Guadalajara, a World Cup venue trapped between dirty water, social unrest and a measles outbreak

Entering or leaving Guadalajara has become an ordeal. Construction is everywhere, and traffic jams on the city’s main roads can exceed 35 minutes. Accidents are frequent, and social protests are mounting, bringing the capital of Jalisco to a boiling point weeks before it hosts four World Cup matches. The sewage crisis, which has been affecting hundreds of thousands of residents for months, is the latest to compound other persistent problems in the city and its metropolitan area, home to five million people. Rising public transportation fares, complaints about the city’s “beautification” efforts, and a surge in measles cases in the state have increased the pressure on authorities who are seeing multiple challenges unfold less than 100 days before the start of the world’s biggest sporting event.

Water was the trigger. The disruptions in hundreds of neighborhoods, which received water of varying colors and foul odors, sparked a protest unlike anything seen before, not even after the massive security operation the city experienced during the federal forces’ hunt for the world’s most wanted drug trafficker, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho.”

The fear and terror of the roadblocks during the operation at the end of February have been overshadowed by complaints about poor water quality. On March 23, the governor of Jalisco, Pablo Lemus, removed Antonio Juárez and replaced him with his close collaborator Ismael Jáuregui as the new director of the Inter-Municipal System for Drinking Water and Sewer Services (SIAPA), the agency that has borne the brunt of criticism amid the crisis.

This week, Jáuregui donned a hard hat and vest with official logos and accompanied dozens of workers to clean the Las Huertas facility in Tlaquepaque, about 10 miles from downtown Guadalajara. There, he gave a lengthy assessment of the agency’s current state: bankrupt finances, low revenue collection, and nearly 300,000 accounts consuming water without paying. In his opinion, the infrastructure needs an investment of at least 80 billion pesos ($4.5 billion) to reach optimal conditions.

“But that’s impossible; we have to prioritize what’s most important. This administration’s objective is the replacement system [for the Chapala-Guadalajara aqueduct], the modernization of the Miravalle water treatment plant, improving distribution, and focusing on consolidating the flow coming through the Zapotillo reservoir, perhaps by increasing its volume,” Jáuregui summarized.

More than 60% of the water that reaches homes in the Guadalajara metropolitan area comes from Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake, via two routes: an aqueduct that transports the water to the Miravalle water treatment plant and an open-air system that suffers volume losses along the way. The idea of ​​replacing this second route with a more modern canal is not new. At various times, the proposal has been met with public opposition, with residents complaining about the lack of studies and proper planning with sufficient technical assessments. The remaining water that does not come from Chapala is supplied through deep wells and the El Salto-La Red-Calderón aqueduct, part of the El Zapotillo distribution system.

On a tour of Las Pintas and Arroyo Seco, two tributaries that carry water to the treatment plants supplying the area, the amount of trash and debris floating in the water is noticeable. A wastewater discharge in Arroyo Seco, on the border between the municipalities of Tlajomulco and Tlaquepaque, stands out due to its volume and because it is actively flowing in plain sight. However, Járuegui assures that there is no danger to the population.

“The turbidity and odor will be greatly reduced with the cleaning of the tanks and the replacement of some components within the plants. We will see this in the coming days,” said the new director of the system. The official insists that the Commission for Protection Against Sanitary Risks (CoprisJal) has already carried out its validations and reviews of the flow rates entering and leaving the treatment plants. “We are within the limits established by the regulations,” he said.

Dirty water in a city under construction

The Degollado Theater, in downtown Guadalajara, is surrounded by construction projects paid for with public funds. “All year long, we’ve had construction everywhere, much of it not functional. This plaza didn’t need fixing. The Plaza de la República at the intersection of Avenida México and Avenida Américas didn’t need fixing. The Minerva monument didn’t need fixing. An overpass at the intersection of Avenida Patria and Avenida Universidad didn’t need fixing,” says Juan Pablo Macías Salazar, a citizen activist, regarding the city’s economic waste in preparation for the World Cup.

The international business graduate still remembers when Enrique Alfaro, the governor who left office in December 2024, assured everyone that thanks to projects undertaken by his administration, the supply of drinking water was guaranteed for at least 50 years in Jalisco. Macías, whose father worked at SIAPA for many years and is very familiar with the system, questions that assertion: “There have been a series of omissions and poor decisions administration after administration, at least in the last 25 or 30 years. Several people and myself have demonstrated with figures that supply is not guaranteed for 50 years, and that while the Zapotillo dam project was completed, there is no certainty that it can provide the two cubic meters per second that Alfaro claimed. There is no hydrological study to support that.”

