The “Connecting Querétaro” highway project has upgraded 226 kilometers of road for an investment of 1 billion pesos (about US $50 million), improving transportation among 300 communities in the sierra, the state government reported on Sunday.

Before the project, roads were in poor condition, some only providing one lane and others being unusable in heavy rain.

The hydraulic concrete highways have transformed residents’ lives by connecting communities, providing access to hospitals and schools, improving public transport, and enabling products to be transported and emergency services to reach people in need, the government said in a prepared statement.

The project provided social benefit too: local labor was sought which helped boost the local economy, and female workers were encouraged to join the workforce in a new precedent for public works in the state.

In one case, 40% of the workers employed in the modernization of roads in the Landa de Matamoros municipality were female.

Querétaro officials say other states have looked to follow suit and replicate the model of female participation. They have signed an agreement to produce a public works manual from a gender perspective, which seeks to ensure that contractors employ women.

Querétaro is one of the country’s safest and most affluent states. From January through May, Querétaro only recorded 92 homicides, compared to neighboring Guanajuato, the country’s most violent, which registered 1,545.

Querétaro’s namesake capital city placed fifth in the Financial Times’ Latin American Cities of the Future 2021/22. The only city in the country that ranked higher was Mexico City, which came first.

Mexico News Daily