Few cases of corruption, inefficiency and perversity have been as evident as that of line 12 (L-12). The whole story is full of opacity, it reaches three local administrations of the CDMX and the current one of the republic, it shows how liar a political current is, first in the PRD and now in MORENA, whose motto is honesty and transparency. It also shows something else: that the personal political interests of President López, Claudia Sheinbaum, Miguel Ángel Mancera and Marcelo Ebrard, among others, are more important than justice. If there is a point where the shed that AMLO has set up has collapsed, it is exactly in the matter of line 12.
There is no deception, everything has been done in broad daylight: the lack of justice, the pressure on the victims, the irresponsibility of the construction companies and, most unfortunate, the protection from the presidency enjoyed by the main parties involved. No waiver or accusation; no hint of guilt and those of us who point them out are undoubtedly “hypocrites, conservatives and slanderers.”
On the night of May 3, 2021, at the height of the Olivos Metro, the structure that supported the train collapsed forming a sinister letter V. What followed was a series of events that, unfortunately, are not over yet. the victims or the authorities. In that “incident”, as the head of government described it, trying to minimize it, 26 people who mostly returned to their homes lost their lives and dozens more were injured; many of them still carry the aftermath of the event.
That day and the following ones we listened to the same script that we have heard from the officials of any party sign: an investigation will be carried out until its last consequences, the victims and their families will be attended to, etc. Claudia Sheinbaum was present at the scene, but President López never appeared, true to his habit of not taking risks in situations that are not controlled. After the fall of the train, I am not exaggerating if he stated that the eyes were focused on Marcelo Ebrard.
In 2012, the then head of government Marcelo Ebrard inaugurated the Bicentennial Line or 12, which he presented as the most modern in the system. However, from the beginning, things smelled bad. Originally planned to cost 17.5 billion pesos, it ended up costing 26.0 MMP, that is, almost 50% more. Rumors of defects and corruption have appeared since then.
Almost from the beginning, it was necessary to make important injections of resources for a “maintenance” that rather seemed to repair initial errors. Everything was so scandalous that, at the end of his mandate, Ebrard left the country. Rumors that accusations could be made against him continued for years. The new head of government, Miguel Ángel Mancera, did not proceed against his former comrade, he preferred to become an accomplice. Who knows if he will now regret this decision.
A year and a half after its inauguration, in 2014, the line had to close 11 of 20 stations to correct multiple manufacturing faults. There was talk of incompatibility between trains and rails, among other aspects. The part of the elevated section comprised from Tláhuac to Culhuacán. The then director of the Metro, Joel Ortega, mentioned “undulating wear on the track” and “systemic failures that are detrimental to the provision of the service and that force a progressive decrease in speed.”
A diagnosis of a company in that year concluded that the line had “a series of flaws in planning, design and construction that caused an overload on the tracks and their premature deterioration.” In 2017, after the earthquakes, the director of the Metro, Jorge Gaviño, pointed out that line 12 had “born with endemic problems” and that costly maintenance would have to be carried out every year.
Were the problems that line 12 had known until 2014 and then 2017? No. Recently, the organization Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity released an analysis of the logs of the construction of the L-12. They contain the same information that another company found in 2014: serious and structural failures. It was known before the inauguration that it was not safe to travel on that train. Ebrard, Mancera and Sheinbaum, who now ignores and sues the Norwegian company DNV, which she herself pondered to make an opinion, was silent.
The third part of three that the DNV company had the obligation to deliver had an eight-month delay and has been ignored by Claudia Sheinbaum, arguing that it was not done with the agreed methodology and that a lawyer collaborated in the work and filed a legal appeal against the President Lopez. The company, for its part, assured that the final report has already been delivered, in accordance with the methodological requirements and without any conflict of interest in the work. For the time being, this third part of the expert report has been hidden, which most likely fully implicates the current capital administration in the problem.
These two unpresentables, Sheinbaum and Ebrard, are candidates for the presidential chair by MORENA. They should have been prosecuted or, at least, have lost their commissions, but they are protected by López, who has become an accomplice in the deaths of that May 3.