Last week, Mexican police and soldiers stormed and seized a cargo port and land on Mexico’s Caribbean coast owned by the Alabama-based Vulcan Materials company.
Video from the incident showed a long line of police and military patrol trucks open a locked gate and enter the property. Vulcan said they did not present any legal paperwork to justify their actions. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican from Alabama, released a statement saying that this forcible seizure of private property is unlawful and unacceptable.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been in a dispute with Vulcan for several years. López Obrador needs the dock to get cement, crushed stone and other materials into the area to finish his pet project, a tourist train known as the Train Maya. The president shut down Vulcan’s stone quarries last May, arguing the company had extracted or exported stone without approval.
Cemex, a Mexican company, had previously agreed to use the port, but Vulcan stated that the agreement had expired.
