Deadly Train Derailment in Mexico Hits Priority Rail Project | Today News

A train derailment in southern Mexico that killed 13 and injured dozens more is presenting President Claudia Sheinbaum with a fresh test to hold her government accountable.

The Sunday accident hit a major rail line that was revamped and operated by the Navy under a government initiative to boost cargo and passenger transit. Both were pet projects of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor.

Sheinbaum told reporters on Monday that care for the victims is her top priority, while also pledging to investigate what caused the deadly derailment. She also plans to travel to the area and visit survivors, with 44 still hospitalized.

“We must conduct a rigorous analysis of what happened,” she said at her regular morning press conference on Monday.

Video posted on social media in the immediate aftermath of the derailment showed overturned cars, as well as part of the train dangling off of a mountain turn.

The incident implicates the Navy, which operates the Interoceanic Train of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec linking Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts. The cargo and passenger rail line is one of the flagship projects of Sheinbaum’s Morena party, meant to stimulate economic development in the country’s poorer south.

It was championed by López Obrador, known as AMLO, in a bid to also lure some cargo shipping business away from the Panama Canal.

Navy and transport officials said the 250-passenger train jumped off its tracks in Oaxaca’s Asunción Ixtaltepec municipality. AMLO put the Navy in charge of constructing and then running the revamped rail project, built on an existing route, part of a vastly expanded remit for the branch of the military that also includes running ports, airports as well as a separate tourist rail project known as the Maya Train.

Sheinbaum directed the rail transport agency and Attorney General’s Office to work together on the derailment investigation.

Sunday’s accident marks just the latest setback for the Navy, which is also under fire for allegations of corruption in a sprawling fuel smuggling scandal.

In recent months, Sheinbaum has sought to curb the smuggling rackets and recover massive quantities of bootlegged gasoline and diesel. A senior Navy admiral has been arrested in the ongoing probe, while her former attorney general was pushed out last month.

He was replaced by Attorney General Ernestina Godoy, a longtime Sheinbaum confidant, now in charge of the probe.

Completing the train projects launched by AMLO as well as building new lines has been one of Sheinbaum’s top infrastructure priorities, while she also aims to gradually narrow a gaping budget deficit she inherited from him. Nine new railway projects will have a budget of 105 billion pesos ($1.3 billion) next year, while the Interoceanic project will receive some 25 billion pesos for its operations.

In addition to providing ammunition to her political opposition, the deadly accident also puts Sheinbaum in an uncomfortable position with AMLO’s family. One of the former president’s sons, Gonzalo López Beltrán, was tapped by his father to be an informal adviser to the Interoceanic rail project despite no experience with train transport.

“Gonzalo is not involved in politics. He has helped as an honorary advisor on the Interoceanic project, but he does not get paid and he is not going to work in the government,” AMLO said in 2024, shortly before leaving office.

Another son of AMLO, Andrés López Beltrán, is the No. 3 Morena party leader. Local media reports have accused him of helping friends obtain contracts for railway projects, but he has denied the accusations.

The Oaxaca derailment is not the first deadly rail accident under Morena’s watch. When Sheinbaum was Mexico City mayor in 2021, an elevated section of the capital’s subway system collapsed as a train passed over it. The incident resulted in two dozen deaths and almost 100 injured, with investigations later pinning the blame on faulty welding as well as deficient inspections and maintenance.

The subway disaster intensified scrutiny of public infrastructure oversight during Sheinbaum’s tenure as mayor. Opposition parties including the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, blamed the collapse on corruption and negligence, pointing to cost overruns, construction deficiencies and inadequate maintenance. At the time, they also criticized Marcelo Ebrard, another former mayor of the capital who currently serves as her economy minister.

Piling on, the head of another opposition party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, pointed to an audio recording released last year by the investigative news outlet Latinus, in which a nephew of AMLO is heard talking about the possibility of the Maya Train being derailed due to the rush to inaugurate it.

PRI President Alejandro Moreno blamed “corruption covered up by Morena” for the latest rail tragedy, in a post on social media.

“It’s clear what happens when Morena’s criminal corruption governs: the people of Mexico pay with their lives,” Moreno wrote.

(Update with context and comments from opposition leader starting in fourteenth paragraph. A previous version corrected the spelling of the president’s name in the sixth paragraph.)

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