MEXICO CITY (AP) — Truck drivers blocked several major highways in central Mexico on Tuesday to protest that the government has not paid them for work they did on a tourist train line.
The protest by truck drivers blocked two major highways leading north from Mexico City and other highways on the Yucatan Peninsula for several hours Tuesday morning, where they had been transporting gravel and other materials for the government’s Mayan train project.
President Claudia Sheinbaum acknowledged Tuesday that the subcontractors who hired the truck drivers had not paid them because the government owed them money.
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“Payments to the companies have started so they can in turn pay the truck drivers,” Sheinbaum said.
It was the latest in a series of complaints from workers and businesspeople who say the cash-strapped government has fallen behind on payments.
Mexico’s federal government is running large budget deficits to pay for ambitious projects and entitlements programs from the previous administration.
Last month, suppliers and contractors to the state-owned oil company published an open letter saying they had not been paid $5 billion for the work they had done.
“This situation … has had negative consequences for our finances and for the regions where we operate,” the Mexican Association of Petroleum Services Companies wrote in the letter.
Under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was Sheinbaum’s political mentor, the government began transferring large sums of money to the state oil company Pemex, started major construction projects and implemented cash handout programs.
That led to federal budget deficits of about 6% of Mexico’s gross domestic product in 2024. Mexico’s finance ministry said it would aim to cut the deficit to 3.9% of GDP by 2025, but it was unclear whether it could achieve that. López Obrador left behind many unfinished train and oil refinery projects, and Sheinbaum expanded benefit programs for the elderly.
In November, rating agency Moody’s said it had downgraded its sovereign debt outlook from “stable” to “negative,” while reaffirming Mexico’s overall Baa2 credit rating and saying increased sovereign debt posed a risk to Mexico.
The cash crisis forces Sheinbaum to look for money with new and unusual taxes and financing sources.
Earlier this week, Sheinbaum said that much of the money made by eliminating independent oversight and regulatory bodies will go to the military to fund an increase in soldiers’ wages.
In November, Mexico’s Congress approved imposing a $42 immigration fee on every cruise ship passenger, with much of that money also going to the armed forces.
López Obrador and Sheinbaum have put the military in charge of all airports, airlines and rail lines, and many of the military-led projects appear to be big money losers, which may help explain the government’s push to find additional funding for the armed forces .
For example, the military largely built the “Mayan Train,” a tourist line that loops around the Yucatan Peninsula. But the train has attracted only 20% of the expected number of passengers when it was proposed.
The Mayan Train entered service on December 16, 2023. Although not quite ready yet (two relatively little-used routes will open later this month), the most popular and heavily traveled parts of the line are already in use.
On December 8, authorities announced that the railway had carried just over 600,000 passengers in its first 51 weeks. That’s just a fifth of the three million passengers authorities had said they would transport per year.
