Mexicans in Guadalajara demanding clean water face repression on streets

Over the past few days, Guadalajara, Jalisco has seen the mobilizations of the Mexican masses concerning the contamination of their water. Hundreds of colonias (barrios or districts) have seen their water come out brown, smelling of feces and inorganic material.

A major demonstration took place on Sunday, October 11. It was promoted by social media influencers in the state, and the people of Guadalajara made it clear to the governor, Pablo Lemus, that they would show up en masse. The governor responded by assuring the people of the chance to voice their frustration, which came to be a false promise.

Around 10,000 protesters were met with violent repression on the streets, being both teargassed and hosed down. Families who came out to demonstrate were confronted by riot police. 39 people were arrested, which activists have referred to as kidnappings, due to Mexico’s history of disappearing political prisoners.

The next day, during her morning Conferencia del Pueblo (a morning address that the president gives to the Mexican people), President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the police’s actions, calling on the governor of Jalisco to give an extensive report of Sunday’s events.

Governor Lemus countered by spewing false information about the events that took place, and he offered to hand this water service problem to private corporations, all the while appropriating progressive talking points of supporting the people to exercise their right to demonstrate. Sheinbaum responded, “We do not agree with supporting the privatization of the water service.”

How did this crisis explode?

Like the October 12 editorial in the progressive Mexican news outlet, La Jornada, states, this was an inevitable outcome of Lemus and his party’s (Movimiento Ciudadano) negligence of this almost 20-year-old issue.

The issue had been a priority of the MORENA (Movimineto de Regeneracion Nacional), the current governing party of Mexico) party for the past six years, through the completion of the El Zapotillo dam in the village of the same name. Only this time, it would include the indigenous and peasant communities of the village on the planning table, whose resistance movement against the dam caused its halt back in 2009. Former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says that the just resistance to the dam was sparked by corporate greed and polices of the neoliberal government that was in power at the time.

This lack of cooperation with the ruling progressive MORENA party from people like Lemus has caused the systemic violence of thousands of people in Guanajuato, taking away the human right to clean water.

#International #Mexico #PeoplesStruggles #Water