Santiago River, “vector of death”

I repeat the phrase that four and a half years ago, after taking a tour to learn about the ecocide on the Santiago River, the Spaniard Pedro Arrojo, then the new United Nations (UN) rapporteur for the human right to drinking water, said. He warned that the ecosystem of this body of water was so deteriorated that it had gone from being “a key to life to a vector of disease and death.”

Governments and promises come and go, but the cleanup of the Santiago River simply isn't a reality, and its degradation continues to affect the health and cause the deaths of residents in surrounding communities.

Now, it was an investigation conducted by my colleague Alejandra Parra Grande, from N+ Guadalajara, in collaboration with the research unit N+Focus, that demonstrated the illnesses that continue to be caused by the heavy metals that are dumped into that river with impunity.

On Enrique Alfaro's first day in office, December 6, 2018, on the banks of the Santiago River, he promised that cleaning it up for its restoration would be a priority of his administration. Almost six years later, and after an investment of 7.333 billion pesos, which he claimed was made in infrastructure and sanitation efforts, he boasted in a costly propaganda campaign that the river had "revived."

Days before the end of his term, however, he acknowledged that what had been done had not been sufficient and that the complete cleanup could not be achieved until 2050, provided his successor continued the work.

Therefore, it would be very useful to know if Pablo Lemus's administration has already conducted an assessment of how the Santiago River was received and the level of progress made in combating pollution in that body of water, and especially in its cleanup after the multimillion-dollar investment his predecessor claims was made for that purpose. And of course, we would also like to know what his administration's strategy will be to address this enormous environmental challenge.

In the disaster to the ecosystem of the Santiago River, the second longest river in Mexico that rises in Lake Chapala and then crosses Jalisco and Nayarit to flow into the Pacific Ocean, municipal authorities also bear responsibility, and above all, the federal government, which has neglected its obligation to preserve it.

That's why it's encouraging that President Claudia Sheinbaum stated in her first State of the Union address last Monday, both in her message and in the written document she submitted to the Legislative Branch, that rescuing the Santiago River is a priority for her administration, in coordination with state and municipal authorities. Hopefully, this time it won't just be mere rhetoric, and this tributary will once again be a "key to life" and no longer a "vector of death."