Yaquis Lose Water War to Hermosillo and CONAGUA

Sonora Chronicles

Introduction to Border Water Crisis Report 

from Center for International Policy

View of water-short Hermosillo (top), and of the empty Abelardo Rodríguez reservoir on the city's eastern edge. Photos by Tom Barry

Across the arid U.S. West and Southwest, enthusiasm for traditional hydraulic solutions -- from damming rivers, pumping diminishing groundwater reserves, and delivering distant water -- through aqueducts, is waning.

Higher temperatures, prolonged droughts, and the long-term dysfunction of hydraulic infrastructure make radical reforms in water policy necessary. Community and government planners are advocating for more sustainable solutions to the spreading water crisis, including voluntary and enforced conservation, groundwater pumping regulation, and more efficient water-distribution systems in the city and countryside.

The transboundary region of the North American Southwest is a mostly arid or semi-arid region that hosts North America’s four major deserts— the Chihuahuan, Great Basin, Mojave, and Sonoran Desert.[1] The great arid lands and deserts of North America don’t stop at the boundary line between Mexico and the United States, with the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts extending deep into Mexico. Similarly, the transboundary water basins and rivers, including the Yaqui River, flow across the international border.

Northern and north-central Mexican states face the same threats and fears regarding their water future. To varying degrees, most Mexican cities and rural areas are seeing traditional supplies of water become less reliable. Yet despite warnings by environmental organizations and scientists, politicians and governmental officials are meeting water crises with the traditional solutions of hydraulic societies, or societies that have been traditionally reliant on water transfer techniques. 

Nowhere is this retrograde response as evident as in the border state of Sonora.

Small farmers and ejidatarios see wells go dry and formerly watered land turn to dust as Hermosillo and agribusiness suck all groundwater and river flows. Photos by Tom Barry

         Temperatures in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, and the Yaqui Valley are regularly rising to record highs. Water basins, notably the Sonora River Basin on which Hermosillo has traditionally depended, are severely depleted. To the west of the city, great extensions of the coastal plains that for four decades were dedicated export-focused agribusinesses now lay abandoned— poisoned by salt residues, and subsiding and cracking as the result of grossly unsustainable groundwater extraction.

         For the past five years, a conflict over water has divided Sonora into contending alliances. In 2010, Sonora’s newly elected governor, Guillermo Padrés Elías, with financing from the National Water Commission (CONAGUA), proposed an array of water megaprojects supervised by a new bureaucracy, Sonora Integrated System (Sonora SI). The most controversial project was the Novillo-Hermosillo aqueduct, also known as Independencia, a 155-kilometer project that is transferring water from the Yaqui River in the mountainous west into the heart of the Sonoran Desert. The Independencia project has ignited perhaps the most prominent of the water wars in the transborder West.

Many indigenous communities have been adversely affected by these government-supported megaprojects. The Independencia project would displace and contaminate parts of the desert inhabited by the Yaqui, an indigenous tribe that fiercely resisted Spanish and Mexican occupations. After the governor’s proposal, the Yaqui took their place at the vanguard of the “No al Novillo” opposition campaign. Their intermittent blockades of Highway #15— western Mexico’s main north-south highway— attracted national and international news coverage. The government’s disregard for the rights of the Yaqui sparked a national solidarity campaign on behalf of the Yaqui that included other affected communities, dozens of nongovernmental organizations, and Mexico’s left, including the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

Meanwhile, the Pilares dam being constructed across the Mayo River by Sonora SI and CONAGUA threatens a less-known indigenous people. The Guajiríos are among those most adversely impacted by the Pilares dam. This diminishing group of deeply impoverished native people inhabit small settlements along the western Sierra Madre in southeastern Sonora and southwestern Chihuahua.

Mexico would do well to look how the breakdown of hydraulic solutions is playing out to its north, given how much it has modeled the modernization of its own arid frontier territories on the U.S experience. Despite the fortified border, U.S. society and economy remain intricately linked to Mexico, especially the border states like Sonora— a principal source of minerals, produce, and industrial products (like Ford vehicles manufactured in Hermosillo) and home to hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents.

        

A closer look at the contributing causes of the Yaqui water war may point out ways to avoid other water wars and possible ways to resolve the lingering issues left unresolved by this complicated dispute over the remaining water resources in the border state.

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[i] William deBuys, A Great Aridness, Oxford University Press, 2011.

Toxic Tourism in Sierra Tarahumara

Chihuahua Chronicles

Toxic Tourism
(Published by the Boston Review at:http://bostonreview.net/world/tom-barry-tarahumara-mexico-tourism)

 Tarahumara boy who lives next to sewage drainage from a luxury hotel on rim of Barrancas del Cobre near Divisadero, and garbage dump used by Divisadero hotels on land excavated by state government for its tourism park. Photos by Tom Barry

According to Mexican tourism officials, magical experiences and eco-adventures await those who travel to the remote mountains and canyons of the Sierra Tarahumara in the border state of Chihuahua. They also assure tourists that they will be safe and that the native Tarahumara people are the major beneficiaries of the government-sponsored tourism industry.

