On the morning of February 15, 300 Mexican National Guards and State Security Forces violently expelled Indigenous environmental activists from their Puebla community center.
The community center was a water bottling facility owned by foreigners for many decades. It was taken over by the Indigenous Nahua people of the area 11 months ago. Many view the incident as a demonstration by Mexican government that big business is priority.
On Sunday, just two days before the security forces seized the space, which the activists had renamed Altepelmecalli (meaning “House of the People”), the Indigenous organizers had begun plans to request that the space be expropriated from its former owner — Bonafont, a water company owned by the multinational corporation Danone.
According to activists, security forces arrived at 1:20 a.m. under the cover of darkness and blocked the factory’s road. They threatened those who were inside, then removed them. Then they tore down the protest camp, kitchen, and dining area that had been set up at the front.
The United People of the Cholulteca Region is made up of twenty Indigenous Nahua communities. They had reclaimed the former water bottling facility to use it for community projects. They said Tuesday to the press that the military takeover of the area was a violation Indigenous self-determination. enshrinedThe Mexican Constitution.
Paris-based multinational food company Danone is the headquarters of Danone. Its annual revenues are approximately $3.8 billion.30billion annually. Bonafont, one of Danone’s brands, had been illegallyExcessively extracting water from the Indigenous region in Puebla state in order to bottle it for profit. In March 2021, the Bonafont plant was closed by the United People. They then took over the plant and made it a community space that offered various agro-ecological, and social, projects.
There are thousandsMexico, Danone, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Danone are all water-bottling plants and purification plants. mainWith 82 percent of the market, these are the beneficiaries. Here in Puebla, Nestlé Water and the U.S. company Keurig Dr Pepper also bottle water, with Nestlé helping itself to spring water of nearby volcanoes. The companies pay around 2,600Pesos ($127/year) for each water extraction concession or make 494 times what they spend when they sell bottled water, while locals don’t benefit at all.
The Cholulteca area has a high rate povertyThe majority of people in the area work as farmers or in factories and industrial plants. Local and foreign companies have industrialized the region over the past few decades, taking advantage cheap labor and natural resources like water. A major Volkswagen plant is located about 10 km away. causedHail cannons can cause environmental damage. Local farmers sayThe technology that uses sonic blasts in order to alter weather patterns has caused the destruction of hundreds of hectares worth of crops.
The region was recognized internationally last year. newsWhen a huge sinkhole appeared down the road from Bonafont’s former Bonafont facility. “Academics worked with us and made it clear that the sinkhole was a result of the plundering of water by these companies,” Bertha, an activist with the United People, told Truthout.
The sinkhole demonstrated “what [Indigenous] people had been saying for years, that the extraction of water and the pollution of our rivers, air and territory in general, was leading to a really severe situation,” Campeche, another activist with the United People, told Truthout. (Both Bertha, Campeche asked that their first names not be used to protect them from retaliation.
The Politics of Water
After the events of Tuesday morning, Puebla’s governor claimed that the military overthrow was the result of a warrant issued by the federal Judiciary of Mexico. calleddialogue between Bonafont, the activists, and the federal and state governments. The United People, however had invitedAccording to activists, he was invited by other authorities and the company for dialogue at various times, but no one showed up.
In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, United People accused Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of coordinating with state and municipal governments to defend Bonafont and Danone and to “strip the people of their water.”
They said that such coordination was evident in the way the state, national guard and local police worked together to expel them from Altepelmecalli.
“This shows that the state serves private interests and the armed forces only exist to repress organized people,” United People said.
They also pointed out the repression of other movements within the Indigenous regions of Nahuatzen, Ayotzinapa and Mactumatz this week, and the murder of a fellow activist, Francisco Vázquez, a few days ago in Morelos.
“What this shows is that we are in a global war for water, which is against the people and all of humanity,” United People stated.
Life as a Cause
WhenTruthout talked to Bertha just a few days before the military seizure of the space, she said, “We’ve changed a place of destruction into a place of life. We have farm animals there, meetings, cultural activities, national forums. We provide health care and workshops, and have productive projects so we can be self-sustaining.”
The space also had a media center equipped for community television broadcasting, and a women’s rights organizing area. So far, the activists say they don’t know what the security forces have done with all their animals, tools, computers, cameras and library of books.
“We closed the company … so they couldn’t steal one more drop of water from us…. As Nahua people, we have been building our own way of life for a very long time,” Campeche explained. He stated that foreign companies and other factors made it more difficult. Therefore, it was significant that 20 different communities joined forces to shut Bonafont.
“In assemblies, people said that what they needed was a place for health care, education and trade-based workshops, so that’s what we did with the old Bonafont plant,” he said.
“Our aim was that this space, where there had been plundering of resources and exploitation of workers … be transformed into a collective space where life is built and created … It’s been 11 months and we have faced some challenges, but we have addressed them as a community,” Campeche concluded.
Bertha told the story on Tuesday Truthout, “We’re going to keep going, keep organizing. Maybe not in that physical space, but we’ll keep everything that we achieved alive.”
At their press conference, the United People declared that they were willing to reclaim what belonged to them, “as we have had to do throughout history.”
“They think that by seizing Altepelmecalli, they will beat us. But we, the Nahua people of the Cholulteca region, tell them that we won’t give up, we will continue to defend our water and life,” the activists stated.
They called for local and global protests outside Mexican embassies and Danone buildings, and declared they would wage a “permanent campaign of mobilization, boycott and sabotage against Bonafont” and Danone.
