Concrete transformation: how Mexican rural communities transformed a large dam to protect their villages
Earlier this year, Mexico witnessed an exciting water management development: against all odds, a grassroots movement succeeded in stopping the ongoing construction of a large dam that would flood three rural villages to supply water to two large cities. The activists also convinced the government to implement a justice plan including reparations, and a technical plan to retrofit the dam wall and downscale it to safeguard the villages. Their achievement is a one-of-a-kind event in a long history of large-scale infrastructure development.
As many dam-affected activists know, once dam construction has started, it is almost impossible to stop. Too many interests, resources and reputations are at stake. Can the Mexican activists’ success spearhead a new, more inclusive type of water development? We have good reasons to think so.
Large infrastructure projects such as dams have long been considered the preferred pathway by countries seeking economic development. The sacrifices, including human suffering, such projects demanded were often ignored. An early user of this approach was the nearly independent India, which during the late 1940s and early 1950s embarked on a pathway to development characterized by mega-sized infrastructure. Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru called the Bhakra Nangal Dam, a 211-meter high concrete dam with a reservoir capacity of 9 billion cubic meters, the temple of India’s development.
Seventy years after Bhakra Nangal Dam, in the heart of Mexico, the same development paradigm continues: Water and development problems are considered best resolved by means of heavy concrete civil works. A grandiose water transfer project started in 2005 with the construction of the Zapotillo dam in the Verde River basin in the State of Jalisco. However, this time, the residents of the soon-to-be-flooded villages Temacapulín, Acasico and Palmarejo fought back.
They kept up their effort despite being accused of being anti-modern, anti-progress and anti-development. And they managed to stop the project. In what dam activists consider almost a miracle, the dam is now being retrofitted by carving six 10-meter by 10-meter spillways in the middle of the 60-meter thick dam wall. This retrofitting will keep the villages safe from flooding, while still providing water to the cities, though at a lower rate than originally envisioned.
Those who accused the activist villagers of being anti-progress and anti-development were proven wrong: The alternative technical solutions they proposed, adapted also to reduce demand for water, and priotize the needs of all people and the environment, will contribute to solving the cities’ long-term water supply needs while protecting the villages.
The water expertise they developed with the help from IHE Delft and others enabled them to present an alternative to the usual approach in which rural areas are sacrificed for the sake of an urban-biased economic system. The villagers, along with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who visited the area repeatedly to support their effort, showed that other kinds of progress and development are possible. The symbolic importance of this achievement cannot be understated.
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If Bhakra Nangal Dam was a temple of development, as Nehru said, then the grassroots movement found a way to transform this Mexican “temple of development”, into a temple of water justice. We congratulate the communities and the Mexican government in spearheading what we hope will be a global movement in which grassroots movements are heard, and water development more inclusive.”
This blog was written by Jonatan Godinez Madrigal, Nora van Cauwenbergh and Pieter van der Zaag.