Miguel López Vega, a land rights advocate for the Nahua community of Zacatepec in the Cholulteca region of Puebla, denounces the plunder of the region by the State Water and Sanitation Commission (CEAS), Concesiones Integrales, and the state’s municipalities, “which are hijacking and stealing our water.” There are 12 wells that were dug thirty years ago and have left rivers and springs dry. López Vega explains that, tired of so much abuse, the communities have organized and are awaiting the resolution of a legal injunction to permanently close the wells and put an end to the plunder.
Miguel’s testimony comes during the Seventh National Assembly for Water, Life, and Territory, held in Zitacua, Nayarit—a community whose name means “place where corn grows”—inhabited by families from the Wixárika, Cora, Tepehuano, and Mexicanero peoples. On August 8 and 9, indigenous communities and groups from across the country gathered there to fight against megaprojects that threaten the water sources in their territories.
In Zitacua, the local population is defending the San Pedro Mezquital River, which is threatened by the state-sponsored “El Nayar” dam project. Some 500 people from 18 indigenous communities gathered here to discuss the threats to their water sources, led by state, private, and extractive projects. They spoke about the damage caused by fracking, hydroelectric dams, garbage dumps and landfills, the pharmaceutical industry, agribusiness, deforestation due to illegal logging, urbanization, and the “touristification” of their territories, among other threats they face.
Coming from 18 states of the Republic, seven countries, and 18 indigenous peoples, the attendees shared their struggles and acts of resistance. They gathered to answer the call of the San Pedro Mezquital, Santiago, Lerma, Mololoa, Tulija, Salsipuedes, Xanga Ndá Ge, Las Canas, Chuviscar, Sacramento, Amealco, Conchos, Acaponeta, Xanadú, Petlapa, San Buenaventura, Arareco, Mayo Prieto, Metlapanapa, Xopana, Xotiac Bolaños, Tulija, Álamo, Tenbembé, Coyuca, Río Bravo, and Amealco. From the streams Los Guayabos, Chicles, Arenal, and Sarco. The Lerma Santiago and Libre Oriental de San José Chiapa watersheds. The Matatipac, Alto Atoyac, and Ojo de Agua Tenbembé aquifers. The springs of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Huitepec, Tulica, Agua Clara, Jataté, Xochimilco, and San Isidro. Lakes Chapala and Calaque; the lagoons of San Pedro Lagunillas, Santiago Mexquititlán Tinamate, Guadalupe, Arareco, and Lagunas de Zempoala; the wetlands of Santa Cruz de las Flores and the lakes of Tlajomulco de Zúniga; the bays of Topolobampo and Ohuira. And the hills of San Juan, La Reina, Toltepec, and Tequixquiac.
At the assembly, the topics of struggle and preservation were discussed. River diversions, the extraction of groundwater, minerals, and gas were classified as “crimes” against water. “In Mexico, we live under a system based on the exploitation of our Mother Earth, the imposition of megaprojects, mining, illegal logging, water hoarding, land-use changes, and the control of organized crime and criminal violence against those of us who defend our territories—a system that represents a permanent war threatening our existence as peoples and as humanity,” they warned in their final declaration.
In Mexico, as stated in the consensus document, “we are facing a structural onslaught that ranges from the pretense of legality to direct violence. On the one hand, institutions facilitate plundering through illegal concessions, the systematic manipulation of official data, and the imposition of regional and local ecological reorganization plans that serve as a façade to authorize land-use changes already agreed upon with powerful industrial, mining, and real estate groups. In addition to this is a tailored legal framework, such as the recent law on Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples, which purports to regulate, limit, and establish administrative procedures so that these communities can be recognized as subjects of public law and exercise autonomy—yet it fails to recognize territorial rights and further establishes mechanisms allowing their traditional knowledge and cultural heritage to enter the market and be legally appropriated by large corporations.”
Regarding the passage of the National Water Law, they warned that the legislative changes “are reinforced by the reform of the Amparo Law and, more broadly, by the judicial reform that limits our peoples’ access to justice under the guise of progress and development.” When a river is destroyed, they noted, “a part of our history is destroyed, a part of our very existence; when a spring is polluted, our people fall ill; when indigenous territory is invaded, our collective identity is attacked.”
In the case of San Pedro Mezquital, in Nayarit—the last free-flowing river in the Sierra Madre Occidental—“there are plans to impose the El Nayar Dam, formerly known as Las Cruces.” They claimed that the project’s name is being changed “as if that would erase the ecocide it represents,” since if that dam is built, “it would affect the natural flow of the San Pedro River and all the forms of life it sustains.” Fishing and agriculture would also be harmed, and ceremonial sites of the Naayeri, O’dam, Wixárika, and Meshikan peoples would be destroyed.
At the end of the assembly, they said they felt stronger, knowing that “we are not fighting only for our communities; we are fighting for the balance of nature, biodiversity, forests, rivers, and the right of future generations to live on a planet where life still exists.” They insisted on walking together, on turning their words into agreements, and those agreements into organization, and “that our organization become hope and action, because water has no owner, because the land is not for sale, because life is not up for negotiation.”
The list of grievances presented by the peoples at the Seventh Assembly was long. Equally long is the resistance of those who have decided to defend their territory. There is no choice when it comes to water—literally, their very lives depend on it.
Original text by Gloria Muñoz Ramírez published in the Supplemento Ojarasca of La Jornada ed.# 353.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.