Coca-Cola sucks wells dry in Chiapas Mexico, forcing residents to buy water. While many in the region resorting to buying water from stores, while some residents have to walk two-hours a day to get access to clean water.

Chiapas has the most renewable water resources in all of Mexico. So what’s happening?

The state is home to a Coca-Cola bottling plant -- and it’s using over 1 million litres of water every single day. Coca-Cola’s corporate interests are being put before the water needs of local people.

This is especially troubling now, as earthquakes have battered the neighbouring province of Oaxaca, leaving the entire region struggling through a water crisis. Mexico needs all its water now, more than ever.

It’s the government’s constitutional responsibility to provide a safe, clean means of water for all of its citizens -- right now, those rights are being trampled all over. 

Tell the Chiapas government to put the water needs of its people first, and limit how much Coca-Cola can extract!

Despite the constitutional right of Mexican citizens to water, most people in the state do not have safe drinking water in their homes, while each Mexican household buys on average 1,500 liters of bottled water a year.

In San Felipe Ecatepec, the rural Chiapas location of the Coca-Cola factory, over one in three people don’t have access to running water -- with families in the town frequently getting sick from drinking contaminated well water.

"In the past four years, our wells have started drying up," says Juan Urbano, former president of the Communal Territory of San Felipe Ecatepec. "People sometimes walk two hours a day to get water. Others have to buy their water."

We can’t let Coca-Cola extract the natural resources of the land while local people suffer shortages.

Earlier this year, when Coca-Cola tried to prevent a bottle deposit scheme from being established in the UK, over 115,000 of SumOfUs members came together to force them to make a U-turn. And no one fights back about water grabs like SumOfUs. From Canada to the U.S. to New Zealand, when water corporations like Nestlé try to suck water dry to bottle and sell for profit, we have stopped them.

With people power, it’s possible to fight back against giant corporations like Coca-Cola and make it do the right thing.

Chiapas government: it's time to put the needs of the people before Coca-Cola. Limit how much water the corporation can extract!

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