En esta noticia
Mexican businessman Miguel Quintana Pali, founder of Grupo Xcaret and born in the United States, presented President Claudia Sheinbaum with a mega-project to build an interoceanic canal to compete with the Panama Canal.
The project comes from a private study of more than 200 pages, financed by Quintana Pali himself, with contributions from experts in engineering, environmental science, and anthropology. For now, it is a proposal under evaluation, not a project approved by the Mexican government.
Who is Miguel Quintana Pali, the businessman behind the project?
Quintana Pali was born in 1945 in Boston, Massachusetts, and is trained as an architect. He is one of the most recognized and influential businessmen in Mexico.
In 1972 he founded a chain of furniture stores in Mexico City. In 1989 he opened Xcaret, the park that gave rise to his tourism empire in the Riviera Maya, and later added, together with his partners, other parks:
The Grupo Xcaret parks
- Xcaret
- Xplor
- Xplor Fuego
- Xoximilco
- Xenses
- Xavage
What does the mega-project to compete with the Panama Canal consist of?
The study proposes a 240-kilometer interoceanic canal between Oaxaca and Veracruz, capable of receiving Post-Panamax ships in a 15-hour crossing. It would allow up to 190 ships a day to pass through, compared with the 45 that cross Panama today.
The project figures
- Length: 240 km
- Width: 200 meters
- Ships per day: up to 190
- Estimated investment: US$ 218.157 million
- Construction time: 15 years
The interest for the United States is direct: 80% of the cargo that today crosses through Panama has its origin or destination in U.S. territory. A route from Long Beach to Miami via Mexico would reduce the trip by about 2,380 kilometers compared with Panama.