By Tim Steller | Arizona Daily Star
(Editor’s note: Posting opinion pieces does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Rose Law Group.)
The blockade is tightening as the water flows. Sonora has been wrenched for three years by conflict over the construction of an aqueduct to supply the capital city, Hermosillo, with water from the Rio Yaqui basin.
Now the water is flowing, and the Yaqui people who live at the end of that exhausted river are maintaining a protest blockade of the main highway that runs north-south from the Arizona border to Sinaloa. From the blockade at Vicam, Sonora, the line of vehicles stretched for miles Wednesday, but on Thursday the authorities shunted traffic onto a four-hour detour.
The scene is not quite apocalyptic, but it makes you wonder what’s coming in this region as water becomes more scarce and valuable.