The Tarahumara, who call themselves Rarámuri (roughly, the “running people”), have a different view of the government’s megaproyecto. While they initially welcomed the plan to attract more tourists to visit this spectacular but hard-to-access region, they now regard the project as another threat to their survival—along with the current gold-mining boom, massive illegal logging, drug-trafficking gangs, and the intrusions of mestizo ranchers.

The Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon) tourism megaproject, named after the six immense copper-hued canyons that cut through the Sierra Madre, has been in the works since the mid-1990s. New roads, a large airport, and an adventure park located on the scenic rim of the Barrancas are now open; still to come are luxury hotels, a golf course, and an aqueduct that will pump water to the tourist complex.

In 1995–96 Mexico received funding from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to help jump start the project. According to the federal tourism ministry, the project would improve the conditions of the deeply impoverished people who have inhabited the area since centuries before the Spanish conquest.

With their colorful dress, primitive living conditions, crafts, and resistance to acculturation, the Tarahumara were the centerpiece of official plans to develop the tourism industry. State and federal governments teamed up to create and promote “magical routes” into the hamlets, or “magical towns.”

Such highway signs might be dismissed as nothing more than fodder for vacationers. But Mexican tourism promoters aren’t the first to find the Tarahumara magical. In the mid-1930s, surrealist Antonin Artaud observed, “These are people who defy the time, who do not recognize our reality, and instead draw magical powers from the mistrust they have for our civilization.” Even those who miss the magic and power of the Tarahumara are not immune to the natural marvels of their homeland, where the mountains are high and the river gorges are deeper than the Grand Canyon.

By some measures, the tourism project has been a terrific success. Hotels are brimming; travelers line up at the adventure park for bungee jumping and cable-car and zip-line rides into the canyon. But as the number of tourists grows, the promised benefits are being questioned by the Tarahumara and nongovernmental organizations that form the Chihuahua City–based Tarahumara Defense Network.

Tarahumara communities, many of which depend economically on the sale of their baskets and other crafts, hoped the investments would be both environmentally and culturally conscious, as promised. But the indigenous now claim that the megaproject is a “white elephant” trampling their rights, destroying their traditional subsistence economies, and contaminating their water supplies.

To create the adventure park, the state government, with the help of politically connected private investors, expropriated land from two Tarahumara communities; the government claims they didn’t exist because they lacked the proper papers. And hotels routinely dump their solid and liquid wastes into the canyon, contaminating springs and leading to outbreaks of rashes and intestinal illnesses. The Tarahumara see a version of Disneyland behind barbed-wire fences that keeps the tourists safe and the natives out. Families have started leaving, hoping to scrape by in the cities or as farm workers.

Not everyone is backing away, though, even if their only water comes from seeps contaminated by the very tourists zipping on cables overhead. Locals are demanding their rights in Mexican and international courts and have organized protests in front of the governor’s palace. Together with the Tarahumara Defense Network, they are becoming activists, a role they haven’t occupied since their rebellion against the Spanish in the late 1600s.

Exit of PAN and Padrés Not Likely to Result in Aqueduct Closure

Sonora Chronicles

As PAN and Padrés Exit, Yaqui Water 

Will Keep Flowing to Hermosillo

For the past five years, Governor Guillermo Padrés Elías was the chief protagonist in one of the most divisive water waters in the transborder West.

In early 2010, only months after PAN’s candidate took the governorship for the first time in Sonora’s history, Padrés announced his plan for the Independencia aqueduct. Known popularly as the Novillo-Hermosillo aqueduct, the water pipeline was constructed to transfer water from the middle basin of the Yaqui River to meet the water crisis in Hermosillo, the PAN governor sparked a militant anti-aqueduct movement based in the river’s lower basin.

At first, the “No al Novillo” and Citizens Water Movement in the Yaqui Valley demanded that the aqueduct not be constructed because it would reduce water supplies needed by the Yaquis, valley agribusiness, and Ciudad Obregón. Then when the Padrés administration pushed through the aqueduct construction with support of then-president Felipe Calderón (also of PAN), ignoring various court orders and Yaqui demands that they be consulted, a militant faction of Yaquis began intermittently blocking the state’s only north-south highway.

The Yaqui blockades counted on the support of agribusiness sector and the PRI.  Members of movements protesting the aqueduct painted

Governor Padrés and the PAN as the chief architects and supporters of the aqueduct. 

