Indigenous Mayans want their sacred cenotes to have personhood status
A huge poplar tree stands proud in Maribel Ek’s courtyard, adorned with a sign that reads: “Florece desde adentro” (“It blooms from within”).
Deep underground, the tree’s long roots search for the water that makes this land special: a sinkhole lake, known as a cenote.
Cenotes provide an important water source to Ek’s community of Homun, in the Mexican state of Yucatan, and a livelihood for locals who lead tourists from around the world into the caverns to bathe in their crystalline waters.
But more than that, cenotes are sacred to Indigenous Mayans like her.
As she descends into the cavern, Ek shines a light on a stone covered in flowers, pots, and candles —the remains of an offering she made to thank the cenote for everything it has given her. She refers to the sacred space as her “neighbor,” one that needs protection.
That belief is the basis of a lawsuit that seeks personhood status for the Ring of Cenotes, made up of hundreds of subterranean lakes that surround the northwest of the Yucatan peninsula in a semicircle, and provide the main source of freshwater in the region.
The lawsuit, from the Indigenous Mayan organization Kana’an Ts’onot, or Guardians of the Cenotes, seeks to protect the area from further contamination by industries that have moved there to take advantage of the plentiful water. The group, as designated guardians, would be able to fight on behalf of the Ring of Cenotes in court.
If they win, this would become the first ecosystem in Mexico to have its own rights, following in the wake of other cases worldwide, such as the Whanganui River in New Zealand or the Komi Memem River in the Brazilian Amazon.
Ek, a member of the Guardians group, speaks of the cenote and its waters as a person, as she explains the reasons behind their fight.
“Because you have to be the voice, that she doesn’t have,” she said. “Because you have to be the hands, that she doesn’t have.”
What do the pig farmers say?
Pig farms and other large industries are drawn to the area because of the availability of water. The farms use large quantities of water (about 20 liters per kilo of meat produced) to cool the animals and clean their waste.
The industry says they are not to blame for the contamination.
Carlos Ramayo Navarrete, director of the Pig Farmers Association in Merida, which represents the largest pig companies in Yucatan, said the problem is the lack of drainage in cities and the small-scale and “backyard” pig operations, because they are not as regulated by the authorities as are the bigger farms he represents.
He said around half the water the farms use is then reused. In addition, he said that all of the farms have treatment plants to reduce the load of pollutants in their wastewater, which is then used as fertilizer to irrigate fields.
“An industry that does everything within its reach and more can’t be demonized,” he said.
However, both the Ministry of the Environment and Aguilar have said that the measures taken by the industry are still not enough to prevent contamination of the aquifer. “As so much (water) is used, to date there is no treatment plant that can lower the pollution load of all that wastewater,” Aguilar said.
What will the future bring?
As the lawsuits wend their way through the courts, tension between mega-farms and the local population has increased.
In 2023, the residents of Sitilpech, about 50 kilometers from Homun, took to the streets to protest against the 48,000 pig farm located on the outskirts of their village. The demonstrations were repressed by the police and resulted in the arrest of several villagers.
When a group of AP reporters approached the farm earlier this year, owned by pig giant Kekén, they saw a security guard with a machete in his hand at the entrance.
The Sitilpech house closest to the farm is small and painted green, with a porch overlooking the road and a banner written in capital letters demanding that the pig farm leave.
In the backyard, Marcela Chi Eb has just put in a washing machine and is hanging clothes on ropes supported by two lemon trees. Their leaves are dry and brownish; she said they got that way when the farm started operating.
At night she is awakened by the farm’s stench and, although the heat is unbearable, she closes the windows to keep out the smell that permeates her nose and clothes.
While one of her daughters rests in a hammock, Chi Eb talks about what worries her most: that in the future neither she nor her children will be able to use the water that comes from the faucet in her house.
Back in Homun, Maribel Ek reaches the end of the cavern and, without a second thought, dives into the turquoise waters of the cenote.
As a child she came down here every day to collect water because the public supply didn’t reach her house.
Since then she learned this wasn’t just “a dark hole with bats,” but “a blessing, a dark hole that becomes a friend,” she says. “That’s why we demand rights for our cenotes.”
Originally published at AP