For more than ten years, communities in Jiménez del Teúl, Zacatecas, have rejected the Milpillas Dam. Through ejido assemblies, legal injunctions, and protests, they halted the project in 2019, citing outdated studies, falsified data, and a complete lack of consultation. In 2020, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suspended the project. However, in 2025, the governor of Zacatecas, David Monreal, and Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum revived this megaproject, which would benefit mining and brewing companies.
The current water crisis in Zacatecas stems from the massive water extraction by Grupo Modelo, part of the Belgian-based brewing group Anheuser-Busch InBev, leaving communities in a state of extreme vulnerability. Experts and residents of the local ejidos point out that the dam’s water is not intended for human consumption but rather to guarantee supply for large extractive and agribusiness industries. Corporations like Grupo Peñoles and its subsidiary Fresnillo PLC would directly benefit. The project would allow these mining companies to continue extracting water from the central region’s underground aquifers without the social pressure generated by urban water shortages, since the dam would “replace” the water for the cities.
Recently, the Movement in Defense of the Territory and the Atenco River denounced that the head of the Agrarian Attorney General’s Office (PA) in Zacatecas, Francisco Pérez Compeán, has been coercing ejido members into accepting the construction of the Milpillas Dam. They added that the PA head in Zacatecas “has been delivering desks to some schools in acts that we consider proselytizing and/or coercive,” actions with which he seeks to pressure the ejido members. In recent days, attacks, disinformation, and coercion against ejidos and communities defending their territory and the Atenco River against the Milpillas Dam project have intensified, warned Desinformémonos.
In an interview with Rompeviento TV, Imelda Sánchez, a resident and daughter of an ejido member from El Potrero, Agustín Reyes, an affected resident of Estancia de Guadalupe in the municipality of Sombrerete, and Grecia Rodríguez, from the Zacatecas Mining Conflicts Observatory and the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA), denounced the corporate interests driving questionable projects like the Milpillas Dam.
Letter to authorities: Organizations and communities warn of human rights violations and demand the cancellation of the Milpillas Dam project (REMA) | Agrarian official coerces ejido members to accept Milpillas Dam (La Coperacha) | See interview Milpillas Dam: mining and brewing companies are the beneficiaries (34 min., Rompeviento TV) | Zacatecas standing up for what’s right: a decade of resistance against the Milpillas Dam (Footnote) | Background The Minute Triumph for opponents of the Milpillas Dam; Conagua cancels bidding process (2019) | Action Plan on Critical Minerals between the US and Mexico will intensify the destruction and dispossession of territories by mining, NGOs warn Photo: La Jornada Zacatecas
Soure: educaoaxaca
