A US company said Monday that Mexican police and soldiers illegally entered and seized a cargo port that operates on land it owns on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.
Alabama-based Vulcan Materials said police forced their way into its pier in Punta Venado, near Playa del Carmen, last week.
“It must be clear that the rule of law is no longer safe in Mexico for foreign companies,” the company stated in a statement. “This invasion, not supported by legal warrants, violates Vulcan’s proprietary and commercial rights.”
Police and marines occupied the facilities last Tuesday night, and were still there on Monday, according to the company.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been locked in a dispute with Vulcan for several years. López Obrador needs the pier to receive cement, pulverized stone and other materials to complete his flagship project, a tourist route known as the Mayan Train. The president closed the Vulcan quarries in May last year, arguing that the company has extracted or exported stone without approval.
Video of the incident shows a long column of police and military vehicles opening the locked fence and entering the property. Vulcan says that the officers did not present any documents justifying such action.
The company claimed that the police officers then supervised the unloading of cement at the pier. The cement was apparently destined for the Mayan Train project, which the president has promised to inaugurate in December despite being seriously behind schedule.
Although Mexican cement company Cemex previously had an agreement with Vulcan to use the port, that agreement has since expired. Both sides have sought protection in court.
Neither López Obrador’s office nor Cemex immediately responded to requests to comment on the situation.
Because there are no local supplies of the pulverized stone needed to stabilize the railways, López Obrador has been forced to import the product from Cuba.
Even so, the Cuban ships are forced to arrive at the port of Sisal, on the other side of the Yucatán Peninsula, from where the product is transported by trucks for about 300 kilometers (180 miles) to the place where the train is being built. .
