As a reader of Mexico News Daily, you know all about virtual trainMaybe you've read about Transoceanic RailwayBut when was the last time you heard about the Sonora Ghost Train?
The name doesn't refer to a haunted locomotive: The “Tren Fantasma” got its nickname when Sonorans saw the railroad being built but couldn't understand why it was being built — or who was building it.
Their only clue is a leaked map of the local rail network. It shows the existing rail network, which runs from the port of Guaymas north through Hermosillo, Ímuris, and the border town of Nogales before finally crossing into the United States. It also shows a new section of rail that has yet to be built. Instead of following International Highway 15 north as it currently does, the rail network branches off east at Ímuris, taking a longer route north to Nogales.
Some locals worry about the railroad dividing their community, construction along their irrigation canals, and damage to protected areas. Others are alarmed when state officials offer to buy their land for as little as 1.8 pesos (less than 10 US cents) per meter, well below market value.
Biologist Mirna Manteca of the Wildlands Network, an NGO that works to conserve and restore wildlife to nature in North America, sought to learn about the project after locals from the town of Ímuris brought their concerns to her attention.
Ímuris officials told him it was a state project. The state said it was a federal project. Manteca contacted one federal office after another, but none had any information about the railway being built in Ímuris.
“There is no real information. There is no official project,” Manteca told The Associated Press in November 2023“They seem to be taking turns taking responsibility… Like fighting ghosts.”
Three days after the AP story broke, Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo said at a news conference that the new construction was part of a project to reroute the existing Guaymas-Nogales rail line. The state plans to modernize the Guaymas port, with federal support, and expects increased rail traffic. That would require the tracks to be moved from Nogales to a less populated area.
And as with the Mayan Train, the Army was tasked with building new tracks.
The Ghost Train Keeps Moving
Today, construction continues and the Ghost Train becomes more real by the day. However, information about the project remains largely secret.
What we do know is that port of guaymasin southern Sonora, is getting some improvements.
“With the modernization of the port of Guaymas… it will be possible to receive deep-draft tourist and commercial vessels,” Sonora Governor Alfonso Durazo said in his third annual report on September 13, adding that the port would serve Chihuahua and the southwestern United States.
The new cargo haulage will rely on Ferromex trains that run from Guaymas to Nogales, Sonora. The trains cross the U.S. in the middle of downtown Nogales, Arizona, just a few meters from where cars and pedestrians cross the international border. Three to four trains pass through the city each day, exacerbating the city’s international border congestion and passing dangerously close to homes and public infrastructure.
With the estimated increase in train traffic to 15-20 trains per day, broad agreement about the need to move the rails.
“It is absolutely essential to remove the tracks from Nogales,” said Sergio Müller, strategy coordinator of the Sonora environmental collective Caminantes del Desierto. “But the problem is how to do it and where to do it.”
The project “makes no sense,” Müller said. “It ends at the same point where the U.S. border currently ends.”
On the U.S. side, the Union Pacific Railroad has not indicated any intention to move its section of track. So instead of going around the city, Mexico will run underneath it. Under the proposed rail move, the track would approach Nogales from the east, then go more than 100 feet (30 meters) beneath the city into a 1.5-mile (2.5-kilometer) tunnel to the border.
Traces and setbacks
But the tunnel’s construction has run into problems, according to Jesús Ibarra Félix, a Hermosillo investigative reporter who covers corruption and accountability.
“Neighbors tell us almost every day through phone calls or WhatsApp messages that they feel vibrations under their houses almost every day. They even send photos with cracks in the walls,” Ibarra said, explaining that the company used explosives to create the tunnels.
Outside of the city, much of the route is ready for construction. About a third of the actual track has been built and none of the route’s six new bridges were completed until early September, Ibarra said.
Ibarra also said tunnel workers told him they were a year behind schedule, having only progressed 500 meters since they began blasting.
“It is impossible for the construction company to complete the tunnel on time according to the contract,” which expires on Sept. 30, Ibarra said.
Who actually built the railroad?
Who holds the contract? Ibarra's long-term investigation into the railroad relocation project for the newspaper El Universal focuses on that question. The investigation, which recently won second place in National Investigative Journalism Competitionsponsored by the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI), found that the Army awarded contracts worth nearly 650 million pesos (US$33.9 million) to companies whose major shareholders had participated in ““factura,” or invoice fraud, and embezzlement of public funds during previous projects.
Responding to the investigation, President Lopez Obrador calls for investigation of Hermosillo 3PM companythe main beneficiaries of these dubious contracts.
Activism begins to subside
In Ímuris, most residents have now stopped speaking out openly against the project, according to environmental activist Sergio Müller.
“There are still communities resisting in Ímuris, but they continue their resistance through legal channels, not civil resistance.”
The owners of Rancho Aribabi, a government-certified voluntary conservation area on the railroad line, “were heavily pressured by the Army to sell, and yes, they did sell,” Müller said. After that, the former owners stopped making public statements about the matter.
In May, the new owners filed a request to cancel Aribabi's designation as a voluntary conservation area, paving the way for the project's environmental approval in August.
It seems highly unlikely that the infrastructure project will be completed by the end of September, as originally planned. Instead, the project will likely continue into President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum's term, who will take office on October 1.
Rose Egelhoff is a freelance writer living in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. Follow his work at RoseEgelhoff.com