Farmers protested at the Zaragoza International Bridge to oppose changes to the General Customs Law, fearing that their permits will be revoked by the government. The protesters were joined by truckers. During their demonstration, they stormed the customs administrative offices to ask the President of Mexico not to succumb to the temptation of “hoarding water.”
PHOTO: MANUEL SÁNCHEZ/CUARTOSCURO.COM
MEXICO CITY. Truck drivers and farmers blocked highways to protest the reform to the Water Law, with which the federal government promises to bury the 1992 “Salinas law” that turned water into a commodity.
The tension has divided opinions. Authorities asserted that this new law will finally guarantee the human right to water and eliminate historical privileges for large concession holders. “Water must cease to be seen as a commodity and be recognized as a human right,” insisted Efraín Morales López, head of the National Water Commission (CONAGUA).
But from the citizen’s perspective, expert Elena Burns dissects the initiative and issues a warning: it is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” The former deputy director of CONAGUA, known for having halved the number of concessions granted to large companies during her tenure, maintains that the project perpetuates a “privatizing and extractive” model. This coincides with the National Autonomous Water Comptroller’s Office, which denounces that the proposal was ruled on by CONAGUA itself, omitting the agreements of 16 open citizen parliaments.
At the heart of the dispute is whether the law will truly dismantle the system that, for 33 years, allowed large industries to amass 600,000 concessions—up from an initial 2,000—while rural communities suffer water shortages; or whether, under the guise of human rights rhetoric, it will simply perfect the same mechanism of monopolization, now with even more power concentrated in a National Water Commission (CONAGUA) notorious for opacity and corruption.
The Mirage of Reform: Superficial Changes, Intact Structures
The official promise sounds convincing: to replace the 1992 National Water Law—which, during the Salinas de Gortari administration, transformed water into a tradable commodity—with a new General Water Law that prioritizes the human right to water. However, the National Autonomous Water Comptroller’s Office (CNAA) warns that this is “an attempt to perpetuate the Salinas-era law, with minimal changes.”
The ruling preserves the structures and mechanisms that for three decades have led to the overexploitation of aquifers, pollution, and water marginalization of large sectors of the population. Even worse, according to the CNAA (National Water Commission), it “includes a chapter dedicated to ‘promoting and encouraging’ the privatization of hydraulic works, and allows the privatization of water and sanitation systems,” directly contradicting the official discourse of decommodification.
The legislative process highlights this fundamental contradiction. While authorities speak of inclusion, the CONAGUA (National Water Commission) project was approved by the same institution, completely ignoring the citizen proposals generated in 16 Open Parliaments. Elena Burns, who compiled these agreements, points out the inconsistency of maintaining two simultaneous laws: “It makes no constitutional sense to have two laws, especially when one law states that water must be recognized as a human right and the other determines who has access to water, and will maintain the system as it is.”
The CNAA regrets that the project maintains the Basin Councils, “where only large concession holders are represented, as the sole body for government-citizen coordination.” Multinationals like Coca-Cola, large breweries, and mining companies continue to have a voice, while Indigenous peoples, community systems, and communities affected by pollution are excluded.
The Hidden Subsidy: Large Industries That Don’t Pay
One of the most serious flaws in the current legislation—and one that the reform fails to address—is the discretionary nature of water rights collection. Elena Burns presents compelling figures: large industrial users “have concessions for 4.3 billion cubic meters of water and pay fees on only 900 million. In 2023, they should have paid 56 billion pesos, but they only paid 12 billion.”
The National Water Commission (CNAA) is more specific: in 2023, industrial and service concession holders declared only 951 million cubic meters of the 4.36 billion they were authorized to use, and the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) only collected 12.4 billion of the 55.6 billion pesos owed. This water tax evasion represents a hidden subsidy of billions to large industries, completely distorting any principle of equitable management.
The reform proposes drastically reducing the timeframe for requesting concession extensions: from four and a half years to a mere six months. According to Burns, this will be “a mechanism for the mass extinction of small concessions, which currently represent 80% of the total but control only 20% of the water.”
A farmer or ejido member rarely has consistent legal advice to remind them to comply with this procedure within such narrow timeframes. This seemingly technical change functions as a perfect mechanism of “attrition,” where the inability of small producers to navigate the bureaucracy will result in the massive loss of their rights, freeing up volumes for large concession holders.
The True Face of Water grabbing: Agribusiness and Thermoelectric Plants
Burns draws attention to the process of water grabbing by agribusiness since the 1990s, particularly by sugar mills and bottling plants, which, along with thermoelectric plants, are the main users of water for agricultural purposes. While authorities announce multimillion-dollar investments in irrigation technology in exchange for concession holders returning the water they have saved, President Sheinbaum has denounced that some refuse to hand it over and that “some are even selling it.”
This practice is especially serious when it involves irrigation districts that sell water to municipalities that they obtained free of charge, commercializing a right that should be public.
CONAGUA: Arbitrator or Biased Judge?
The proposal centralizes the exclusive power to grant or revoke concessions in CONAGUA. While in theory this seeks to end the informal market for buying and selling water, for civil society organizations (CSOs) it means giving all the power to “an opaque agency where multiple cases of corruption have been verified.”
Burns expresses concern about the difficulties rural communities face in accessing CONAGUA’s digital systems and questions the criteria the institution would use to decide who receives concessions. “For us, it is a mistake to grant all the power to a government institution without any criteria, transparency, or participation,” he states, pointing out that the Constitution requires citizen participation and participation from all three levels of government.
In addition, one of the most serious shortcomings highlighted by the CNAA is that the proposal “excludes the recognition of the water rights of Indigenous peoples and communities,” a right established constitutionally since 2001. It also fails to recognize presidential decrees, which have a higher legal standing than concessions.
This omission is not technical but political: it ignores historical rights and community-based water management systems that have demonstrated greater sustainability than the centralized state model.
Incompetent Management: The Libres-Oriental Aquifer Case
Francisco Castillo Montemayor, former head of the Environment Ministry in Puebla, exemplifies management failures with the case of the Libres-Oriental Aquifer: “Until 2019, it had four to seven million cubic meters of available water, and in 2020, it suddenly appeared with almost no availability. Currently, it has a deficit of 22 million cubic meters.”
His diagnosis is conclusive:
“The water problem in 70% of the country is due to inefficient management, not a scarcity of resources.”
This technical incompetence, combined with economic interests, has created an artificial crisis that justifies reforms which, instead of correcting the problem, exacerbate it.
For her part, Elena Burns summarizes the experts’ verdict: the initiative “leads us to believe that it simply perpetuates the extractive and mercantilist system. The National Water Law makes no mention of the human right to water, nor does it give us any tools to compel the government to respect citizens’ human right to water.”
The omission of the free minimum vital supply—an essential element of the human right to water—confirms that the rhetoric of rights is merely a facade to maintain a system of privileges intact. While the government announces that it will modify the initiative following the protests, public distrust continues to grow: people fear that the changes will be cosmetic and that, after the apparent debate, a model will be consolidated that perpetuates water as a commodity for the few and a source of thirst for the many.
Original article by Laura Buconi at Pie de Página, November 30th, 2025.
Photo by Manuel Sánchez.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.