MEXICO’S PRESIDENT ISSUES DECREE FOR AUTOMATIC PROJECT APPROVAL

Declaration aimed at public works in ‘national interest’

The administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a broad decree Monday requiring all federal agencies to give automatic approval for any public works project the government deems to be “in the national interest“or to “involve national security.”

The decree published Monday sidesteps all environmental, accountability and feasibility review processes, and gives regulatory agencies five days to grant a yearlong “temporary” approval for projects the government wants to build.

The agencies would then have a year to grant definitive approval, by which time the projects would presumably already have broken ground.

López Obrador has been known for building huge projects. For example, he started building a 950-mile “Maya Train” line that will run in a rough loop around the Yucatan peninsula.

Though the area has abundant Indigenous communities, jungles, wildlife and archaeological sites, the project was pushed through with little in the way of consultations, feasibility studies or environmental impact statements.

Monday’s decree by the Interior Department would do away with such requirements.

“This is serious. This is severe. This needs to be resisted,” security analyst Alejandro Hope wrote in his Twitter account.

Leonardo Nunez, a researcher at the nonprofit group Mexicans Against Corruption, called the decree “extremely dangerous.”

The decree states that “the projects and works carried out by the Mexican government associated with infrastructure in the areas of communications, telecommunications, customs, borders, water works, the environment, tourism, health, railways and everything having to do with energy, ports, airports are declared to be in the public interest and a concern of national security.”

Lopez Obrador is big proponent of fossil fuels, and has ordered the construction of one large oil refinery and the upgrading of others.

But the Maya train is perhaps his most ambitious effort. It is intended to connect Caribbean beach resorts to the peninsula’s interior in a bid to stimulate economic development around its 15 stations.