Mexico’s National Water Plan excludes the Libres Oriental Basin. Peasants demand a solution to the plundering of water by agro-industry.
The Movement in Defence of Water in the Libres Oriental Basin demands that President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo resolve the plundering of water in this region of Puebla, where one of the largest agro-industrial parks is concentrated, with the presence of the transnational companies Granjas Carroll, Driscoll’s, the Heineken brewery, Iberdrola and the Audi car company.
This position was expressed by Renato Romero, a member of the campesino movement, after the federal president announced the National Water Plan 2024-2030, from which the Libres Orientales basin was excluded, according to campesinos from Puebla.
Through social networks, the water defender asked the federal government to audit the management of the Puebla delegation of the National Water Commission (Conagua), in the hands of Beatriz Torres Trucios, and to examine concession by concession, well by well, in order to put an end to corruption, concession trafficking and water smuggling in the state.
Romero demanded that the Conagua, created during the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, should be dissolved, because it was corrupt and bureaucratic. He also demanded that foreign companies leave the Libres Oriental region because of their high water consumption and their monopoly on the best farmland, despite the fact that they pollute with solid waste, toxic gases and greenhouse gases, to the detriment of the local peasant economy.
Romero also called on the new federal government to lift the ban imposed 50 years ago in the region, which prevents ejidatarios and small landowners from having access to permits to dig agricultural irrigation wells.
He asked Sheinbaum Pardo for a scientific study on the use of any technology that interferes with the natural cycle of rainfall (aeroplanes, drones…), which was originally supposed to be the responsibility of the Secretariat of National Defence (Sedena), but which was never carried out in the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and which should be classified as a serious crime against the environment.
Finally, the Movimiento en Defensa del Agua de la Cuenca Libre-Oriental demands justice for the brothers murdered in Totalco, Perote, while they were peacefully demonstrating in front of the Granjas Carroll factory over water theft. Renato Romero called for the investigation of the company Granjas Carroll de México, the mayor of Perote and the state governments of Veracruz and Puebla, as well as federal officials who may have been responsible for the crime they committed by repressing the campesino movement.
He said that in this region of Puebla, which borders Veracruz, “there is no water crisis or drought, but rather looting, hoarding and theft of the resource by industry, agribusiness and landowners who cultivate hundreds of hectares with irrigation wells.
Romero said that former president López Obrador ‘did not touch the Conagua’, despite having information about corruption and concession deals within the body. He criticised the fact that López Obradore had also failed to promote initiatives to pass a new national water law that would put an end to deals and the ‘huachicoleo’ of water resources.
Finally, Romero said that the peasants were condemned to disappear with the Free Trade Agreement, which brought the import of cheap maize that destroyed the peasant agriculture they had been suffering for 30 years.
