Agua para Todos protests the dismissal of Burns at the Conagua headquarters

Angelica Enciso L.

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, November 8, 2022, p. 12

Yesterday morning, members of the National Coordinator for Water for All demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the National Water Commission (Conagua), as well as in at least five other offices in the states, protesting the dismissal of Elena Burns as Deputy Director General of Water Administration of the agency.

In a letter addressed to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this coordinator pointed out that “it is clear that this attempted purge of the Water Administration subdirectorate has the purpose of removing one of the few teams from the agency that truly work to stop the process of hoarding, overexploitation, contamination of the waters and the installation, de facto, of the human right for water and sanitation in Mexico. A team that includes Elena Burns, whom you entrusted to work so that the waters belong to the people”.

He pointed out that, from that area, Burns has done many things in favor of the indigenous peoples and the people in general, such as canceling the Monterrey VI aqueduct and making the first criminal complaint against polluters in Alto Atoyac.

In the protest in front of Conagua, on Insurgente Sur avenue in Mexico City, Pedro Moctezuma, a member of the coordinator, stated that the population suffers from hunger, thirst, death, this causes the policy of the landlords, and recalled that after a decade a citizen proposal on the General Water Law was achieved and is in Congress awaiting approval. In the Conagua like this they receive people: with the use of forcehe said pointing to the police apparatus that guarded the building.

There, with banners and cardboard, people rejected the dismissal of Burns, a member of the coordinator, and dozens of people pointed out that, for example, she has worked with community water systems. During the morning, they carried out intermittent closures on Insurgentes avenue, while in Mexicali, Hidalgo, La Laguna, Mérida and Villahermosa there were also protests in front of the Conagua facilities.