Water and the Territory of Citizenship

Abstract

The previous chapter addressed the contradictions between the formal enunciation of rights, such as the universal right to water and essential water-related services, and the real practices that render formal entitlements meaningless for vast majorities. In this regard, the formal sanctioning of the access to water and essential water services as universal public goods in Article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, which in practice was never achieved, is an excellent example. The constitution not only proclaimed the universal right to a share in the social wealth, but also gave the state a leading role in endowing individuals and social groups with the means to exercise effective command over essential goods and services such as water and sanitation. However, as discussed earlier, despite the laudable principles adopted in the charter, and of the paternalistic policies that followed, the factual post-revolution development was characterized by ‘the internal dynamics of inequality’ (González Casanova, 1965b: 87). This process eventually precluded a large part of the Mexican population from full access to these essential goods and services and, indeed, to the territory of citizenship.¹

‘Barbarism … is rather a by-product of life in a particular social and historical context … barbarism has been on the increase for most of the twentieth century, and there is no sign that this increase is at an end. First, the disruption and breakdown of the systems of rules and moral behavior by which all societies regulate the relations among their members and, to a lesser extent, between their members and those of other societies. Second … the reversal of what we may call the project of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, namely the establishment of a universal system of such rules and standards of moral behavior, embodied in the institutions of states dedicated to the rational progress of humanity.’—Eric Hobsbawm, Barbarism: A Users’ Guide