Tuesday, June 13, some 30 residents from the Poncitlan villages of Agua Caliente, San Pedro Itzicán, Santa María, Chalpicote and la Zapotera demonstrated outside the Governor’s offices in Guadalajara, demanding a new artesian well be drilled so they could stop using contaminated water, which is being blamed for a host of diseases plaguing their communities.
“They are digging one of the two wells promised us, but they haven’t finished it...because they are lacking signatures, funds, all while people are dying,” said Jaime Gonzalez Gonzales, a resident of San Pedro Itzicán. “They [the government] want to placate us without getting to the bottom of the problem - with a talk, some toys, a meal. But meanwhile, the Casa de Salud doesn’t have medicine, and sometimes not even a doctor. The doctor comes maybe every two weeks to La Zapotera, Chalpicote and Agua Caliente,” he complained.
The protesters waved placards with photos of those who’ve died due to chronic kidney failure. They also carried small coffins.
These five villages in Poncitlan have as many as 600 residents, many of them children, suffering from this disease. At least 35 are receiving dialysis or hemodialysis treatments due to the advanced nature of their conditions, according to Guillermo García García, chief of Nefrology Services of the Antiguo Hospital Civil in Guadalajara. Some patients have already received transplants. The rate of incidents in Poncitlan children is ten times that in the rest of the state and four times more than in adults with kidney problems, according to statistics from Mobile Health Centers of the Hospital Civil Foundation.
“In Jalisco, the prevalence of transplant therapy is about 1,600 cases per million inhabitants. In Poncitlan, the number is closer to 2,500 per million,” said Garcia. “This is an epidemiologic contingency and if nothing is done, the number of patients that will require dialysis or transplants will increase.”
Although there are multiple causes — among them pollution, poor nutrition, unprotected use of agrochemical products and poverty, according to the Universidad de Guadalajara — heavy metals have been detected in high quantities in the communal wells from which these communities drink. The ingestion of eavy metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury are known causes of renal deficiency.
In a study by a group led by Doctor Felipe Lozano of the University Center for Health Services (CUCS), they found a high presence of pesticides in the urine of 231 children in Agua Caliente, 24 percent of the village’s population.
The protesters were met by the Mayor of Poncitlan Juan Carlos Montes Johnston, the state Secretary of Social Development Miguel Castro Reynoso and other state authorities, who explained that the first well had to be drilled deeper than expected, thus the delay in the expected April completion date. Castro promised to have it finished by mid-June. He also said the state would begin drilling a second well, and offered meanwhile to continue bringing fresh water in tanker trucks, in addition to bottled water.
However, the Poncitlan residents asserted that the state’s Secretary of Health, Antonio Cruces Mada, should have been at the meeting and ought to be working harder to resolve the health services problems plaguing the villages.