This activist now fears that the current water crisis will lead authorities to privatize the system. “We’ve already seen the experience of Cancún, Aguascalientes, and Puebla, where water was privatized, and it turned out very badly. Water cannot be privatized because it is a universal human right, and it cannot be treated as a commodity,” he says.

Sergio Garibi, one of the spokespeople for the residents of Colonia Americana, one of the affected neighborhoods, asserts that the situation remains unchanged despite the changes at SIAPA and the statements made by authorities. “They aren’t publishing scientific data. Since we don’t really know what the problems or pollutants are, and without a clear diagnosis, it’s very difficult to know whether the proposed projects should be undertaken; besides, they will all take years. What are we going to do for the next three years?” he asks.

The municipalities of El Salto and Juanacatlán also play a significant role in the water crisis. El Salto, located just over 20 miles from Guadalajara and with 230,000 inhabitants, has a vast industrial area and is considered one of the more than 50 environmental disaster zones that abound in Mexico.

Sofía Enciso, a member of the organization Un Salto de Vida (A Leap of Life), and several of her colleagues separate cotton seeds on a table. They cultivated these seeds near the Santiago River in El Salto. In this corner of the world, surrounded by goats, native trees, and a greenhouse, they conduct research, community work, and try to mitigate the harmful effects that this community has endured for decades. Near the river, a little over a mile away, a monumental stone wall, its markings revealing its age, contains the water that falls from different directions. Were it not for the strong odor and the color of its murky contents, it would pass for a dreamlike landscape.

Enrique Enciso, another member of the organization, used to bathe there more than 40 years ago and has witnessed the transformation of the area. Today, the river receives toxic waste from over 300 companies in the industrial corridor, as well as sewage from the Guadalajara metropolitan area.

For 20 years, Un Salto de Vida has been working through protests, meetings, and awareness campaigns to stop projects that harm the health of local residents. In 2022, they succeeded in closing a landfill, a site that received approximately 5,500 tons of waste daily. Currently, they maintain a project cultivating native tree species on a 4,000-square-meter plot in neighboring Juanacatlán. Enrique Enciso considers this his legacy for when his grandchildren ask him what he did in the face of the environmental catastrophe that surrounds him.

The price hike, public space and measles

But in Guadalajara, it’s not all about water. The protests last week also rejected the increase in public transportation fares. “No to the fare hike!” shouted dozens of people at a demonstration in Parque Revolución, better known as Parque Rojo. The price increase, which went into effect on April 1, raised the fare from 9.50 to 11 pesos. The government had proposed an increase to 14 pesos, but backtracked after a public outcry. There have been months of disputes and adjustments, but the public still believes the increase is unfair.

A couple of miles away, on Chapultepec Avenue, lined with trendy bars and restaurants, the World Cup playoff matches are being shown on giant screens. At the end of the avenue stands one of Guadalajara’s most emblematic monuments, the former roundabout of the Niños Héroes (Child Heroes), which activist groups have renamed the Glorieta de las y los Desaparecidos (Roundabout of the Disappeared). “They died for their country,” can still be read among the figures of several men, now splattered with lilac paint and graffiti. Newly laid tiles have been placed by the activist groups, who for a year have feared that their missing persons posters will be removed in a deliberate attempt by the authorities to give the city a clean and orderly appearance.

Jaime Aguilar, from the Guerreros Buscadores (Searching Warriors) collective in Jalisco, says that just a few hours ago, dirty water arrived at his house, something that hadn’t happened before in his neighborhood, and that the overall situation regarding disappearances in the state remains the same. “Things are still the same, disappearances continue to rise, and [forced] recruitment [by cartels] is the same,” he says. He emphasizes how the figures from Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, regarding its reinterpretation of the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons, presented on March 27, were received. “It was a slap in the face for us collectives,” he says.

In downtown Guadalajara, the landscape is also dominated by photographs of missing persons. They’re plastered all over the Government Palace, on the sidewalks of main streets, and on walls and buildings. Public space, in the lead-up to the World Cup, remains a battleground. Collectives like Aguilar’s continue to post these photographs, despite the local Congress’s attempt to ban them from unauthorized public spaces.

Furthermore, another problem looms over Jalisco. The wave of violence during the operation to capture El Mencho, coupled with social protests against contaminated water and the increase in public transportation fares, has hampered the local government’s efforts to curb the measles outbreak. Since the beginning of this year, Jalisco has led the country in reported cases. The latest bulletin from the Ministry of Health, dated April 3, indicates that 5,039 cases have been confirmed in the state so far in 2026, a figure rapidly approaching the total number of cases Mexico recorded in all of 2025 (6,460).

Vaccination stations have been set up in hospitals, but the apparent calm of the Easter holiday period means that, even though several dozen people visited each day, the fear of catching measles is far down on their list of concerns.

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