Universal and equitable access to drinking water service is a requirement included in international agreements, such as the 2030 Agenda, which aims to reduce the percentage growth of water scarcity for rural and urban societies in the 21st century. Faced with this dynamic, since the end of the 20th century, the heads of state of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have made changes in national and international policy to facilitate access to piped water for human settlements lacking this resource. However, in spite of these interventions, many countries in LAC still lack access to the vital liquid, and Mexico is a clear example, since a considerable percentage of the population lives in poverty and without water service in several rural localities, which is why they have organized themselves to gain access to water service through the coordination of their human potential and the adequate management of local water resources, benefiting thousands of families.

Keywords: water scarcity, poverty, community-based organizations

The 21^st century is the natural scenario where the governments of the world recognize that they have not been able to solve the social problems accumulated since the eighties of the 20th century. From the exercise of public policy, it is accepted that problems have worsened due to water scarcity; there is talk of a humanitarian crisis recognized as an international issue. This social reality generated the concern of organizations such as the United Nations (UN), which motivated heads of state to establish a new international pact with the aim of forming political-economic alliances between nations to address the various social problems detected.

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,¹ proposing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),² aimed at putting an end to social problems such as poverty, hunger and water scarcity, among others. In legal matters, safe access to drinking water is a constitutional responsibility of national States, which has resulted in the design of laws to create governmental water instances and economic investment in the construction of infrastructure. In this sense, embodied in SDG 6, access to water is an international political demand required by the UN in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, where clean water and sanitation are demanded in order to ensure the availability of water for all and its sustainable management.¹

The international agreement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is not new with respect to access to safe drinking water, since in 2002 General Comment No. 15, in point number two, states the following: The human right to water is the right of everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses. An adequate supply of safe water is necessary to prevent death from dehydration, reduce the risk of water-related diseases, and meet drinking and cooking needs, as well as personal and domestic hygiene needs.³ However, it is estimated that 2.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water⁴ and that, if current trends continue, there will be more than 4 billion by 2025.⁵ Of these 2.2 billion people without access to water, 1,524,370,686 live in rural areas, representing 69.2% of this population segment.⁶

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), out of a population of 664,997,000 million inhabitants,⁷ 166 million people do not have access to public piped water service, representing 26% of the population living in the region.⁸ Of the 166 million people without access to piped water, 44,270,046 (20.5%) are located in Brazil;⁹ 9,000,000 (20.1%) in Argentina;¹⁰ 6,563,500 (13.6%) in Colombia;¹¹ 3,000,000 (16.8%) in Guatemala;¹² 2,994,000 (9.2%) in Peru;¹³ 2,627,000 (15.3%) in Ecuador;¹⁴ 1,580,339 (21%) in Paraguay;¹⁵ and 1,442,651 (13.3%) in Dominican Republic.¹⁶ These countries account for 71,477,536 people without access to piped water service, representing 43% of the 166 million who subsist in the region. It is worth mentioning that of these 166 million people, 59,263,923 are located in rural areas⁶ where their inhabitants live in conditions of poverty and without access to public services, facing a more complicated and vulnerable subsistence.

Another social problem in LAC is poverty, since it is estimated that 201 million people are moderately poor (32.1%) and 82 million are extremely poor (13.1%), totaling 283 million people living in poverty¹⁷ out of a total population of 664,997,000.⁷ In practice, the international political demands set forth in the 17 SDGs in the 21^st century have not yielded the projected macro-social results, since many developing countries and vulnerable human groups are in conditions of high and very high levels of marginalization, living in poverty and without access to public water services, two quantifiable variables that demonstrate the harshness of this social and economic marginalization.

In Mexico, out of a population of 126,014,024 million inhabitants,¹⁸ 27,813,720 do not have piped water service, representing 22% of the national average.¹⁹ In the State of Guerrero, out of a population of 3,657,048 inhabitants,²⁰ 1,986,796 people (54.3%) do not have access to public water service.¹⁹ While in the municipality of Acapulco de Juarez, the main city and port of the State of Guerrero, out of a population of 846,121 inhabitants, 181,367 people (21.4%) do not have access to piped water service.²¹

Globally, water scarcity has motivated rural and indigenous localities to mobilize individually or collectively, demanding the intervention and political-economic support of municipal and state authorities to guarantee water services. As a result, civil organizations have been formed to manage piped water services in several LAC countries, as is the case of the Community Organizations for Water and Sanitation Services (OCSAS), where more than 180,000 have been operating for more than 40 years,²² benefiting more than 80 million people in rural and peri-urban areas.²³ For more than 40 years.²²

