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A train careered off the tracks in southern Mexico on Sunday, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more, in an incident that rekindled opposition party allegations of corruption in train and public works projects championed by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The derailment happened on the state-owned Interoceanic Train that runs across the Tehuantepec isthmus linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a link designed to spur development in a poor part of Mexico while offering a rail cargo route to rival the Panama Canal.
Government-issued images showed one carriage plunged into a precipice, with another left dangling.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said 13 of the 250 people on board were killed and 98 were injured, five seriously. Speaking at a morning news conference, she promised a “rigorous analysis of what happened”.
Authorities gave no immediate reason for the derailment in the state of Oaxaca. The attorney-general’s office has opened an investigation.
Nearly 100 people were injured in the accident in the state of Oaxaca © Luis Villalobos/EPA/Shutterstock
The interoceanic route, which upgraded an existing line from 1907 that had been in decline for more than a century, was one of the star infrastructure projects of Sheinbaum’s predecessor, whose term ended last year.
Like other public infrastructure, including Mexico City airport, the project was put in the hands of the Mexican military. López Obrador said last year that one of his sons, Gonzalo “Bobby” López Beltrán, supervised the interoceanic train project on a pro bono basis.
The opposition Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) said the tragedy demanded “immediate answers”.
PRI president Alejandro Moreno highlighted an audio aired last year by Latinus, an investigative online news site, referencing alleged corruption in a contract for the Maya Train, a project in the Yucatán peninsula.
In the recording, a nephew of López Obrador appears to tell a contractor: “When the [Maya] train derails, that’ll be another problem.”
“This tragedy cannot be separated from a model of government that allowed family members, friends and accomplices to power to benefit from public works without planning or real controls,” the PRI party wrote on X, calling for a full audit of such projects.
Sheinbaum dismissed Moreno’s comments, telling her daily news conference on Monday that she was “not going to debate with the president of the PRI” and insisting the train had operated with all safety requirements.
López Obrador and his family have denied previous allegations of corruption and influence peddling.
López Beltrán said in a 2022 open letter written with Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, another son of the former president, that they had been subject to political persecution and that critical media reports on them were based on assumptions, third parties, spying and biased reporting.
They “categorically denied” having acted to benefit any business people in government works, including the Maya Train, calling such allegations “baseless calumny”.
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The derailment was the third incident on the interoceanic route since July, including one on December 20 when a train hit a truck at a level crossing. There have also been other accidents on the Maya Train.
The train line where the train derailed on Sunday was the backbone of the so-called interoceanic corridor intended to boost the region as a hub for industry and development.
The Maya Train tourist service around the Yucatán peninsula, López Obrador’s other main rail project, has been criticised for causing environmental damage, suffering soaring costs and attracting few passengers.