The political reality was, however, not as simplistic as the anti-aqueduct movement asserted.  The recent electoral victory of PRI’s gubernatorial candidate Claudia Pavlovich will likely reveal the broad support for the aqueduct and other hydraulic megaprojects among Sonora’s political and economic elite and the federal government.

Main Institutional Players In Yaqui Water War

State

The chief institutional protagonists are the federal government and the Sonora state government.  As governor, Guillermo Pádres has been the leading advocate of the Novillo-Hermosillo aqueduct, acting through the governor’s office, the newly created state agency Sonora Sistema Integral (Sonora SI), and the State Water Commission (CEA), as well as state offices, such as the attorney general’s office and other agencies that provide basic services and rural development assistance (to pacify and divide the Yaqui).

Federal

While Governor Padrés and Sonora SI have been the most visible state government proponents of the Yaqui River water transfer, the Independencia aqueduct would not have been possible without the federal government, which is a strong proponent of new aqueducts and dams to address water shortages. But more than advocating hydraulic solutions, CONAGUA provides at least two-thirds of the funding (usually more than 90%) for these projects, including the contested aqueduct in Sonora.

Aside from the financing, federal agencies, including SEMARNAT and its decentralized arm PROFEPA, rubber-stamped the construction plans for the aqueduct, without giving any consideration to environmental impact of the water transfer. CONAGUA never seriously evaluated how much water was being legally drawn with valid permits from the Yaqui River, how much water belonged to the Yaqui, or the impact of climate change and prolonged droughts on Yaqui River flows.

Local

The city and county of Hermosillo have been prime advocates of the aqueduct but have no official role. The counties of Cajeme and San Ignacio Río Muerto in the Yaqui Valley took their case against the aqueduct to the Supreme Court and lost on the fundamental question about the legality of the aqueduct. However, the Supreme Court did find SEMARNAT’s environment impact study woefully lacking, and ordered it to produce another more credible evaluation.

The Yaqui have no legal standing within Mexico as an autonomous government. Instead, the Yaqui must pursue their interests through the political structures of the mestizo-controlled municipios and ejidos. Yaqui communities do have their own form of governments with governors, secretaries, and spokesmen. Yet these communities and their leadership are divided with different factions having their own leadership. This absence of a legally-recognized central government makes the Yaqui and other indigenous communities subject to manipulation by local, state, and federal governments as well as by those with special economic and political interests.

The Yaqui Valley Irrigation District, representing most large farmers and agribusinesses, together with the PRI provided logistical and other support for traffic disruptions.

Political Parties

The dynamics of the Yaqui Water War have in no small degree been shaped by the political ambitions of the two leading political parties, the PRI and the PAN, and to a lesser extent by less influential parties in Sonora, notably PRD.

With the launching of Sonora SI and the construction of the Independencia aqueducts and other hydraulic megaprojects, PAN has hoped to solidify its hold on the Sonoran electorate, given the broad support for such projects, especially in Hermosillo and other the desert cities.  

The political dynamics changed after PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto succeeded PAN’s Felipe Calderón as president. PRI politicians, although historically strongly supportive of such hydraulic projects and in particular the longstanding Yaqui River aqueduct plan, have since 2010 criticized the aqueduct, albeit mainly with respect to budgetary and legal issues rather than over the need for the aqueduct.

Meanwhile, CONAGUA and other federal agencies have not backed away from their support even as tensions between the PRI and PAN in Sonora and between the federal and state government escalate. It is unlikely that either party would currently or in the future support any definitive closure of the aqueduct, given the depth of support for the aqueduct outside the Yaqui Valley.

CONAGUA is a Principal Player

Sonora’s water crisis can ultimately be attributed to the lack of due diligence by CONAGUA. Without ensuring that the Novillo-Hermosillo aqueduct counted on all the proper state and federal permits and impact studies, CONAGUA financed and supported the aqueduct’s construction and operation at least until 2013.

Without guaranteeing that the aqueduct would not adversely affect the water rights of the Yaqui or even consulting the Yaqui, CONAGUA gave the go ahead to inter-basin water transfer. What’s more, CONAGUA provided critical backing to the fictitious backstory created by Sonora SI and the state water commission (CEA) in the face of widening opposition.

CONAGUA echoed the state government’s claims that most of the aqueduct water came either from unallocated Yaqui river water or from the purchase of water rights from small landholders and ejidatarios  (members of collective land holdings called ejidos) in the middle basin.

It is true, as CONAGUA officials are apt to assert, that national water law decentralized the control and monitoring of water use, giving state and local authorities more participation and responsibility. Yet CONAGUA is not some distant bureaucracy in Mexico City. 

