist packages and suggested the line could eventually carry freight.
Yucatán readers will recognize several of the dynamics Reuters documents, including the train’s notorious logistical challenges getting passengers from stations to the places they actually want to visit.
About the Mayan Train
- The Reuters special report was photographed by Daniel Becerril and written by Cassandra Garrison, with additional reporting by Paola Chiomante
- The Mayan Train loops approximately 1,500 km (about 930 miles) around the Yucatán Peninsula
- Original cost estimate in 2018: approximately US$7 billion; current figure: more than US$25 billion
- Revenues in the most recent year covered less than 13% of operating costs
- Projected annual ridership was cut from 3 million to 1.2 million passengers
- 6 Tren Maya hotels along the route averaged 5%–24% monthly occupancy last year
- Quintana Roo’s economy grew 13.2% during construction in 2023, then contracted 9.7% in the first 9 months of 2025
- Approximately 60% of Yucatán workers remain in informal employment
- Only about 70% of Campeche’s population has access to running water
- The project is operated by Mexico’s defense ministry via a state company
Sources: Reuters, Yucatán Magazine, Wikipedia (Tren Maya)