Photo from La Jornada Oriente

On February 15, the National Guard and State Police removed the Altepemelcalli – Casa de los Pueblos (house of the peoples) occupation of the Danone/Bonafont bottled water plant in the city of Juan C. Bonilla in the state of Puebla.

Almost a year ago, on March 22, 2021, twenty Indigenous Nahua communities formed the Pueblos Unidos (the United Peoples) and took over the bottled water plant in response to the depletion of water in their wells, rivers and streams.

Danone/Bonafont had been extracting 1,641,000 liters of water per day for the past 29 years before its closure by Pueblos Unidos.

PBI-Mexico has tweeted:

“The United Peoples of the Cholulteca Region and the Volcanes and members of @fpdtampt [the People’s Front in Defense of Water and Land – Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala] turned Altepemelcalli into a space to exercise their rights as indigenous communities and against the dispossession of water and the scarcity that exists in the region.”

Now, hundreds of organizations and individuals have signed this statement that concludes:

“We invite the population not to support these companies and stop consuming the products of the French transnational Danone: Bonafont, Activia, Danonino, Vitalinea, dnp, Danette, Dany, Oikos and other range of junk food.”

Among the signatories are Salvemos los cerros de Chihuahua (22), Fridays for Future Mexico (33) and Greenpeace Mexico (108).

The Peoples’ Front of Morelos Puebla Tlaxcala has also posted this statement on their Facebook page that concludes:

“We call on all communities and people who defend the struggles for life and who believe that another world is possible, to mobilize and join the campaign of BOYCOTT the Bonafont company, through calls on social networks, talks, memes, stickers, manifestos, caricatures, graffiti, murals, songs, dances, plays and any possible means,  telling people NOT TO BUY AND NOT TO CONSUME Bonafont water.”

The Danone brands sold in Canada include the Activia, Danette and Oikos brands noted in the solidarity statement signed by Salvemos los cerros.

For more on the call for the boycott, please see Tamara Pearson’s article Indigenous activists in Mexico launch global campaign against water bottling transnationals. More context on the occupation can also be read in this article by Marina Tricks: How Nahua Indigenous communities in Mexico took on Danone in defense of water and life.

We continue to follow this situation.

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    Mexico