Mexico's president goes full-steam ahead with Maya train

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador lauded a Mayan train project as he inaugurated a leg of its construction in Campeche on Wednesday.

The project has faced concerns about its environmental and social impacts, and legal challenges have been made to block it.

López Obrador on Wednesday highlighted economic benefits that the train will generate, saying it will create some 80-thousand new jobs at a time that nearly a million have been lost to the lockdown caused by the novel coronavirus.

He also the project "respects the environment that doesn't destroy anything. On the contrary: it's a program to improve the environment."

The train would run some 950 miles (about 1,500 kilometers) from Caribbean beaches to the peninsula’s interior while stimulating economic development around its 15 stations.

The government says it will cost as much as $6.8 billion US dollars, but others say it will be much more.