While Mexico plays politics with its water, some cities flood and others go dry

When Cape Town acknowledged in February that it would run out of water within months, South Africa suddenly became the global poster child for bad water management. Newspapers revealed that the federal government had been slow to respond to the city’s three-year drought because the mayor belongs to an opposition party.

Cape Town is not alone. While both rich and poor countries are drying out, the fast-growing cities of the developing world are projected to suffer the most acute shortages in coming years.

Scarcity turns water into a powerful political bargaining chip. From Delhi to Nairobi, its oversight is fraught with inequality, corruption and conflict.

Mexico, too, has seen its water fall prey to cronyism in too many cities. I interviewed 180 engineers, politicians, business leaders and residents in eight Mexican cities for my book on politics and water. I was startled to discover that Mexican officials frequently treat water distribution and treatment not as public services but as political favors.

When thunderstorms are cause for panic

Nezahualcoyotl is a city in Mexico State near the nation’s sprawling capital. Just after lunch one Friday afternoon in 2008, Pablo, an engineer, was showing me around town when news of an unexpected thunderstorm began lighting up his team’s cell phones and pagers.

The engineers shouted back and forth, looking increasingly frantic. Having just begun my book research, I did not yet understand why an everyday event like a thunderstorm would elicit such panic.

Pablo explained that Nezahualcoyotl’s aged electric grid often failed during big storms and that the city lacked backup generators. If a power outage shut down the local sanitation treatment plant, raw sewage would flood the streets.

These “aguas negras” carry nasty bacteria, viruses and parasitic organisms and can cause cholera, dysentery, hepatitis and severe gastroenteritis. If raw sewage also contains industrial wastewater – which is common in rapidly industrializing countries like Mexico – it may also expose residents to chemicals and heavy metals that can lead to everything from lead poisoning to cancer.

Pablo and his colleagues avoided a flood that day. But I later read news articles confirming how relatively common sewage overflows are there. Nezahualcoyotl residents have been dealing with this multisystem failure for 30 years, complaining of gastrointestinal illness and skin lesions all the while.

So why hasn’t this public health emergency been fixed? The answer is a primer on the tricky politics of urban water delivery in Mexico.

In some Mexican cities, heavy rains routinely cause raw sewage carrying a host of dangerous parasites and bacteria to overflow into the streets.
AP Photo/Prometeo Lucero

Profit from dysfunction

Public malfeasance in Mexico is widespread. Nearly 90 percent of citizens see the state and federal government as corrupt, according to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

The country’s water situation, too, is pretty dire. The capital, Mexico City, is “parched and sinking,” according to a powerful 2017 New York Times report, and 81 percent of residents say they don’t drink from the tap, either because they lack running water or they don’t trust its quality.

Officially, nearly all Mexicans have access to running water. But in practice, many – particularly poorer people – have intermittent service and very low pressure.

Workers in one city asked me to keep their identity anonymous before explaining why the water infrastructure there was so decrepit. It wasn’t a lack of technology, they said. The mayor’s team actually profits from refusing to upgrade the city’s perpetually defunct hardware. That’s because whenever a generator or valve breaks, they send it to their buddies’ refurbishing shops.

Numerous engineers across Mexico similarly expressed frustration that they were sometimes forbidden from making technical fixes to improve local water service because of a mayor’s “political commitments.”

In Nezahualcoyotl, I met a water director who openly boasted of using public water service for his political and personal gain. In the same breath, he told me that he fought to keep water bills low in this mostly poor city because water was a “human right” but also that he had once turned off supplies to an entire neighborhood for weeks because of a feud with another city employee.

No voter ID, no water

Public officials also use water to influence politics.

My sources also alleged that the powerful Revolutionary Institutional Party, or PRI – which has long run Mexico State, and thus controlled its water supply – has turned off the water in towns whose mayors belonged to opposition parties. These tactics are not reported in the Mexican press, but according to my research the cuts tend to occur just before municipal elections – a bid to make the PRI’s political competition look bad.

Water corruption isn’t limited to Mexico State, or to the center-right PRI party.

The millions of Mexicans who lack reliable access to piped water are served by municipal water trucks, called “pipas,” which drive around filling buildings’ cisterns. This system seems prone to political exploitation.

Mexican households without steady running water have cisterns filled by ‘pipas,’ or municipal water trucks.
AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

Interviewees told me that city workers sometimes make people show their voter ID cards, demonstrating their affiliation to the governing party, before receiving their water. Across the country, mayoral candidates chase votes by promising to give residents free or subsidized water service, rather than to charge based on consumption.

The phenomenon of trading water as a political favor is probably more common in lower income communities, which rely almost exclusively on the pipas.

Water is a state secret

In Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz state, I saw how water can hold a different kind of political power.

