Yucatán's water comes from a fragile ecosystem of underground rivers that is threatened by the arrival of large projects. The most recent is the ongoing installation of the Heineken brewery in Kanasín, whose goal is to produce four million hectolitres of beer per year, an amount equivalent to filling 160 Olympic pools that will double in a few years.
Although the State Government highlights the plant as a social benefit, the local population claims that there were irregularities in the community consultation about its operation and to date they lack accurate information.
“Only a few of us heard about the consultation, but there was no mass dissemination; it was because we learned little by little what it was about, but they didn't provide much detail either,” said Melchor Uicab, a resident of Kanasín, about the social consultation processes.
Heineken has publicly assured that it complies with legal procedures. Causa Natura Media requested an interview with Heineken about the installation of the plant, but the company limited itself to sharing its press releases endorsing this position.
A review by Causa Natura Media of the accompanying minutes of the Human Rights Commission (CODHEY) during the prior consultation process highlights that the brewery was approved during an assembly held on August 21, 2024 attended by between 35 and 40 people, when 141,939 people live in Kanasín, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
The minutes of the CODHEY observers record 12 meetings corresponding to previous consultations with the local population without specifying for the most part how many people attended. In the process, there were numerous concerns expressed about the company's use of water.
The amount of water that the brewery will extract would be enough to supply 28,000 families a year, according to the Assembly Against Extractivism in Yucatán, a group that defends natural resources.
“We want to defend water because what big companies do in Yucatán is looting,” emphasized Aurelia Torres, a resident of Kanasín.
On July 17, 2024, at a meeting to which the state Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) sent riot control and patrols, Daniela Rosa, an engineer at Heineken, assured the population that the water used by the plant would be pre-treated and would not endanger the ecosystem.
The authorities have come out to support this position and the state's Secretariat for Sustainable Development (SDS), Neyra Silva Rosado, said in an interview with Causa Natura Media that citizens should not worry about the establishment of the brewing plant because it will extract “little water from the ground”.
“We are not compromising the ecosystem because there will really be little water that the company will extract, for the most part it is contaminated water that the company will use and treat it, that is, it will clean it up,” he said.
On the contrary, academics and water advocates maintain, through various studies, that these types of statements ignore the fragility of the Yucatan karst system, aquifers are interconnected and any discharge or overexploitation impacts on a large scale, even reaching the coast.
The publication Reasons to Care for the Cenote Ring: Homún Yucatán and surroundings, prepared by researchers Yameli Aguilar, Francisco Bautista and Fátima Tec, from the Mexican Association for Karst Studies, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Ajau Speleological Group, explains that this karst system contains a large number of cenotes and caves, many of them open, semi-open and cave. Due to its characteristics, the area has been classified as “extreme vulnerability”.
Although Kanasín had been part of the Cenotes Ring Geohydrological State Reserve since 2013, a change by decree in July 2025 excluded it from the Protected Natural Area (ANP) and opened the door for the company to install its plant. This occurred despite the fact that the original decree, in its Article 8, establishes that it is “prohibited to carry out activities that by their nature have a significant impact or cause, in the short, medium or long term, adverse impacts on the environment or ecosystems”.
Another factor that allowed the installation of the brewery, as well as other industries in the area, is the absence of a Management Plan, despite the fact that the area was declared an ANP 12 years ago.
The Cenote Ring is an ecosystem that concentrates the most important groundwater recharge in Mexico and represents more than 32% of the national total. However, the July decree reduced its size from 219,000 to 213,000 hectares.
Thus, of the 54 municipalities that were part of the Cenotes Ring, only 23 remain under this environmental protection figure.
The water crisis
Beyond the Heineken case, Yucatán faces a worrying scenario of overexploitation. The Autonomous Water Comptroller's Office documented that, between 2003 and 2023, resource availability in the state fell from 5,759 million cubic meters to 2,59 million, a reduction of 64%.
With data from the Public Water Rights Registry, they confirmed that at least 10 companies concentrate more than one million cubic meters per year each and Heineken would join this list in the future.
“These concessions are a systemic violation of the rights of indigenous peoples, since there are no prior consultations when companies are established in their territories,” said Cuauhtémoc Jacobo Fermat, a member of the Comptroller's Office.
His colleague Teresa Vaught added that, in the analysis of concessions, they identified irregularities.
“These are false coordinates, titles with no specified volume and even extraction permits that do not show how much water they use,” he said.
Water is no longer fresh in Yucatán
Thus, Kanasín has become the epicenter of two views towards the future. For the authorities, the arrival of Heineken means economic development, but for the communities of Kanasín the project is a direct threat to the water resource.
Mariana Ramírez, member of the Assembly against Extractivism in Yucatán and a resident of Kanasín, whose real name has been kept for security reasons, described that the town is surrounded by industries that minimize the needs of those who live around it.
The population recalls that the pollution generated by other industrial plants forced them to stop cultivating the milpa, since the lands stopped being productive, a situation that puts their food security at risk.
“There is also a history that with the establishment of other breweries, such as the Grupo Modelo (located in Hunucmán), the wells of the communities have dried up, so this is a very serious problem that has already been documented. Saline intrusion is also beginning to be identified due to excessive water extraction,” he said as an example of what could happen in Kanasín.
This intrusion of salt water into fresh water causes the death of trees and plants and leaves wildlife homeless.
“This situation leads us to collectivize because we will have simultaneous effects on a territory that is abandoned by the State,” Ramírez lamented.
* This article was written by Itzel Chan, who covers coastal communities thanks to the support of the Report for the World program .
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