Prosperous Mexican Farms Suck Up Water, Leaving Villages High and Dry Elisabeth Malkin - The New York Times
go to original May 19, 2016

The Rev. Juan Carlos Zesati, center, blessing a recently constructed rainwater cistern in Guanajuato State, central Mexico. (Janet Jarman/The New York Times)

In the dappled shade of mesquite trees by the side of a pale yellow schoolhouse, the children finished a song and waited for the priest’s blessing.

The Rev. Juan Carlos Zesati began with a gentle exhortation, citing Pope Francis. “Water is part of God’s creation,” he said as he traced the connection from God to the earth, to life, to community and ultimately to every individual. “We have to respect that connection.”

But the well in San Antonio de Lourdes, a village in Guanajuato State in central Mexico, went dry years ago. The village itself, depleted by poverty and migration, seems to be drying up, too, and only 29 children are left in the primary school. But a half-hour’s drive away, fertile farms pump water from deep underground to irrigate fields that grow broccoli and lettuce for American supermarkets.

“Your communities are suffering,” Father Zesati told a group of mothers and children before delivering his indictment. It is the farms that “are sucking up the water — but just for themselves.”

Then he turned to face a whitewashed water tank, built by the people of San Antonio de Lourdes to collect rainwater from the school roof, raised his right hand, and blessed it. “This seems small for all the problems there are — but it’s a sign of hope.”

It was the first of a day of such blessings in a hilly arid pocket of central Mexico where farmers wait for rain to bring subsistence crops of corn and beans to life.

When Father Zesati arrived in northern Guanajuato four years ago, he quickly learned that he was at the heart of a water crisis, one that is playing out over much of agricultural Mexico.

Read the rest at The New York Times

Related: Many Homes Don't Get Enough: Some Ideas to Address Water Inequality in Mexico (Mexico News Daily)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!