On Friday August 28, , four days before I officially became the W. Kellogg Chair for Community Philanthropy at the Johnson Center, I knew what the topic of my inaugural blog for this platform would be.
Kellogg Foundation. It is important to state upfront that all the recipient organizations vehemently deny his allegations. Given that my chair was endowed jointly by the W. Another motivating factor for me is that this attack is not an isolated incident. Tren Maya was to be his signature infrastructure project. The plan was to lay 1, miles of rail lines around the perimeter of the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting key destinations and igniting economic prosperity by facilitating tourism and transportation of raw materials and manufactured goods.
From the start, the project has met with stiff resistance from an assortment of local, national, and international groups that believe the mega-project will bring disruption and environmental degradation.
Nevertheless, the consultation proceeded. During the month-long consultation at the end of , the government claimed high levels of participation and approval in both a popular referendum and assemblies aimed at indigenous groups. Local organizations cried foul. At present, two of the seven sections of the project have been halted by court orders, while construction proceeds on others Vanguardia , raising the question of how the train can function if its circuit is left incomplete.
AMLO claimed that these NGOs had hidden their sources of funding because they were acting on behalf of foreign interests, including multinational corporations and the U. State Department. He put his case succinctly on September What was wrong is that they worked in anonymity, clandestinely, without transparency, supposedly as independent non-governmental associations, so maybe they are independent, but from the people, not from the cabals of the powerful Presidency of the Republic, b.