To the extent that social groups gain local recognition and the need to strengthen themselves through permanent projects that require external resources appears, the experiences become institutionalized by assuming a legal figure (Association, Corporation, Institutes, etc.), a name or label that expresses their identity by establishing an operating structure with its own headquarters and dynamics.²⁴ Actors use social institutions not only as a function of the possibilities of accessing a better status in the social hierarchy, but also to reinforce the capacity to undertake social actions engendered by them.²⁵

The objective of this study was to assess the participation of citizen committees in the management of water for domestic use, their contribution to local development and the health and well-being of the inhabitants in three rural localities of the municipality of Acapulco, in the State of Guerrero, Mexico. Namely: Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero; El Salto; and Kilometro 39.

The methodology used in this research was qualitative. It is identified as qualitative because it takes very seriously the words and actions of the people studied. Qualitative studies can be investigations of people's lives, lived experiences, behaviors, emotions and feelings, as well as organizational functioning, social movements, cultural phenomena and interaction between nations.²⁶ The purpose of qualitative research is to give voice to human groups marginalized from modern social systems (poor, ethnic, racial, sexual minorities, as well as segments of migrants and other by-products of capitalist societies), to interpret the historical and cultural significance of social phenomena (historical-cultural understanding) and to advance theory (construction of new theories).²⁷

The collection and review of documents was carried out to obtain key information on the research phenomenon. Here, documents are written testimonies of a past or historical fact that we must value in its right dimension.²⁸ Documentary research makes it possible to "contextualize" the phenomenon to be studied, establishing diachronic and synchronic relationships between current and past events; this makes it possible to make a comprehensive and interpretative "prognosis" of a given event. Documentary research enables a retrospective view, a current view, and a prospective view of the reality under investigation.²⁹ This indicates that documentary research is based on previous scientific knowledge;³⁰ already published or fully known.³¹

The official documents reviewed were the population and housing censuses of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), as well as reports from the Ministry of Welfare, concessions of water rights to rural localities by the National Water Commission (CONAGUA), National Water Law, and executive projects for the construction of infrastructure of hydraulic systems in rural localities supervised by the Drinking Water, Sewerage and Sanitation Commission of the State of Guerrero (CAPASEG). As for unofficial documents, the following were consulted: historical archives, organizational documents, local newspapers, lists of users who have piped water service in their homes, contracts, energy bills from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and requests for piped water service by managers and commissioners on duty before municipal and state authorities.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants, such as founders and promoters of rural localities, municipal commissioners, natural leaders, members of water committees, users, managers of the local water system and municipal employees. Key informants are those persons who, because of their position in the structure and organization of the community or group under study, or because of their knowledge and experience on the subject under analysis, can provide relevant information on the topic under investigation.³²

Location of study areas

Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero is located at latitude 16° 56' 30" north and longitude 99° 48' 34" west and has an elevation of 100 meters above sea level. El Salto is located at coordinates 16° 51' 53" North latitude and 99° 45' 55" West longitude and has an altitude of 20 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l.). Kilometro 39 is located at coordinates 17° 02' 41" North latitude and 99° 46' 42" West longitude and has an altitude of 385 m.a.s.l..³³ The three localities belong to the municipality of Acapulco de Juárez, Guerrero, Mexico Figure 1.³⁴

Figure 1 Location of the study areas.

The municipality of Acapulco has a total population of 846,121 inhabitants (22.9% of the state population) of which 268,190 people (35.4%) live in moderate poverty and 126,670 people (16.7%) in extreme poverty, indicating that 394,860 people in the municipality (52.1%) are at the poverty line.²¹ Poverty is a social problem that has been addressed by the municipal authority of Acapulco, in conjunction with the federal and state governments; social programs have been implemented and economic resources have been allocated in the construction of public works required to address this situation. It must be recognized that there has been progress: in 2010, 512,547 people were poor (65.2%), of which 405,499 lived in moderate poverty (51.6%) and 107,048 in extreme poverty (13.6%).³⁵ In 2023, 394,860 people are in poverty (52.1%), of which 268,190 are moderate poor (35.4%) and 126,670 are extreme poor (16.7%).²¹ As it can be seen, there is a 13.1% decrease in poverty Table 1.

As documented in the aforementioned data, poverty has been reduced in real and percentage terms. However, despite the fact that the three levels of government have addressed this social problem, it still persists as a deficit that questions governance, so public policy will have to double its efforts to undermine the scourge of poverty. The municipality of Acapulco is composed of a municipal capital, which is the city of Acapulco, territorially organized by 67 commissariats and 57 municipal delegations.³⁶ Most of the poor population is located in localities in conditions with high and very high degree of marginalization, without access to the main public services, such as piped water.