Not only does CONAGUA have extensive offices in Hermosillo, all water drilling and water-diversion permits in Sonora, as well as all major hydraulic projects, come under the jurisdiction of the Hermosillo-based Organismo de Cuenca Noroeste  (Northwest Basin Agency). In theory, this agency protects the sustainability of water resources in each of the state’s major water basins. Indeed, CONAGUA’s Sonora branch consists of separate planning offices for Sonoyta, Concepción, Sonora, Yaqui, Mátape, and Mayo basins.

In other words, it is not the state government, whether controlled by PRI, PRD, PAN, or the Partido Verde (Green Party), that bears ultimate responsibility for the sustainability of Sonora’s hydraulic society. Rather, it is the federal government through CONAGUA— and not only because it authorizes water megaprojects and even individual wells, but also because it and the federal government’s central budget provide the principal funding for all major water works in Sonora.

(Photos by Tom Barry; 1) Yaqui anti-aqueduct banner at Estación Vicam, 2) Yaqui blockade on Route #15, 3) Aqueduct enters Hermosillo, and 4) Abelardo Rodríquez dam in Hermosillo.)

PRI Wins Back Sonora, Yaqui Water War Left in the Dust

Vineyards to produce table grapes for export to U.S. markets continue to expand in the Sonoran Desert north of Hermosillo due to government-backed water drilling and water diversion projects supported by government, while farmers and ranchers with small holdings and shallow wells (top photo of abandoned farm south of now-dry Abelardo Rodríquez dam in Hermosillo) are left without traditional water supplies -- despite their prayers. New vineyard attributes its prosperity with belief in desert miracles. After all, Luke in the Bible says: "Nothing is impossible for God." / Photos by Tom Barry

Sonora Chronicles

PRI Wins Back Sonora, Yaqui Water War Left in the Dust

Tom Barry

As election day approached, it was a toss-up. In Sonora, the gubernatorial election pitted two governing parties against one another.

The PRI controlled the federal government, and PAN held political power in the state. The gubernatorial election pitted the PRI the PAN – two parties bereft of moral principles and burdened by long rap sheets for their patronage schemes, personal enrichment of political leaders, and blatant favoritism of friends and family in government contracts.

There were good reasons to believe that PAN’s Javier Gándara (former Hermosillo mayor) would succeed Guillermo Padrés Elías as Sonora’s new governor in September 2015. But many other observers and political insiders in Sonora persuasively argued that Senator Claudia Pavlovich would win back the Palacio del Gobierno in Hermosillo for PRI – the political party that had held the governor’s office for seven decades until PAN’s electoral victory in June 2009.

In hindsight, Pavlovich’s victory seemed assured given the crescendo of corruption scandals that started sweeping over the PAN administration in mid-2014.

From his first year, Governor Padrés began building a virulent opposition movement to his administration. By pushing through the Novillo-Hermosillo aqueduct transfers mountain water from the Yaqui River to the state’s booming capital city situated in the Sonoran Desert, Padrés sparked an anti-aqueduct alliance in the river’s lower basin in the Yaqui Valley and in Ciudad Obregón.  At the same time, however, Padrés initially reinforced – and even extended – support for his administration and PAN by his backing of water megaprojects, including dams and other aqueducts, to bring mountain water to desert cities and coastal plains.

But the governor’s arrogance, lack of fiscal accountability (or any other sort of public accountability), self-serving projects (like using government funds to build a dam to serve his family’s ranch), and shocking (even for Mexico) corruption, eroded his base of political support, even in Hermosillo. The PAN administration’s pilfering of the budgets of an array of state agencies – including the education, public health, education, among other departments – to shift funds to favorite projects and favored companies surpassed the traditional and expected levels of corruption in the governor’s palace.

Yet PRI also faced the election burdened by the plummeting support for President Peña Nieto – mainly because of his own corruption scandals and the increasing evidence that the military and police were among the prime suspects in a wave of horrific violence (including the disappearance of 43 students in Michoacán).

While each party tapped government funds to buy the vote, Senator Pavlovich had the advantage of being able to promise an increased flow of federal funds and favors from the national PRI-controlled government (executive branch, Congress, and courts) to communities that would support PRI in the June electoral contest.

Governor Padrés won the 2009 election with his promise to create a “New Sonora.” But after six years, voters, sickened by the blatant corruption and the resulting monumental public debt (20.7 billion pesos – representing more then 55% of annual state revenues), more voters were persuaded by Pavlovich’s promises of “Another Sonora. (“Otro Sonora”).”

Despite all the protests and brouhaha about the Novillo-Sonora aqueduct during the past five years, it wasn’t an issue during the elections. None of the candidates – from either the major or minor parties – took a position on the aqueduct. Given that the PRI at both the federal and state levels has been the primary proponent and financial backer of water megaprojects, there is little expectation that the new governor will withdraw state or federal financial support for the hydraulic projects initiated by Padrés and his Sonora SI (Integrated System) water-project agency.