by ANN LOUISE DESLANDES
Candidates in Mexico’s upcoming general election promise to fix water scarcity, but the problem runs deeper than the polls.
“Here the water is extracted, sold and, with impunity, given to [transnational companies] such as Bonafont, Volkswagen, [and] Ternium,” said Nahua Indigenous activist Adela in conversation with Desinformemonos. Hailing from the Sierra Norte region of the central Mexican state of Puebla, she was explaining the many facets of the Nahua peoples’ struggle against the corporate capture of water in the region.
Adela—also a member of the organization Pueblos Unidos de la Región Cholulteca y de los dos Volcanes—draws on a generations-long struggle to protect their land. In March, she attended the Fourth National Assembly for Water and Life in the central state of Tlaxcala. Nearly 600 participants from over 150 collectives and organizations from over a dozen states attended the assembly. A fifth assembly will be held in August.
“The Nahua people who inhabit the region since millenary times have defended our territory, we have a culture of struggle and defense,” she said.
Three years ago the people of los dos Volcanes shut down the well at the Bonafont bottled water plant in Puebla City, owned by Paris-based, agribusiness giant Danone. This was a moment that Adela said continues to be a “symbol of freedom that we as peoples have built and that we sustain.”
Turning off the tap at Bonafont released millions of liters of water back into local rivers and streams, according to multiple testimonies.
After some four months of blockading the Bonafont plant and shutting down its operations, the Indigenous and local communities protesting the company entered the plant itself and took it over, disabling surveillance cameras.
The communities occupying the plant renamed it Altepelmecalli, meaning “the house of the people” in the Indigenous Nahuatl language.
For 11 months, the site was home to cultural and community events, talks, a library, farm animals, artworks, a media center, and a free community doctor. In February 2022, military and state security forces violently evicted protestors.
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