The city of Acapulco accounts for the majority of the municipal population with 658,609 inhabitants, while 120,957 people live in the remaining 233 localities.³³ According to the information gathered in the population and housing censuses conducted by INEGI, the rural area of the municipality of Acapulco had a demographic growth from 1990 to 2020, while the urban area experienced a population decrease in the same period Table 2.

The municipality is made up of 234 localities; eight of them have more than 2,500 inhabitants and 226 have less than 2,500 people.³⁶ The 234 localities are housed in 220,033 inhabited dwellings representing 24.6% of the 895,157 dwellings that the State of Guerrero has.⁴¹ Of the 234 localities in the municipality of Acapulco, 189 are in conditions with a high degree of marginalization, 43 with a very high degree of marginalization, one with a medium degree and one more with a low degree of marginalization.⁴²

In the 189 localities with a high degree of marginalization live 104,733 people (12.9%), the 43 localities with a very high degree of marginalization concentrate 11,867 inhabitants (1.4%); the locality of Tres Palos is the only one with a medium degree of marginalization where 5,001 people live (0.6%), while the only locality with a low degree of marginalization is the city of Acapulco where 689,068 people live (84.9%). The 189 localities living in conditions of high degree of marginalization and the 43 localities with very high degree of marginalization (totaling 232 of the 234 localities) concentrate a total of 116,600 people representing 14.3% of the total municipal population Table 3.⁴²

The management of potable water is the responsibility of the Drinking Water and Sewerage Commission of the Municipality of Acapulco (CAPAMA), which is in charge of supplying piped water in the urban area of the municipality. In the rural area of Acapulco, 121,601 people do not receive the water service that CAPAMA should guarantee, because some localities are located outside the distribution area of CAPAMA. This situation has caused rural inhabitants to request water service from the corresponding municipal or state authority, resulting in various procedures to access public water service.

The fact that the rural area does not have piped water service has led inhabitants and community authorities to organize themselves in order to be attended by state and federal authorities. Through organization and mobilization, they have been able to gain access to certain economic and technical support for the construction of water systems in their local areas, thus creating better living conditions for their families and the locality.

As a result and product of collective effort, in the municipality of Acapulco there are 61 rural localities that have piped water systems organized in a self-managed or independent manner. These organizations are administered by citizen committees made up of inhabitants of each locality, elected by direct vote in a general assembly of users who receive public water service. The committees are responsible for the administration, operation and maintenance of the water system in their local areas.

The 61 localities concentrate 85,578 inhabitants, a space where they have organized themselves socially and politically to access piped water service as a human right, demonstrating their capacity for social organization in the management of water in the municipality of Acapulco. It is worth mentioning that, of the 61 localities, 53 are in conditions of high degree of marginalization, seven with a very high degree of marginalization, and one with a medium degree of marginalization Table 3.⁴⁴

Given the results obtained, the rural towns of Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero, El Salto and Kilometro 39 are clear examples of social organization in the management of piped water and a specific way to solve historical and social problems, suffered for decades in their work and coexistence spaces. In these towns, the water supply is managed by committees made up of inhabitants of each of the rural localities; these bodies are in charge of the piped water systems, which they manage and operate without receiving a salary for the services provided to each community.

The sources of supply, on which the piped water systems in Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero, El Salto and Kilometro 39, are springs and noria wells (groundwater); the first and third localities are located in the sub- basin Hydrological Region (RH) 19Ab River the Sabana and the second locality located in the sub-basin RH19Aa Lagoon Tres Palos of the basin River Atoyac and others,⁴⁶ belonging to the RH19 of the Costa Grande of Guerrero, Mexico Figure 2.⁴⁷

Figure 2 Location of the sources of supply in the study areas.

The municipality of Acapulco is part of two RHs, RH19 Costa Grande and RH20 Costa Chica;⁴⁸ of RH19 are located three sub-basins RH19Aa Lagoon Tres Palos, RH19Ab River the and RH19Ac Bahía de Acapulco belonging to the basin of the Atoyac River and others,⁴⁹ and of RH20 is located the sub-basin RH20Ea River Papagayo belonging to the basin of the River Papagayo -RH20 Costa Chica-River Verde-.⁵⁰ The River Atoyac basin (RH19 Costa Grande-River Atoyac and others) is located in the west, southwest and south of the municipality and covers 31.62% of the territory, and the River Papagayo basin (RH20 Costa Chica-River Verde) is located in the north and east of the municipality and covers 68.38% of Acapulco's territory.⁵¹

According to the National Water Law (Chapter II, Article 20) there are two ways to obtain water rights for domestic use (for private use by individuals and households) and urban public use (to serve population centers and human settlements): one by concession and the other by assignment; the first is for individuals and legal entities, the second for agencies and decentralized bodies of the federal, state or municipal public administration.⁵² This law recognizes (Title One, Article 3, Section XLI) as individuals, ejidos, communities, associations, societies and other institutions that the law recognizes as legal entities with the modalities and limitations established therein.

