When Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a candidate, he promised many things. One of them was to help the most vulnerable. That has been the “mantra” of his administration. Promises and promises that never came for many. Neighbors of the “Las Torres” neighborhood are still waiting for the relocation promised to them.
PLAYA DEL CARMEN Quintana Roo. (SIPSE) – A group of around 800 families from the irregular zone “Las Torres” in Playa del Carmen. They were waiting for their relocation to a site with better conditions and basic services, promised by the federal government headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as one of the Mayan Train’s great benefits.
Carlos Ríos Castellanos, head of the Secretariat of Sustainable Urban Territorial Development (Sedetus), confirmed that the Federation had put the project on hold since the Mayan Train will no longer pass through this area. For these actions, the State Government had donated a piece of land. Still, they do not have the necessary economic resources to provide basic services and start with the houses’ construction.
“It is a complicated situation since we do not have the economic resources. The project was a joint project with the federal authorities; however, they ceased since the megaproject will no longer cross the area where there are high tension towers, which makes it more difficult to continue with this and give the families a better area to live in”, added the state official.
Because of this situation, he said that they are working on new requests to the federal government to establish a special item that will conclude with the project, which requires the urbanization of more than 30 hectares, for which substantial economic investment is necessary.
In 2018 it was announced that, derived from the layout of the Mayan Train, it was necessary to remove the families living in the irregular zone that covers more than 6.5 kilometers; through the Ministry of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (Sedatu), a strategy would be promoted to create an integral housing project and thus rearrange more than 1,600 people living there.
The agreement established at the time was that Sedatu would provide the economic resources for the construction of housing, the state the land, and the municipality the paperwork for land use and basic water, electricity, and sewage services.
