Water Woes: CNN and Mexico

By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal

Besides my buddy over at Breitbart.com, Ildefonso “Poncho” Ortiz and some of his colleagues, show me an American journalist who ever writes anything that puts Mexico in a critical light. You can’t. Especially among the mainstream media.

Why that’s the case, who knows. There’s much to criticize with regard to the Mexican government, as with our government, no matter who’s president; but we pile on the U.S. and treat Mexico with kid gloves.

The CNN Report

Consider, if you will, a recent news report published by CNN Monday, June 17th, titled — “A water war is looming between Mexico and the U.S. Neither side will win.”

The story was written by Laura Paddison and Fidel Gutierrez. Overall, it was well-written, even going so far as to mention, as has been mentioned before in The Advance, that currently, Mexico lacks the water to pay us the water debt it owes, per the 1944 Water Treaty.

The reporters quote Maria Elena Giner, the US commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the bi-national body that oversees the treaty.

On one hand, Giner says, discussing the lack of water flowing our way, or not, “… if there’s no water to distribute, there’s nothing we can do.”

Exactly. Thank you.

That’s because the storage in the six Mexican tributaries that feed Amistad and Falcon was at only 1.01 million acre feet (the week ending June 8).

Meanwhile, Mexico owes the U.S. 882,500 acre feet per the 1944 Treaty.

There is no way that Mexico is going to pay up the 882,500, leaving its stakeholders with only 136,000 acre feet of the wet stuff. Not in the middle of a severe drought?

In the CNN story, Giner talks about Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is a climate scientist, and how negotiations between the two countries are ramping up again, so, “We’ve asked Mexico for a plan on how they’re going to meet their deficit right now.”

Yeah, but you just admitted that you know that Mexico currently lacks the water it owes. Right now.

What the CNN story didn’t mention, though, and is really the crux of the matter, is that Mexico had the water two years ago after a big rain event filled their reservoirs, approximately three times what it has today, but it never paid its debt; and our elected officials like John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Henry Cuellar, and Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz never said a peep.

Now, of course, with our water reservoirs at an all-time low, they’re sounding the trumpet.

For what? Mexico currently doesn’t have the water.

Unfortunately, neither do we.