MEXICO :: Mazahuas Choose Jail over Going Without Water

we'll be seeing more and more fights like this as corporations and governments continue the move to privatize the basics of life. and how do you expect an indigenous people to react when you take the water out off their streams and put it in a pipe or behind razor wire fences in a reservoir and then start charging them for the privilege of using what was theirs for free before you showed up? progress huh?
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original-interpress news

MEXICO:
Mazahuas Choose Jail over Going Without Water
Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, Dec 30 (Tierramérica) - Although they live near a gigantic water distribution system, the indigenous Mazahuas lack access to water and live in deep poverty. Since Dec. 11, when they shut off the valves of one of the system's plants in protest, Mazahua women have kept up the vigil -- and warn that it could turn radical.


"We prefer jail over continuing without water," Beatriz Flores, a member of the "General Command of the Mazahua Women's Army in Defence of Water", told Tierramérica.

The group, despite its name, declares itself to be a peaceful movement. Its protest consists of maintaining an encampment of 50 to 70 people outside "Los Berros" water purification plant in the Mazahua town of Villa Victoria. The plant where the protesters shut off the valves is part of the Cutzamala water system, which supplies the capital and part of the state of Mexico, neighbouring Mexico City.

Flores, 27, has three young daughters and combines her domestic duties with activism for water rights. Her family gets by thanks to a vegetable garden and the exhausting farm work of her husband.

"We asked them to supply water in our houses, and also an integrated development plan to get out of poverty. That is why we won't leave the plant until they listen to us," Flores said in a Tierramérica interview.
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complete article here

Carlyle and other mega-corps are buying up water treatment facilities.

These are assets that belong to the PEOPLE of this country. No private corporation should ever be allowed control over access to water.

Wait and see. Talk about setting the stage for the next phase of the class war... Try restricting access to the most primary necessities of life...

There's more of us than there are of them...and I'm not above throwing punches when punches need to be thrown.

It is amazing to me that they believe they will get away with this.

Bechtel Corp. got control of the water in one Bolivian city, then jacked up the prices to the poorest of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater! The people rose up in massive protests and basically threw Bechtel out of their country--then elected Evo Morales as president, the first 100% indigenous Andes Indian ever to be president in Bolivia (--and I believe the first in South America). The indigenous are leading the way! They are the "canaries in the coal mine" for us urban dwellers. They are the first to feel the impacts of the Corporate Rulers upon the environment. Often they are small farmers. Wells/creeks dried up. Soil eroded, soil/plant life polluted with pesticides and GMOs. Forests denuded. Wildlife disappearing. And these days, huge displacement of small farmers by mega-corporations buying up the land, polluting the land, and/or dumping US ag products on local markets to first destroy local farmers then take their land--all over the world, India, South Korea, all of Latin America. But these campesinos have banded together in a huge worldwide organization, that is having a tremendous impact for the good on global "free trade" (global corporate predator) policy. They are in fact leading a huge, peaceful democratic revolution in South America--with leftist (majorityist) governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and big new movements in Peru and Paraguay (also in southern Mexico and Mexico City; and reflected in the election of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua). These countries are banding together (through Mercosur, and new talks on a South American "Common Market" and common currency) to achieve regional self-determination and to fight against the often US-based multinationals that are stealing their natural resources and destroying their environments, and the global predators enforcement arms (US State Dept./CIA, World Bank/IMF, WTO). There are democratic uprisings almost everywhere in Latin America, and, as the result of the long work of the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civic groups and grass roots activists on TRANSPARENT elections, the advocates of the poor majority are getting elected, at long last!

Mexico is a special case, because of its proximity to the US border. The recent stolen presidential election was no doubt the work of US-based multinationals in cahoots with the Bushites and the local rich fascist elites in Mexico. The new corporatist/fascist president, Calderon, smashed the big uprising in Oaxaca, recently--and there has been excessive fascist brutality by both the local governor (rapes, torture, kidnappings, murder) and the Federales who invaded Oaxaca on his side (gassing of the entire town of Oaxaca, more deaths, arrests of hundreds of local community orgranizers--teachers, union leaders, elders--torture, disappearances). However, the fascists are ultimately going to "lose" Mexico, too, because the trend in Latin American is overwhelmingly democratic, and the poor are by far the majority. Viva la revolución!

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Real news from Mexico: www.narconews.com
Real news from Venezuela and the Andes: www.venezuelanalysis.com
Real news on Bolivia and other places: http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/

thanks!

the first drop of Water when you wake to the hole you piss in before you sleep and go to that place where there are no longer dreams.

in special packaging.

Tap water in most of the US is just fine and in most areas better than the water in bottles.