Water dispossession at the Llano en Llamas : a research study by a daughter of Mexican farmworkers in the land of her consciousness

Abstract

In 1953, Juan Rulfo, one of the most important Latin American writers of the 20th century presents, El Llano en Llamas (Burning Plain), a collection of realistic short stories about rural life in the land of his childhood in Jalisco, Mexico. About 60 years after El Llano en Llamas, this daughter of Mexican campesinos, has also decided to write about the land of her childhood: the same El Llano en Llamas. This thesis examines the water dispossession experienced by agricultural laborers living in the municipalities of Tonaya, and San Gabriel, which are symbolically part of the Llano en Llamas. By focusing on a corporate socially responsible agricultural company and a mining company in the state of Jalisco, Mexico I argue that both projects of development are dispossessing the communities of their water sources. I also intend to illustrate that currently, the processes of dispossession use modes and logics of power rooted in colonialism.