In mid-2020, the Ministry of Communications and Transportation announced that Aldesa, the concessionaire of the Tuxtla Gutiérrez-San Cristóbal de Las Casas toll road, would start expanding this communication route, at a cost of 1,45 million pesos.
On December 3 of that year, the expansion work began, with the resounding applause of the authorities who congratulated themselves that all the investment would come from the Spanish company.
Behind the good news, there was an elephant locked up. As soon as 2021 began, and without having advanced even one kilometer, Aldesa increased the toll fee by 10 pesos; which went from 53 to 63 pesos.
With the next increases in 2022 and 2023 we saw the elephant come out of our scrawny pockets. This year, the toll has increased by 14 pesos, which adds up to a total of 89 pesos, 38 pesos more than what was paid in 2019. In other words, Aldesa has increased the toll fee by 75 percent for an increasingly unsafe road and dangerous.
At first Aldesa took seriously the promise to finish the work in 24 months, as had been announced. To achieve his purpose, they hired workers who, in mixed shifts, mobilized dump trucks, road rollers, pavers, and excavators.
Later, the company forgot about the work and has maintained a few crews of workers just to justify the constant and scandalous increases in the toll.
Although Aldesa promised a motorway, the truth is that if the expansion work ever ends, it will be a toll road, since international standards recognize as motorways only those that have at least four lanes (two in each direction) and the San Cristóbal road will have three lanes.
Almost 30 months after the start of the work, and six months after it was supposed to start operating, the toll road is a road left to capricious fate, without adequate signs, but with loose gravel, stones, parked trucks and protective barriers with holes and dented by the constant crashes of motorists.
The road, already dangerous since its inception, has become a game with destiny, where accidents have multiplied; the only legislator who has raised her voice, has been the local deputy of Morena, Fabiola Ricci, who denounced the null progress of the construction and the evident insecurity for users.
Aldesa does not worry about finishing the work. There is no authority forcing it. It will continue with the business of increasing the toll, of maintaining some crews of workers so that some movement can be seen in the work, without caring about the safety of the users of this communication route, which last week was the scene of a multiple crash with results fatal.
At the lazy pace with which the work progresses, the years will pass and Aldesa will continue complicating the lives of motorists and demanding an ever-increasing toll.
The fear is that the years will go by, and the five or six crews of workers will continue, in an impossible task to add a new lane to the highway, as long as the Aldesa company continues extracting resources from the poorest pockets of Mexicans.
Source: Chiapas Paralelo