In this sense, the 1994 Regulations of the National Water Law, in Chapter IV, Article 18, recognizes the organization and participation of users to exploit, use or take advantage of water, but only by constituting one of the legal entities recognized in the current legislation.⁵³ In accordance with the above, this makes possible and gives legal support to the collective action of rural localities in water matters (concession), in addition to receiving economic support from the State for the construction of infrastructure (hydraulic system) and technical advice from state (such as CAPASEG) or municipal (such as CAPAMA) bodies with administrative responsibility, commissioning rural localities to supply piped water on a permanent basis. Furthermore, political support for rural localities is an international requirement established in Principle 22 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.

Indigenous peoples and their communities, as well as other local communities, play a fundamental role in environmental management and development due to their traditional knowledge and practices. In this sense, the proper management of resources such as water, should be encouraged to solve urgent problems without losing the strategic sense, i.e., States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests of these sectors in their effective participation in achieving sustainable development.⁵⁴

Historically, in this study area, rural localities have organized themselves by requesting piped water service from the corresponding authorities, and by requesting economic and material support for the construction of hydraulic systems in their living spaces, taking advantage of hydro-territorial potentialities to satisfy vital needs. Some rural localities at the municipal level have efficiently resolved water scarcity without having many economic and technical resources; they do so by taking advantage of endogenous capacities such as local knowledge, organizational capacity to carry out social, political and economic activities. The objective is to guarantee the long-term supply of water resources in their local areas.

The water supply in the three localities has its antecedents in the sixties of the twentieth century, a time when active citizen participation was generated to meet the water needs of its inhabitants through the use of available natural sources, such as rivers and streams, or the construction of artesian wells located in some localities.

In the case of Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero, this is a rural locality in conditions of high social marginalization⁴⁴ with a total population of 2,756, see Table 3, 4. Of the 808 occupied households, 691 have piped water service (85.51%) and 112 homes do not have public service (13.86%).³³ There has been significant progress in this aspect as in 2010 the locality had 635 inhabited households;³⁴ 138 had piped water service (21.7%) and 497 did not have public service (78.2%).⁴²

El Salto is a locality with a high degree of social marginalization,⁴⁴ with a total population of 1,385 inhabitants, see Table 3, 4. Of the 396 occupied households, 388 have piped water service (97.9%) and only eight homes do not have access to water (2%).³³ There has been significant progress in this aspect, as in 2010 the locality had 361 inhabited households;³⁴ 312 had piped water service (86.4%) and 49 did not have public service (13.5%).⁴²

Kilometro 39 is also a locality in conditions of high degree of social marginalization,⁴⁴ with a population of 831 inhabitants, see Table 3, 4. Of the 210 occupied households, 202 have piped water service (96.1%) while the other eight households do not have access to water (3.8%).³³ There has been significant progress in this aspect, as in 2010 the locality had 196 occupied households;³⁴ 27 had piped water service (13.7%) and 169 did not have access to public water service (86.2%).⁴²

These three rural localities live in highly marginalized conditions, as do 186 other localities, see Table 3. These three localities concentrate 4,972 inhabitants, which represents 4.7% of the 104,733 people living in highly marginalized localities; lacking basic services that limit the human development of the inhabitants of each community.

In spite of the socioeconomic disadvantages of the three rural localities mentioned above, they have organized themselves to face the challenges or problems in their areas through social organization, managing in-kind or technical-economic support to address the multiple existing social, economic and environmental problems; in addition to administering their endogenous resources and intervening in their community development.

Acapulco's 61 local experiences in rural water management concretely represent the active participation of civil associations, not only at the municipal level but also, as noted, in other earthly latitudes evidenced in the experience of the Community Organizations for Water and Sanitation Services (OCSAS).

