On the 18th anniversary of the death of Miguel Ángel López Rocha, the seven-year-old boy who died after falling into the polluted Río Santiago in El Salto, a small white coffin sat at the center of a press conference in the elegant Hotel La Rotonda in Guadalajara Centro. Representatives from citizen groups throughout the region had come to present a “citizen balance” or evaluation of the first year of the federal government’s Lerma–Santiago river basin restoration program.
Miguel Ángel slipped into the river near his home in La Azucena in February 2008 and died from acute arsenic poisoning. Activists say his death remains emblematic of the health crisis linked to industrial contamination along the river corridor.
On the positive side, the citizen groups acknowledged that the federal government’s Programa de Saneamiento y Restauración de la Cuenca Lerma–Santiago represents a long-awaited shift in attention and funding. Among the advances they identified is a multiyear federal budget commitment for 2025–2030. According to the figures released, 500 million pesos were announced for 2025, of which 408 million pesos have been spent, with 1.35 billion pesos projected for 2026 and 7 billion pesos planned through 2030. The Jalisco state government has also committed 2.295 billion pesos during the current administration.
The groups also welcomed the inclusion of the Lerma–Santiago cleanup as a priority within the National Water Plan, greater coordination between federal and state authorities, and what they described as openness to dialogue from federal officials.
However, the report argues that the program remains focused primarily on hydraulic infrastructure — treatment plants and collectors — rather than on stricter regulation of polluting industries.
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