Coca-Cola Sucks Wells Dry in Chiapas, Forcing Residents to Buy Water
Coca-Cola Sucks Wells Dry in Chiapas, Forcing Residents to Buy Water
Wednesday, September 13, 2017 By Martha Pskowski, Truthout | Report
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41916-coca-cola-sucks-wells-dry-in-chiapas-forcing-residents-to-buy-water
SNIP...The water is disappearing in San Felipe Ecatepec, an Indigenous town three miles outside of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, in southern Mexico.
People sometimes walk two hours a day to get water. Others have to buy their water.
"In the past four years, our wells have started drying up," says Juan Urbano, who just finished a three-year term this February as the president of the Communal Territory of San Felipe Ecatepec. "People sometimes walk two hours a day to get water. Others have to buy their water."
Where is all the water going?
In between San Felipe and San Cristobal lies a Coca-Cola bottling plant, operated by the Mexican company FEMSA. The plant consumed over 1.08 million liters of water per day in 2016.
In Zinacantán, a Tzotzil indigenous community outside San Cristobal, Coca Cola is widely sold during the festival for the town’s patron saint, San Jerónimo. (Photo: Martha Pskowski)(Photo: Martha Pskowski)
Urbano, 57, explains that the urban growth of San Cristobal has gradually eaten up agricultural lands in San Felipe. He is part of a shrinking number of people in the community that still grow corn, beans and squash on plots of land passed down for generations, and drink pozol, a drink made from fermented corn dough.
"Many people don't drink pozol anymore," Urbano laments. "They've replaced it with Coca-Cola."
San Felipe Ecatepec is one of thousands of towns across Mexico where corporate water consumption has taken precedence over local need. Advocates are scrambling to rein in a chain of public health consequences.
Government Is Failing on Constitutional Right...SNIP
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