Mexico City Neighborhood Organizes to Defend Water and Fight Gentrification

In Mexico City on February 24^th, the General Assembly of the Peoples, Neighborhoods, Communities and Pedregales of Coyoacán took to the street to hold the first forum in defense of the aquifer at Avenida Aztecas 215. The assembly has been actively organizing in the neighborhood for two years now in resistance to the construction of an apartment complex on top of a fresh-water aquifer. Not only is the apartment complex project a force of destruction of an aquifer in a city starved of water, but it is also a force of gentrification in a working class Mexico City neighborhood with a long history of community organization and resistance. Below is a translation of the assembly’s communique regarding the struggle, along with a series of audios and photos from the event.

A Recounting of the Struggle of the People in Defense of the Aquifer at Aztecas 215

In these two years of neighborhood organization, the General Assembly of the Peoples, Neighborhoods, Communities, and Pedregales of Coyoacán have carried out multiple actions to stop the ecocide and the illegalities of the real estate company “Quiero Casa” in their construction project at Avenida Aztecas 215, Pueblo de Los Reyes, Coyoacán.  The owners of the company are the brothers José and Salomón Shabot Cherem.

We have organized at least 100 neighborhood assemblies, and we have filed citizen complaints against the delegation of Coyoacán, SACMEX, SEDEMA, PAOT, SEDUVI, the Secretariat of Public Security, and the commission of human rights of DF.  We have reclaimed the popular struggle with 380 days of encampment in defense of water, life and territory.  We have also carried out at least 17 marches and blockades in and of the delegation of Coyoacán, PAOT, the central government, SEDEMA, the house of the ex-delegate Valentín Maldonado, of construction projects and offices of the real estate companies Quiero Casa, High Park and Torre Mitika.  To share the problem that we are facing, the assembly has given testimony in more than 50 public forums carried out in diverse places, visited eight radio stations, and been covered in multiple newspaper articles both print and digital.  We have protested in two renowned international forums and submitted evidence and testimony to the Grupo de Trabajo regarding companies and human rights, and to the special rapporteur regarding water and sanitation of the United Nations.  Together with everything above, nearly 30 dialogues have taken place with government representatives, without thus far the problem being solved of the damage to the shallow aquifer and the dumping into the drain of 5.6 million liters of water during 730 days.  The authorities, far from contributing to the solution of the conflict, have utilized repression against our peaceful struggle, like the police operation on April 30^th, 2016, and the eviction of the encampment by more than 500 riot police on December 5^th, 2016 where the governor Miguel Ángel Mancera ordered the robbery of our belongings and three vehicles.  Furthermore, the government and the real estate company have fabricated crimes against members of the assembly, with the intention of vanquishing the organization.

Despite all of this, the organizational force of the assembly has reached a fundamental achievement: the technical study of the origin of the water that was carried out by Dr. Oscar Escolero of the Institute of Geology at UNAM.  We are sure that without the social mobilization we would have not reached this study.  Today the knowledge of the shallow aquifer is a very important tool not only for the defense of the underground water and our territory, but for the defense of the environment in all of Mexico City that day in and day out is destroyed by the real estate and commercial cartels colluding with the entire political class.  As a social movement we have learned that this is a very unequal struggle and that we have to prepare ourselves extensively and support ourselves with specialists, organizations and peoples.  As such, we have constructed the Popular School “Escuela Popular Piedra y Manantial”, a space of mutual learning for the struggle.  This school was born from workdays organized for the construction of a community and popular green area that we carried out in November of 2016, and that was squashed by the governmental and police boot.  Today we decided to set forth again, for the second time, the effort to communally construct, in cooperation with specialists in the material, an alternative project that definitively stops the ecocide and rescues the aquifer and our dear natural spring.  Thus, we begin the series of forums in defense of the aquifer of Aztecas 215.  We invite you all to construct the pathway of water and the people, a pathway without ecocide, without dispossession, without corruption and without repression.  A pathway of hydraulic, scientific and popular justice.

Water is life and life is defended!

The natural spring is national patrimony!

Asamblea General de los Pueblos Barrios Colonias y Pedregales de Coyoacán

February 24^th, 2018

Bienvenidos:

Recuento de la lucha en Aztecas 215:

Dr. German Sandoval:

Dr. Rodrigo Gutiérrez Rivas:

Dr. Luis Zembrano: