Lake Texcoco: Life’s Triumph

This editorial appeared in the July 12, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

Members of the People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) toured the media on Thursday to show them the more than 1,800 hectares that have been filled with water in the protected natural area (ANP), which includes the Texcoco Lake Ecological Park (PELT).

The community members asserted that all traces of the construction of the New Mexico International Airport (NAIM) will eventually disappear, with its structures now submerged in the resurfacing bodies of water. Where the last three presidents of the neoliberal era shed community blood to impose a technically unviable and economically insulting airport, up to 7 million cubic meters of water may now be concentrated, harboring an astonishing amount and diversity of flora and fauna, including around 230,000 native and migratory birds.

Hydrological and ecological restoration is a source of pride for the members of the FPDT, who defended this territory from neoliberal voracity and who today work hand in hand with the government to complete the most important environmental rescue project in the area where almost a sixth of the country’s population lives. Interviewed by Elena Poniatowska for La Jornada , the general director of the Texcoco Lake Ecological Park, Iñaki Echeverría, highlighted almost a year ago that former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s decision to cancel the NAIM meant nothing less than keeping the Valley of Mexico alive as a habitable space for the next 100 years. In a context of climate change that places water and temperature among the greatest challenges to the survival of human, animal, and plant communities in the Mexico City Basin, reversing the lake’s drying up gives the megalopolis back the possibility of remaining viable.

This assessment could be dismissed as biased, coming from the person in charge of designing and executing key aspects of the wetlands rescue project, but it has been supported by independent agencies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Last February, the organization designated Lake Texcoco as an ecohydrology demonstration site for contributing to biodiversity conservation, improving water quality, and community development. It is the only such site in the country and one of only 63 worldwide.

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In short, residents, experts and multilateral organizations recognize the rescue of the Lake Texcoco ecoregion as an environmental and social achievement of the utmost importance, and the only ones who at this point defend the nefarious idea of destroying the last remnants of the Anáhuac lake system are those who had economic interests in the NAIM’s death project and those so blinded by their hatred of López Obrador and the governments of the Fourth Transformation that they have lost the ability to discern between the facts and their ideological phobias.

The progress made in the restoration of Lake Texcoco is to be welcomed, as is the level of awareness reached by the majority of citizens who reject the failed airport and its promoters. However, it must not be forgotten that triumphs in environmental protection and major social achievements cannot be taken for granted, but must be reinforced every day through education, awareness of rights, and, when necessary, mobilization against those who put private profit above the common good.