Father Juan Carlos Zesati began with a friendly exhortation in which he quoted Pope Francisco. "Water is part of God's creation," he said to trace God's connection with the earth, life, community and finally with each person. "We must respect that connection".
The well of San Antonio de Lourdes, a town in the state of Guanajuato, in central Mexico, dried years. The people, decimated by poverty and emigration, also appears to be drying up, and there are only 29 children in primary school. However, a half hour drive, some farms still pumping water from deep underground to irrigate fields that grow broccoli and lettuce for US supermarkets.
"Their communities are suffering," Father Zesati told a group of mothers and children before delivering his charge: the farms "are extracting water ... but only for themselves."
Then he turned into a tank covered with lime water that built the people of San Antonio de Lourdes to collect rainwater from the roof of the school. He raised his right hand and blessed him. "This seems very small for all the problems that exist, but it is a sign of hope".
It was the first day of blessings in an arid and isolated area with several hills, in central Mexico, where farmers expect to get rain for their crops, subsistence, corn and beans.
When the father arrived Zesati north of Guanajuato four years ago, he quickly learned that the area was going through a water shortage crisis that is destroying much of the agricultural Mexico.
"What the Pope emphasized is that those who suffer most from pressure on land and ecological destruction, the first to suffer the effects are poor," Father Zesati said. "They impoverish because those who follow an economic model that takes all costs to the poor."
Farms in Guanajuato represent one of the great success stories of this model, codified in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Every day, workers packed boxes of fresh produce up to huge and noisy refrigerated trucks that go directly to the border with Texas.
"Within NAFTA only intensive agriculture is handled," said Dylan Terrell, director of Caminos de Agua, an organization that works with US universities to test water quality in wells of Guanajuato and designs and cisterns purchase and other methods of collecting drinking water.
Since the eighties, even before the free trade agreement, the government banned almost all new wells in Guanajuato. Despite that, the water extraction grew exponentially. "A system of bribes and well-known corruption" allowed that to happen, says Terrell.
Each year the farms reach deeper levels of aquifers and scientists warn that doing so are drawing contaminated water from deposits dating from between 10,000 and 35,000 years ago.
"That's the challenge for the authorities," said Marcos Adrián Ortega Guerrero, hydrogeologist of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "Managing water that is thousands of years old, water that is contaminated with arsenic and fluoride, it is causing great damage they have never wanted to admit."
Signs that the water is contaminated are clear. The strongest evidence is the prevalence of dental fluorosis, a disease that blackens the teeth. In addition, the many complaints of joint pain suggest that some people may be suffering from a more serious disease, skeletal fluorosis, which occurs when fluoride accumulates in bones.
"My husband can not stand the pain in the feet," says Guadalupe Mata, 39, mother of three children. They live in Rancho Nuevo, the second village route Zesati Father to bless cisterns. "We injected, but the pain always comes back. Anyway you go to the fields to plant chili. "
His 16 year old daughter had to enter the hospital due to kidney problems, he said. Buy bottled water is out of reach of the family: her husband earns about $ 33 a week.
No conducted formal studies of the health effects of excess arsenic and fluoride in communal wells Guanajuato, but some recent tests conducted by the Northern Illinois University for Roads Water shows levels much higher than the recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to WHO, continued exposure to arsenic to such levels can cause skin and lung cancer, among other types; in addition, it can also have neurological and cardiovascular effects. Along with dental and skeletal fluorosis, excess fluoride can exacerbate kidney problems, the organization said.
Three people have died from kidney disease since the Zesati father, who now fears for Gloria Villanueva Rodriguez, whose kidneys stopped working a year ago arrived. Three of his children were to join three others already working in the United States and send money to pay for their dialysis treatment.
"They work to heal myself," said Mrs. Villanueva, 51
Few dispute that the water supply is under pressure in Guanajuato. Farms use about 82 percent of all water and not have to pay.
In response to questions, Victor Hugo Alcocer Yamanaka, deputy technical director of the National Water Commission (Conagua), wrote that "the available studies are more than enough to say that the aquifers are undergoing a destructive over-exploitation".
But he denied the allegations that Conagua, which has only 10 inspectors for the entire state, has granted illegal water concessions.
Alcocer also confirmed that have been detected excessive levels of fluoride in various places in the north of the state, and found both fluoride and arsenic in others.
"We need to support growth," says Roberto Castaneda, undersecretary of Agriculture of the state of Guanajuato. To save water, "we must enforce the law more strictly, bring technology to the field and improve efficiency."
Alvaro Nieto, a farmer who sells broccoli, lettuce, cabbage and Brussels sprouts to distributors in California, said that most farmers are not interested Guanajuato talk about the environment. In addition, the government has refused to take action against illegal wells and overpumping, he added.
Nieto said it has reduced its water consumption by 40 percent compared to two decades ago using soil conservation techniques. "No more water pumping because I want to extend my business for several generations. There are many people who drink water with many straws of a single glass of water, "he said.
Jaime Hoogesteger, a researcher at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, who has studied the problem of water in Guanajuato, predicted that the day will come that the rise of agriculture ends with all the water that feeds it. "The only question is how soon," he said.
As evening approached, the father Zesati more blessed a cistern amid the bleating of sheep in the house of an elderly couple, Teresita Aguilar and Gabriel Padron.
Along with a dozen relatives and friends, he raised his right hand.
Then someone said, "Now we just hope for rain, and much".
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