León Felipe Mendoza
We are living through a global crisis of civilization. The collapse of ecosystems and the growing precarity of life reflect a development model that consumes and dispossesses. It’s not just air and water that are contaminated—our relationships, bodies, and ways of living are breaking down. Human health and the health of the land are deeply connected. When we care for the land, it cares for us. When we damage it, we harm ourselves.
San Miguel de Allende—renowned for its architecture and tourist charm—is also caught in this crisis. Behind the postcard image of “the world’s best city,” the region faces a serious water emergency. Like many places around the globe, unchecked growth—driven by urban expansion, industrial agriculture, and high-impact tourism—has ignored natural cycles and ecological limits.
Real estate, industrial corridors, and tourist-driven development have expanded under policies that often favor private over public interests. While rural communities are hit hardest, the crisis also affects urban neighborhoods, subdivisions, and farmlands. Rationing, deeper wells, tanker deliveries, abandoned fields, and prolonged drought have led to water scarcity and hoarding.
Since the 1950s, groundwater extraction has surged, especially for export crops. Today, over a billion cubic meters are pumped annually from about 3,000 wells—85% of it for agribusiness. As a result, water tables have dropped from 50–60 meters in the 1950s to as deep as 500 meters. What’s being extracted now is fossil water—10,000 to 35,000 years old—often contaminated with fluoride, arsenic, sodium, or radioactive materials, posing major health risks.
The Ignacio Allende Dam, built in 1969 to modernize local agriculture, now stands as a visible symptom of this failed model. It altered the Laja River and displaced communities whose fields, mesquite groves, and communal lands were submerged. Over time, it became a site of life, recreation, and fishing—but today faces a serious environmental and social crisis.
Since 2021, water hyacinth has overtaken the dam’s surface. It signals eutrophication from untreated sewage and agrochemical runoff. While hyacinth can filter water in some conditions, in a degraded ecosystem it grows uncontrollably—blocking light, reducing oxygen, and suffocating aquatic life. It’s like an immune system gone haywire: a body trying to protect itself but drowning in the process. In 2023, the dam hit its lowest level since construction—on the verge of drying up.
In response, local residents have taken action. A collective of women from Presa Allende, along with neighbors from Begoña and Flores de Begoña, have spent years manually removing the hyacinth. Their work is slow but constant—an act of care and resistance against a system that has long excluded them. As they clear weeds with pitchforks, export farms and golf courses continue to use millions of liters of water.
Building a more conscious relationship with the land is a shared responsibility—but the greatest burden lies with those who enabled and profited from this crisis. Restoring the dam requires concrete action: upgrading treatment systems, adopting sustainable technologies, and regulating urban growth and water-intensive industries. So far, authorities have failed to act with the urgency the crisis demands.
A more just future is possible—but only if it’s shaped with those who live on and care for the land. San Miguel must choose: continue prioritizing tourism, industrial corridors, and agribusiness—or face the climate and social emergency for what it truly is.
Saving the dam is more than an environmental task—it’s a collective act of care, a commitment to life, and a call to imagine new ways of living.
