Abstract
Tetreault analyzes water issues in and around the Metropolitan Area of Zacatecas and Guadalupe, located in the arid central region of the state of Zacatecas. The case is presented as one of “no conflict” vis-à-vis objective conditions of environmental crisis and injustice. The analysis begins with a brief historical review of the genesis and evolution of water supply and contamination problems, from the city’s founding as a mining enclave in the mid-sixteenth century until the present, with emphasis on the transition from the period of state-led development and import substituting industrialization to the current neoliberal era. Mexico’s water policies and water management practices in Zacatecas are examined in an effort to explain the driving forces behind a deepening water crisis on the local level. This is sketched out in three dimensions: the overexploitation of aquifers, the contamination of surface and underground water sources, and an unjust distribution that privileges the private sector and delivers water with dangerously high concentrations of heavy metals to the urban population. The study reveals that there is little public awareness of these problems.
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Notes
- 1.
A part of this aqueduct has been conserved until the present, in the historic center of Zacatecas .
- 2.
Burnes (2010) observes that the mining sector was restructured during the late nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth century as a response to technological changes and new trends in global markets for precious metals, with important long-term implications in the subsequent (under-)development of Zacatecas’ economy. Along these lines, mercury amalgamation was replaced by cyanide-leaching techniques to extract precious metals from ore. This not only changed the nature of mining -induced water contamination , but also facilitated a greater division between the stages of industrial metal production, with the actual mining process falling behind in technological terms vis-à-vis the process of smelting and refinement, with the latter increasingly taking place outside of the state of Zacatecas , thereby reinforcing the enclave nature of mining .
- 3.
Author’s calculation based on data presented in Colmenares López et al. (1992: 147–154).
- 4.
Author’s calculation based on data presented by Colmenares López et al. (1992: 181).
- 5.
Author’s calculations based on INEGI (2007b).
- 6.
Natera had been a military leader during the Revolution, a Constitutionalist originally assigned by Carranza to take the city of Zacatecas . However, the forces under his control ended up playing a secondary role in the decisive battle of June 23, 1914, that of slaughtering the federal soldiers fleeing from Villa’s forces as they passed through the narrow stretch of the valley between Zacatecas and Guadalupe . Afterward, he was appointed by Carranza to be provisional governor of the state of Zacatecas, a role that he played until stepping down on August 2, 1915.
- 7.
In 1988, near the official end to the land reform process, almost half of the state’s territory had been redistributed to ejido s. However, only about 22% of this redistributed land was arable (803,128 hectares), and of this, only 10% was irrigated (Arteaga Domínguez 1993: 51).
- 8.
Samples of water taken from wells drawing from Calera in the 1990s indicated that concentrations of heavy metals were within permissible limits (CONAGUA 1998). This is not to say, however, that the zone is free from contamination . Besides sources of contamination in agriculture and industry, mining contamination has left behind high concentrations of heavy metals detected in soil samples in the Valley of Calera, particularly in three communities—Francisco Madero, Noria de Gringos, and La Pimienta— which were affected by a tailings-pond spill in 1956, from a mine called El Bote (Garay et al. 2012: 162–163).
- 9.
Author’s calculations based on data published by INEGI (2012: 51–52).
- 10.
Information obtained vía Infomex (folio number 1610100124316).
- 11.
The SARH was created in 1976 to fuse into one institutional body the responsibility for managing both agricultural development and the nation’s water resources, which were largely conceived as an input for increasing agricultural production. It existed until 1994, when it was replaced by the Ministry of Agriculture (SAGARPA).
- 12.
Two other aquifers in the central region of Zacatecas with COTAS are Chupaderos and Aguanaval.
- 13.
Interview conducted by Dr. Angela Ixkic Bastian Duarte in August of 2014.
- 14.
Interview conducted by Dr. Angela Ixkic Bastian Duarte in August of 2014.
- 15.
Author’s calculations based on information included in CONAGUA (2005).
- 16.
Figures published by CONAGUA on its Internet site: http://www.CONAGUA.gob.mx/disponibilidad.aspx?n1=3&n2=62&n3=112.
- 17.
- 18.
Author’s calculations, based on the Register of Users (Registro de Usuarios) for the aquifers Benito Juárez, Calera, and Guadalupe Bañuelos, provided by CONAGUA , Zacatecas , Department of Subterranean Waters (Gerencia Estatal de Zacatecas, Departamento de Aguas Subterráneas) in 2012.
- 19.
Author’s calculations based on the Register of Users (Registro de Usuarios) for the aquifers Benito Juárez, Calera, and Guadalupe Bañuelos, provided by CONAGUA , Zacatecas , Department of Subterranean Waters (Gerencia Estatal de Zacatecas, Departamento de Aguas Subterráneas) in 2012.
- 20.
This excerpt comes from an interview conducted by Dr. Angela Ixkic Bastian Duarte in August of 2014. By saying that “they’re getting the energy quota” he suggests that he has permission from CFE to use enough electricity in each one of his six wells to extract the equivalent volume of water recognized by the concession.
- 21.
Interview that took place on May 21, 2015.
- 22.
Response to a request for information via Infomex, folio number 1610100224514.
- 23.
Response to a request for information via Infomex Zacatecas , folio number 00042715.
- 24.
Response to a request for information via Infomex Zacatecas. Folio numbers 00042715 and 00061915.
- 25.
Interview conducted by Dr. Angela Ixkic Bastian Durate in August of 2014.
- 26.
Author’s calculations, based on the Register of Users for Calera (Registro de Usuarios para Calera), provided by CONAGUA , Zacatecas , Department of Subterranean Waters (Gerencia Estatal de Zacatecas, Departamento de Aguas Subterráneas) in 2012.
- 27.
My calculations based on INEGI (2007a).
- 28.
This figure was provided by CONAGUA in response to a request for information made via Infomex in 2014 (Folio number 1610100224514).
- 29.
CONAGUA’s response to a request for information made via Infomex in 2014 (Folio number 1610100224514).
- 30.
Dr. Mark Rushton, from the Academic Unit of Development Studies, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, coordinated and applied this questionnaire, with the help of two undergraduate students. By design, they avoided the most marginalized neighborhoods of the MAZG for reasons of personal security.
- 31.
For example, from CONAGUA’s perspective, the number one issue is “the population dynamic,” which “has generated extraordinary pressure over hydric resources” (CONAGUA 2015: 5–7). In another example, in a book produced by the College of Mexico dealing with the country’s “big environmental problems ,” Perevochtchikova (2010: 67) considers that “it is of utmost importance to point out that the average per capita availability of water in Mexico has diminished drastically in the period 1950–2006, by dropping from a value of 18,035 m3/inhabitant/year to 4771 m3/inhabitant/year.”
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Tetreault, D. (2018). Water in Zacatecas: A Crisis Without Conflict. In: Tetreault, D., McCulligh, C., Lucio, C. (eds) Social Environmental Conflicts in Mexico. Environmental Politics and Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73945-8_6
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