As Mexico’s drought continues, the country’s farmers are taking action. They argue that the water-intensive avocado orchards and berry fields of commercial farms are drying up streams in the mountains west of the capital. Farmers organized teams and went into the mountains to uproot the illegal water pumps and break up the unlicensed irrigation basins.
Over the past 10 years, natural water bodies have been drying up and water has been captured, mainly to be used for avocados and berries. In the lower parts of the area, there are villages that no longer have water.
Julio Santoyo, activist
Santoyo estimates that about 850 plastic-lined earthen ponds have appeared in the hills around the town of Villa Madero, usually soon after planters illegally cut down or burned the local pine forest. The pines help the soil retain water while the avocado trees deplete it.
The mayor of Villa Madero blamed outsiders for the problem.
“There are people who are not from our municipality who come here and take away our water,” said Froilan Alcouter Ibarra, mayor of Villa Madero.
Drug cartels often make money from illegal logging and extorting avocado growers in Michoacán. Residents of the village of El Sauz say they have been asking the landowner to allow the spring to flow down to their community for 15 years.
There is a serious risk of being killed for protesting and asking the government for what we need. The government should support us, help us and release these resources.
Francisco Gómez Cortes, a resident of a nearby village
In the past, activists around Villa Madero have been threatened, kidnapped and beaten. Residents say they don’t want to cut off water to the orchards entirely and have proposed an agreement that would give landowners 20 percent of the water from local streams if they let the other 80 percent continue to flow. But there is still no answer.
In March, activists organized a meeting near Lake Patzcuaro to demand that authorities do something about the rapidly declining water level. The government has long done little to limit producers and combat deforestation and water abstraction.