Organizational experiences in water management in Latin America are becoming increasingly visible, as each year new cases of collective action are registered to guarantee access to piped water to vulnerable localities, or to solve other local problems such as education, housing, street paving, etc., and to influence local- community development. A clear example of this is the locality of Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero, which in addition to managing the first piped water system in 1963 also managed other public services for the locality, such as electricity in 1950, an elementary school in 1952, a health center in 1967, a space for religious worship in 1960 and a civil registry in 1968.

In the municipality of Acapulco, many localities in rural areas try to solve water scarcity through their own means; with the participation of civil authorities and community participation, access to economic resources is promoted to take advantage of the natural capital of the environment. The above indicates that rural localities should not be perceived as neutral, passive entities, nor reduced to quantifiable variables (voters, illiteracy, low-skilled labor, religious creed) or abstractions (conceptualizations, categorizations, classes) stripping them of their human potential.

The 61 cases in access to piped water, in rural areas of the municipality of Acapulco de Juarez, Guerrero coincide with the experiences in the State of Veracruz, Mexico, where it is recognized that there are 2,000 community organizations of water and sanitation services (OCSAS); of these, 1,425 have self-managed practices and 646 are administered by the State Water Commission of the State of Veracruz (CAEV).⁵⁵ Likewise, in the municipality El Cardonal in Hidalgo, Mexico, there is a record of 12 piped water systems, of which the municipal authority manages only one with 650 intakes, while the rest are managed by user committees with 1975 intakes.⁵⁶

One aspect to highlight is that, if there is a solid social organization and a real knowledge of the local territory, the local space can be correctly managed and viable endogenous proposals for the supply of piped water can be generated; that is, the conjunction between a good social organization and the correct use of local knowledge of the territory can be basic elements for the solution of the water shortage that rural localities in Acapulco have suffered. Historically, many rural localities have solved in a practical way the needs in their living and coexistence spaces, showing themselves as authentic managers of community development.

The participation of rural localities in water management is increasing, offering innovative proposals for solutions to long-standing problems, such as water scarcity, designing representative (partisan) or citizen (non-partisan) social structures to manage public services before local and municipal authorities. In the case at hand, they are working to build organizational structures for the efficient administration and distribution of water resources in their localities, but also evidencing the inefficiency and incapacity of the municipal government responsible for offering basic services to its inhabitants in accordance with article 115 of the Mexican Constitution. In synthesis, when local actors interact in a common territory, exchanging resources (information materials, experiences and capacities) they share socio-cultural frameworks that allow them an adequate reading of their environment and certainty to act in their territory.

Western societies have attributed to water a commercial value and use for the development of their productive activities. However, at the end of the twentieth century it has been recognized as a human right, therefore, it is the political responsibility of sovereign states to provide water service to all human groups in a territory, and in each political-administrative division, regardless of racial or socioeconomic status. Regardless of the cultural diversity of human groups existing in a territory, of their histories as protagonists or antagonists since, however strange they may be, they are connected because they share a natural need in the use and distribution of water.

In the 1970s, the municipality of Acapulco experienced a demographic growth derived from the immigration of settlers from other municipalities in the State of Guerrero and other states, establishing, in some cases, certain urban centers and, in others, favoring the emergence of rural localities. The creation of rural localities implied the appointment of specific authorities (commissariats), subject to a municipal authority (mayor's office), with powers to exercise local political power and access economic support, as well as public goods and services for the wellbeing of their inhabitants.

In the rural area of the municipality of Acapulco, access to piped water has been a public issue for many localities living in conditions of poverty and social marginalization. In Los Organos de Juan R. Escudero, El Salto and Kilometro 39, it was observed that water service is provided by committees that strive to continuously involve users in socio-cultural tasks for the efficiency of the public service.

Piped water committees, as organizational structures, are citizens' proposals set up by rural (and even urban) localities to solve the water shortage in their local areas, thus giving evidence of a new social reality in these spaces that can be basic elements for social change. The organization and active and creative social participation of the collective subject is the social capital required to outline the future of each locality, as well as for the valuation, management and administration of existing water resources.

These forms of socio-community organization are not only empirical references for understanding the new dynamics in rural areas, they can also be agents for generating social change; Therefore, through the efficient development of social functions and responsibilities in the management, administration, distribution and management of water in their local areas, they can transcend in their functions, both in decision-making and in their structure, and be an axis that articulates the various social sectors existing in the locality (municipal, ejido, parents' committee, youth groups, women's groups, professionals) for the effective implementation of activities, and integrate themselves into the multiple local, regional, state or national processes.

To the inhabitants of the rural localities studied who participated in making this research possible, as well as to the Centro de Ciencias de Desarrollo Regional de la Universidad Autonoma de Guerrero, our Alma Mater.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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