“I See Concrete Where There Should Be Seeds”: Maya Worldmaking in the Wake of Infrastructure

The Maya Train, a 1,525km-long passenger train traversing five states in Southeast Mexico, began operating in 2024. From the perspective of the Mexican government, the train will secure national autonomy, improve the living conditions and connectivity of Mexico’s southern region, and serve as a curtain to block migrant flows in their transit towards the U.S. But Maya communities living along the train’s routes view this megaproject differently. Drawing from extensive participant observation, archival research, photo-ethnographic methods, interviews, and oral testimonies, my dissertation examines the contested promises and visions for development behind this infrastructure. In line with UCHRI’s theme of “Sustenance” and through the creation of a collaborative oral archive, this project explores how communities in the Yucatán peninsula sustain themselves in increasingly hostile environments, and how seeds of resistance are planted amidst eroding socio-ecological worlds. Against the Mexican state’s representation and repurposing of Maya identity and culture to legitimize this infrastructure, the testimonies and soundscapes collected for this community archive challenge the state’s unilateral production of knowledge while serving as a shared space to document and enact different ways of being in the world.