When the Aqueduct Has No Water: 21st-Century Rural "Development" in Yaqui Territory

In February 2024, then Mexican President AMLO inaugurated the Yaqui Aqueduct. Surrounded by the media and Yaqui representatives, the president explained that decades of wrongdoing were being addressed by finally channeling water toward the Yaqui territory in Sonora. Pictures of the event showed massive construction equipment, smiling officials, and a beaming president. What the pictures did not capture was a crucial element: the dam was nearly empty. Moreover, the "inaugurated" aqueduct was unfinished and months, if not years, away from completion. Despite this, the news centered on righting the wrongs of water and land extraction in indigenous territory. This paper examines the paradox of "development" in Yaqui territory through the case study of the Yaqui Aqueduct. Examining the history of the initial capture of the Yaqui River—first via dams that defied a presidential decree in the 1930s—through the impact of climate change in the flow of the Yaqui River, this paper explores what development means in a post-extraction space.