Community leaders, academics, activists and legislators met last week in the Jalisco State Congress to challenge Mexico’s proposed reform to its National Water Law, warning that it would deepen rather than dismantle privatization of the nation’s water.
The Open Citizen Parliament in Jalisco brought together farmers, Indigenous representatives, scientists and lawyers, urban collectives and environmental groups under the banner “One Water, One Law.” Their aim: to craft citizen proposals for a new General Water Law that guarantees the constitutional right to water and curbs corporate control.
“We must move toward a new law that eliminates the privatizing model — one that recognizes water as fundamental to life, as a right, not a commodity,” said María González Valencia, director of the Mexican Institute for Community Development (IMDEC) and coordinator of the Jalisco Water Defense Movement, as she opened the forum before a packed hall.
González explained that the event was both a citizen and legislative exercise, with panels analyzing competing bills and working groups drafting Jalisco-specific resolutions to be delivered to the Water Resources Commission in the Chamber of Deputies for inclusion in the national debate.
Federal Deputy Mariana Casillas Guerrero called it a decisive moment.
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