Building Alternatives to Drought and Water Plundering

Mexico City has reached record temperatures in recent months, and the dams that supply drinking water to the 20 million inhabitants that make up the metropolitan area, of which 9.2 million live within Mexico City, are reaching critical levels of scarcity.

In the Iztapalapa district, one of the most marginalized areas of the city, almost 2 million people suffer daily from water shortages and microclimates that make it unbearable to go out in the street in the middle of the day because of the heat reflected by the asphalt. However, for many families in this district, it is common to have to queue in the sun to get water from the government’s water pipes, because the water supply from the plumbing system is never constant. Several days can go by without a drop of water from the tap.

In the midst of this urban chaos, surrounded by hills, lies the community of Acapatzingo, home to 596 families belonging to the Organización Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente (Francisco Villa Popular Independent Leftist Organization, or OPFVII), more commonly known as Los Panchos. Unlike its neighbours, this community has infrastructure projects such as a large cistern and water purification and potabilization plants, so that its members do not lack this vital liquid in their daily lives.

Corruption and government neglect of the communities living on the margins of this large city have been met with organized urban movements taking on the state’s obligation to provide basic services to the population. Los Panchos emerged more than 35 years ago out of the need for adequate housing. Today the organization has developed a model that addresses and resolves more than just the material needs of its members.

Throughout the years, building on class consciousness and community work, they have managed to establish material conditions that effectively meet their needs from an ecological perspective. As a result, OPFVII has developed infrastructure and internal policies for their communities such as urban gardens, solar panel lighting for common areas, and electricity consumption regulations to avoid waste.

Adaptation and Organization

Aware of the need to adapt to the drastically fluctuating water levels, the members of Acapatzingo, following the advice of experts, dug four rainwater absorption wells to find the water table and thus avoid flooding. The deep tubes of the wells contain layers of different materials, such as sand and gravel, through which the water is filtered as it travels downward, returning into the aquifer as clean water. To keep them in perfect working order, a designated committee cleans the filters every month and reuses the sediment and sludge they capture to nourish their urban gardens, for example. In the community, everything is reused.

To operate the water treatment plants, they use a more sophisticated system. The water coming into the treatment plant is purified through mineral and activated carbon filters, then undergoes chlorination and ozonation, and is finally subjected to a UV filter. After this process, explains David López, part of OPFVII’s political committee, the water comes out with the necessary minerals for human consumption and is of very good quality. “It even tastes better than bottled water, to which the inhabitants of the Mexico City are very accustomed”, he assures.

In this part of the city, floods and extreme drought are very common. “More than ten years ago, the members of the organization started to develop alternatives to mitigate the structural lack of basic services and the environmental changes that challenged their community life”, David says.

Their political project includes diverse practices of care for the environment and the commons that have been the result of reflection and a deep environmental and class consciousness. For example, during the Christmas holidays, luminous decorations that consume a lot of energy are prohibited, since it is known that power is scarce and more expensive at that time of year. Necessary uses are prioritized. It is rare to find similar experiences of resilience in cities with characteristics such as the Mexican capital. David explains: “The result of this community is due to training, commitment to the community, solidarity, and mutual aid, which give life to spaces where anyone can feel at peace. More than resilience, it is political organization.”

Mexico City has navigated the paradox between water abundance and scarcity since its foundation. The basin where the city is situated has no natural channels for water drainage to other bodies of water outside it.

The first inhabitants of this area, the Mexica people, maintained a certain harmony with the lakescape. In colonial times, invaders attempted to replicate an urban model similar to the cities of Renaissance Europe, causing the water ecosystem to collapse. The ancient city of Tenochtitlán, which gave rise to what we know today as Mexico City, was founded, according to legend, when a god ordered the centre of civilization to be built where an eagle stood on a cactus. This was the beginning of the construction of the great Tenochtitlán on an islet in the middle of a gigantic system of lakes.

Due to the characteristics of the basin, this pre-Hispanic people implemented great hydraulic engineering works to regulate the flow of water and ingenious techniques for the cultivation of food. These were based on chinampas, structures built with pillars driven deep into the lake and filled with soil and plant matter until they protrude above the water and food and flowers can be grown on the surface. Some chinampas are still in use in areas of the city such as Xochimilco and Tláhuac. The pre-Hispanic founders of the city also had an ecological system for managing waste, which did not go into the lake, but was turned into fertilizer to maintain water purity.

Historically, the authorities have not addressed the root of the problem, and official alternatives to the current drought season leave the city’s inhabitants with many concerns about water pollution and scarcity.

While the Mexica were able to regulate their environment, after the Spanish invasion, the project of building Mexico City faced great environmental challenges. Unlike the Mexica, the Spaniards did not know the extent of seasonal rainfall, and their attempts to drain the territory and turn it into a Spanish-style city were not the right treatment for an endorheic basin that allows no outflow of water. Documented catastrophes such as the great floods of 1604 and 1607 forced the colonizers to build the first artificial drainage.

Still, the flooding episodes did not stop completely. For this reason, they constructed another monumental project, the Great Drainage Canal, one of the most spectacular engineering works of the time. However, this was still not enough to drain the wastewater, so almost 70 years later, the canal was complemented with another great drainage project through which wastewater is drawn off and out of the city, thus avoiding saturation of the drainage system and consequent flooding.

Since the beginning of the colonial urban project, infrastructure has been insufficient to recharge the aquifers and manage the rainwater, which joins the wastewater. At the same time, the over-exploitation of underground wells is growing, and is the reason why certain parts of Mexico City have been sinking over time, such as the cathedral and Zócalo, the city’s central square, which sink approximately 7.4 centimetres each year.

Maintaining the city’s water supply has only been possible thanks to the importation of water from other territories through a monumental water system that stores, supplies, purifies, and distributes water for the inhabitants and industries of Mexico City. The Cutzamala system, one of the biggest drinking water systems of the world, supplies water to a large part of Mexico City, supported by some local wells that supplement the demand of inhabitants and large industries.

Since 2023, the impacts of the El Niño phenomenon, a climate pattern that returns every few years and is characterized by long droughts, has put the Cutzamala system in check due to shortages in the dams from which it is fed. In January 2024, a deficit of 37.8 percent was reported; historical averages did not fall below 60 percent. It has been a challenging year for city authorities, who have had to ration water and try to repair the damaged infrastructure which causes about 40 percent of the water to be lost to leaks.

Meanwhile, in the midst of unprecedented heat waves, city dwellers have been called upon to ration drinking water, to bathe in the shortest possible time, to reuse water for cleaning, and not to wash their cars directly with hoses. For some wealthier residents, this call to restrict individual water use is a novelty, while for many other groups in the city, the current drought has not been the first time they have had to deal with water rationing.

The lack of urban design for public spaces or regulation of urban growth has resulted in profoundly unequal territories in socio-environmental terms. In addition, the unrestricted spread of urban space, turning the land into an immense asphalt slab without green areas, has made the soil less permeable in areas where the land’s natural clays have already compacted the sediment layers and made the natural reabsorption of water difficult.

Historically, the authorities have not addressed the root of the problem, and official alternatives to the current drought season leave the city’s inhabitants with many concerns about water pollution and scarcity. Mexico City’s environment ministry, for example, promotes the “Rain Harvest” programme, which is currently available to inhabitants of six of the 16 municipalities. To receive rainwater collection and treatment equipment, inhabitants must meet certain technical and infrastructure requirements that are not accessible to the majority. In addition, the rainwater is not suitable for human consumption, which does not solve the problem of the lack of drinking water.

Shortages or Hoarding?

Water scarcity requires comprehensive and collective attention — but what about water grabbing?

One of the most palpable problems exacerbating inequality of access to drinking water is linked to the concessions that the government grants to private companieshas made to the beer and soft drink industries, as well as to real estate projects. The granting of these concessions has triggered conflicts in the communities affected by these decisions.

For example, the Estadio Azteca stadium project, which will be the inaugural venue for the next FIFA World Cup in 2026, has been granted a water concession that worries those living in the surrounding areas. The main concerns initially had to do precisely with the water concessions that would be required and with possible gentrification. Thanks to neighbourhood organizing, public demonstrations, and confrontation with authorities, several of the projects that were going to be built around the stadium, such as shopping centres and hotel complexes to house the fans, were cancelled.

Real estate projects, too, are breaking into the community life of traditional or native neighbourhoods. The Mítikah complex, a mega-project of flats, shopping centres, and luxury offices that was built in Mexico City’s Xoco neighbourhood, is now leaving the population without water. When the complex was constructed, the city government built a well with the commitment that it would be administered by the authorities to guarantee access to water for the rest of the population. However, the case has lacked transparency and inhabitants of the area continue to denounce irregularities in water supply and quality.

Despite the fact that community and grassroots organizations do not play a leading role in the international debate, it is necessary to ask how to continue to acknowledge and respect their experiences so as not to impose solutions to the crisis that are not appropriate for all areas, all cultures, or the needs of the entire population.

In 2012, a constitutional amendment recognized the human right to water and sanitation, which includes the duty to prioritize personal and domestic use over industrial, agricultural, energy, etc. This achievement was driven by many organizations and defenders of human access to water as a right. But the reality is that there is still a lot of opacity and hoarding in the flow of drinking water. In actual fact, the constitutional amendment functions more as a simulation than in daily practice.

Mexico City’s water system continues to be publicly owned, despite the threat of privatization to solve urgent supply needs. These needs must be addressed from a perspective of rights and the guarantee of public services.

In 2020, the Mexican population was the largest consumer of bottled water in the world, although the cost of this “product” is up to 751 times higher than the water supplied by public networks. In some cases, the purchase of bottled water is due to the unreliable quality of public systems. But in others, the choice to buy water is directly linked to the lack of supply.

In the Iztapalapa district, where Los Panchos live, as well as in other districts such as Tláhuac, Xochimilco, and Milpa Alta, which are the most marginalized in the city, water only reaches homes for a few hours, a few days per week, a practice known as tandeo (staggered water service). To compensate for the lack of supply in the pipes, people in these districts also resort to buying water from private companies, which are often unregulated.

“But if there is no water, there is no life and there is no organization”, David concludes, describing how within the communities of Los Panchos, members’ own conscience has driven projects such as the water purification plants and wells that help to recharge the aquifers, as well as their urban gardens, and lighting using solar panels, which power the common areas and provide energy for the water pumps. All these actions were carried out without government mediation, solely through community work and the permanent commitment of the different work brigades that look after community life.

There are other models in Latin America that, like Los Panchos, provide real solutions with significant empirical knowledge, where community organization is encouraged in the creation of other forms of relationship with the place of life, based on solidarity and the preservation of the territory and its resources. In order to achieve environmental justice, it is essential to recognize the environment and its characteristics in order to strengthen the relationship with the habitat and common goods.

Environmental justice also involves recognizing that these socio-environmental practices challenge logics and levels of domination. It is not a matter of scale and replicability, but of addressing injustices using different ways of understanding and being in this world.

Despite the fact that community and grassroots organizations do not play a leading role in the international debate, it is necessary to ask how to continue to acknowledge and respect their experiences so as not to impose solutions to the crisis that are not appropriate for all areas, all cultures, or the needs of the entire population. It is the duty of the authorities and of decision-makers to take up these local practices that challenge the continuity of an extractivist and individualistic way of life.