The federal government and representatives of 12 Maya communities attended a ceremony in Palenque, Chiapas, yesterday to ask for Mother Earth’s permission to build the Maya Train.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón Cadenas attended the event at the old Palenque airport, where the two were also given a special cleansing, or limpia, to rid them of “bad vibes.”

The ceremony also included the placing of offerings in a hole in the ground. Among there were a chicken, a bottle of pozol (a fermented corn dough and cacao drink) and 12 bottles of a local aguardiente, a distilled alcoholic beverage.

The ceremony was intended to ensure that the president’s first big infrastructure project is finished without incident.

“We have to ask for permission to the earth, because we eat from her and we walk on her,” said the state Secretary for the Sustainable Development of Indigenous Peoples.

In a speech after the ceremony, López Obrador recalled that former president Porfirio Díaz had been able to lay 20,000 kilometers of track during his decades-long dictatorship, suggesting he ought to be able to lay the 1,500 kilometers of track required for the Maya Train.

Source: El Universal (sp)