A Bloody War for Water in Mexico

30th May Fill­ing a glass from his gar­den faucet, Juan Ramírez held the swirling water up to the intense Mex­i­can sun. Sat­is­fied with its puri­ty, he touched his glass gen­tly against my own. “Your health,” he toast­ed, before drink­ing it down in one gulp.

Mex­i­co City’s reser­voirs con­sis­tent­ly rank amongst the most con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sup­plies to any world cap­i­tal. Drink­ing from the tap here is sim­ply not rec­om­mend­ed. Ramírez’s water, how­ev­er, comes direct­ly from a vol­canic spring in San Bar­to­lo Ameyal­co, an oth­er­wise impov­er­ished town on the hilly south­west­ern out­skirts of Mex­i­co City, in the bor­ough called Alvaro Obre­gon.

“My grand­fa­ther drank from our town’s spring, and his grand­fa­ther before him,” Ramírez told me when I vis­it­ed the town this week­end. “Now the gov­ern­ment wants to pipe our town’s water direct­ly into rich house­holds and leave us with its con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed filth. We are not going to let that hap­pen.”

Ramírez is leader of a group in San Bar­to­lo Ameyal­co intent on keep­ing their water sup­ply local. Last Wednes­day, Ramírez along with approx­i­mate­ly two thou­sand oth­er res­i­dents of Ameyal­co attacked a police force of fif­teen hun­dred riot offi­cers who were guard­ing the final con­struc­tion stage of a pipeline that will con­nect the town’s vol­canic spring to San­ta Fe, one of the most afflu­ent dis­tricts of the Mex­i­can cap­i­tal.

In videos post­ed online, San Bar­to­lo res­i­dents are seen vio­lent­ly pum­mel­ing an offi­cer in riot gear who had fall­en to the ground.

The res­i­dents beat back both police and pipeline engi­neers, leav­ing at least 100 police offi­cers injured, 20 seri­ous­ly. Res­i­dents said dozens were injured on their side, and author­i­ties arrest­ed five peo­ple. Mex­i­co City’s gov­ern­ment warned that more arrests would come.

While the bat­tle of the morn­ing of May 21 was won by the res­i­dents of San Bar­to­lo Ameyal­co, what the locals now pop­u­lar­ly call the ‘Water War’ is sure to be long and tense.

“The peo­ple are unit­ed,” said María Chávez, one of the lead­ers of the town’s resis­tance, which has based itself in the pub­lic library. The munic­i­pal build­ing is papered with mes­sages of sup­port from oth­er towns in the region. A ban­ner pro­claimed: “Our water is not for sale.”

“When the local government’s plans to extend our pipelines fur­ther afield were drawn up last year, the author­i­ties refused to nego­ti­ate with us. Leonel Luna [the bor­ough del­e­gate] told us the water would be going to help oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in the region. It’s only now that we have put up a fight that they want to talk things over.”

Mex­i­co City’s gov­ern­ment sees the inter­na­tion­al busi­ness-aimed satel­lite city of San­ta Fe, a high-end urban­iza­tion zone rapid­ly built upon a dump­ing ground with no pri­or water infra­struc­ture, as a pil­lar of the local and even nation­al econ­o­my. Although the details of the plan remain murky, San Bar­to­lo Ameyal­co res­i­dents are right­ly sus­pi­cious of any scheme to divert their pure water to the inter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate offices near­by.

Ameyal­co, mean­ing “place where the water spouts” in Nahu­atl, was engulfed by Mex­i­co City’s urban sprawl in the 1950s. Its spring pro­duces 60 liters of pure water every sec­ond, an amount which runs thin for the 35,000 peo­ple who depend on it.

The nar­row streets still chan­nel the smells of pine sap and cook­ing tor­tillas on the cold moun­tain air. Neigh­bors chat in the mar­ket­place about past vic­to­ries and future strate­gies and chil­dren kick soc­cer balls against the main square’s murals of the village’s prized spring.

“When I was a child the water was end­less,” said Ale­jan­dra Espinosa, anoth­er town res­i­dent. Espinosa has lived her entire 54 years in San Bar­to­lo. “Now, due to the larg­er pop­u­la­tion, parts of the town can go a week at a time with­out run­ning water.”

Mex­i­co City has seri­ous prob­lems with water short­ages. One in three homes has no access to run­ning water, forc­ing them to depend heav­i­ly upon water trucks called pipas, which refill homes’ water tanks at exor­bi­tant prices. Sev­en­ty-four per cent of the capital’s water is pumped from under­ground, caus­ing the city itself to sink.

Leonel Luna, del­e­gate of the Alvaro Obre­gon bor­ough, has stat­ed the spring is to be redi­rect­ed to serve oth­er towns in the area. Luna claims oppo­si­tion to the project has been fund­ed by the same busi­ness­men who sell water from pipas, and who don’t want to lose their cus­tomer base if more run­ning water is made avail­able to oth­er towns.

Since the government’s announce­ment in April 2013 that the spring would be con­nect­ed to a wider net­work cov­er­ing the bor­ough, res­i­dents of San Bar­to­lo set up camp beside their main sup­ply tank to defend their pre­cious resource. The project to tap the San Bar­to­lo spring for wider use has been in the works for almost two decades, though, author­i­ties note.

On May 21, the town’s church bells sound­ed out across the hill­side to announce the author­i­ties’ arrival. The res­i­dents respond­ed to the sig­nal by hurl­ing rocks in the nar­row streets, launch­ing fire­works at the police line from win­dows and destroy­ing plumb­ing equip­ment.

“This water belongs to us,” says Manuel Rue­da, anoth­er activist I met at the pub­lic library the move­ment is using as a base of oper­a­tions. “We can’t end up pay­ing for the city’s poor plan­ning.”

In the town’s last func­tion­ing pub­lic laun­dry, where a com­mu­nal pool is flanked by wash­basins, Lau­ra Hernán­dez wrung the last of the soap from her son’s soc­cer jer­sey. She had man­aged to wash her entire family’s clothes using the sin­gle buck­et of water she had rationed her­self.

“Only half of the hous­es on my street have run­ning water these days, and I live at the top of town,” she said. “Peo­ple at the bot­tom of the hill can go weeks with­out water. How can we sell our water else­where when we have so lit­tle?”

Oth­ers say San Bar­to­lo is being self­ish with its resource.

“These peo­ple don’t under­stand that oth­er peo­ple in the region need their help,” said Rodri­go Pérez Gar­cía, an event pho­tog­ra­ph­er and reg­u­lar vis­i­tor to the town. “They have a free source of water yet they refuse to share it.”

“It’s pure self­ish­ness,” Pérez con­tin­ued. “At the very least there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sell it by under­cut­ting the water trucks.”

Lead­ers of the move­ment, how­ev­er, said they are not budg­ing. A series of march­es are planned for the com­ing weeks. In recent days, mem­bers of var­i­ous relat­ed or com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed social move­ments in the Mex­i­co City met­ro­pol­i­tan region have sent mes­sages of sup­port to San Bar­to­lo, sig­nal­ing a wider fight in the pub­lic polit­i­cal sphere in Mex­i­co relat­ed to the spring.

“We’re will­ing to nego­ti­ate,” said Juan Ramírez, the man who served me a glass of fresh spring water from his gar­den faucet. “We just don’t want to be treat­ed like brutes. We know our rights like every­body else.”