There, I found, the location of underground pipes and other critical water infrastructure was guarded like a state secret, known by just a handful of public workers. It made them irreplaceable.

So when customers complained that some municipal employees were asking for bribes to provide water, management hesitated to fire them. The workers controlled valuable information about the city’s water system.

The ConversationWater may be a human right. But when politicians manipulate it for their personal or political benefit, some cities flood while others go dry.


Veronica Herrera, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

When Cape Town acknowledged in February that it would Continue reading

Follow Us On Google News | Get Our Newsletter



Trending News on PVDN

  • Where do foreigners come from and where do they live in MexicoMexico City Protest on July 5 Challenges Gentrification and Airbnb’s Impact on Housing Residents of Roma and Condesa will gather at Parque México on July 5 to protest gentrification, rising rents, and Airbnb’s effect on local housing. This Saturday, July 5, Mexico City will witness its first organized citizen protest against gentrification—a peaceful but urgent gathering taking place at 3:30 p.m. at the Lindbergh Forum in Parque México,…
  • raw-sewage-playa-los-muertos-puerto-vallartaMore Raw Sewage Dumping at Playa Los Muertos Appear to Come From Local Hotel Business owners in Puerto Vallarta are demanding action after raw sewage was discovered leaking onto Playa Los Muertos, raising public health and tourism concerns. A raw sewage leak at Playa Los Muertos in Puerto Vallarta has sparked outrage among local tourist service providers and business owners, who say the contamination is driving away visitors and…
  • puerto-vallarta-rainfall-hurricane-flossie-july-2025Puerto Vallarta braces for torrential rains as Hurricane Flossie gains strength Puerto Vallarta faces a high risk of flooding as Hurricane Flossie intensifies in the Pacific. Torrential rains and overwhelmed drainage systems pose major challenges for the city. Puerto Vallarta, a city wedged between the Sierra Madre mountains and the Pacific Ocean, is no stranger to dramatic weather shifts—but this summer, the skies are testing the…
  • protests3Mexico City Protests: There is a fine line between anti-gentrification and xenophobia The line between anti-gentrification and racism is clear if you choose to see it: genuine activism targets policy and practice, not nationality or ethnicity. I have lived in Mexico for two decades, and I have never witnessed the level of anti-American sentiment that exists today. All of it is tied to the buzzword "gentrification," a…
  • puerto vallarta lettersPuerto Vallarta needs a new image to create meaningful reasons for travelers to visit Business leaders at Jalisco Tourism Secretariat forums stressed the need for renewing Puerto Vallarta image and diversifying attractions to appeal to national and international markets. Local business leaders and tourism specialists agreed this week that Puerto Vallarta needs a fresh look and a broader range of attractions to compete at home and abroad. In a…
  • José Luis Velázquez RodríguezSEAPAL Official Reported Missing in Puerto Vallarta Authorities in Puerto Vallarta have launched a search for José Luis Velázquez Rodríguez, SEAPAL's head of transparency, who has been missing since June 30. Family and officials are urging the public to report any information. Local authorities and civil protection units have launched a search operation for José Luis Velázquez Rodríguez, head of the Transparency…
  • puerto-vallarta-police-chase-bahia-de-banderasPuerto Vallarta police chase ends in deadly collision in Bahía de Banderas A Puerto Vallarta police chase along Highway 200 ended in a deadly collision in Bahía de Banderas, leaving two people dead. A high-speed chase that began in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, and ended in Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit, left at least two people dead and raised new questions about police engagement and road safety in the…
  • protestProtest graffiti and smashed windows mars anti-gentrification rally in Mexico City Residents and activists joined an anti-gentrification rally in Mexico Park, but the anti-gentrification rally Mexico Park turned destructive as masked youths defaced local shops and broke windows. A rally against gentrification held yesterday in Mexico City’s Parque México drew residents from Juárez, Roma, Condesa and Hipódromo alongside local activists. Organizers billed it as the city’s…
  • mexico city real estateGentrification in Mexico City is not the reason for the high cost of housing City housing shortage, not gentrification, drives prices skyward as planning lags behind demand and foreigner influence remains minimal. High real estate costs in Mexico City stem from a deep and persistent housing shortage—exacerbated by land constraints, tangled regulations and speculative investment—rather than by the presence of foreign residents. Despite headlines blaming “gentrification,” foreign-born residents make…
  • no-damage-jalisco-hurricane-flossieNo Damage Reported in Jalisco as Hurricane Flossie Moves Away While Mexico's Weather Service predicted heavy rains, Hurricane Flossie causes no damage along Jalisco’s coast. The Category 3 storm brings light rain and moderate waves as it moves away from the region. The coasts of Jalisco remain calm and largely unaffected following the passage of Hurricane Flossie, a powerful Category 3 storm that is now…
Scroll to Top