Mexico: Cartels, Construction & the Battle for Water

Behind its idyllic beaches, turquoise waters and lush forests, Mexico is running out of water. The cause is global warming, which is hitting Mexico even harder than the rest of Latin America, but that’s not the only problem. The race for economic development, necessary in a country where 30% of the population lives below the poverty line, is slowly destroying resources, while the cartels are trying to monopolise water supplies.

In Yucatan, the nerve center of Mexican tourism, millions of visitors and newly settled workers have caused water consumption to skyrocket. The construction of the Maya Train, intended to connect the main tourist sites, has led to the pollution and even destruction of thousands of underground lakes which are the region’s only source of drinking water.

In kitchens and bathrooms in Chiapas, water now only flows for a few hours a day. While residents are banned from drawing water from the aquifers, Coca-Cola has a contract allowing it to extract over a million of litres of water a day. As water becomes more and more valuable, the cartels see it as another resources to control. In Michoacan, armed drug traffickers are driving farmers off their land. Water is looted, resold at exorbitant prices, or trafficked to other high- yield sectors such as avocado farming. But resistance is mounting, as in the town of Coahuayana, where residents have taken up arms to defend themselves.