FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gives his regularly scheduled morning press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, April 16, 2024. The American quarry company, Alabama-based Vulcan Materials, rejected on Monday, May 27, 2024 the Mexican president’s offer to buy its property on the Caribbean coast, amid a years-long dispute. Alabama-based Vulcan Materials said in a statement Monday that offer “substantially undervalues our assets.
The Mexican president has in the past threatened to expropriate the extensive property, claiming the pits it has dug to extract crushed limestone have damaged the fragile system of underground rivers and caves in the area. The Mayan Train is a pet project of López Obrador to build a tourist train around the Yucatan peninsula. Activists, cave divers and archeologist sayLópez Obrador has said in the past that the most attractive part of the property was the company’s freight shipping dock — the only deep port on the coast’s mainland — which he plans to turn into a dock for cruise ships. He says he wants to turn the rest of the property into a natural reserve.