Laguna de Cajititlan fishermen are tired of fishing in raw sewage and they’re ready to do something about it.

Protesting Cajititlan fishermen say that pollution is ruining their livelihood, as fish grow scarce and locals refuse to buy the few fish still found swimming in sewage-tainted waters.

“Either we do something now, or we condemn the laguna de Cajititlan to death,” Enrique Alfaro Ramirez told press this week. Alfaro, an area congress member from the leftist Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD), has become one of the leaders in a grassroots movement to demand action from the municipal and state governments and expose what the community terms as indifference, ineptitude, and irresponsibility.

More than environmental activism, the Cajititlan protest movement is about reminding authorities of their broken promises.

The fishermen are asking some tough questions. They want governor Emilio Gonzalez to begin cleaning up the lake by this Friday, August 8 (the original deadline for starting construction of a long-awaited sewage treatment plant) and provide a full accounting of plans, contractors and deadlines for the promised plant and lake clean up. They also demand that Gonzalez explain precisely what was done with the 764-million-peso state environmental rescue budget for Guadalajara and that the state government compensate fishermen for lost income, as promised in a May 28, 2008 initiative.

As for Tlajomulco mayor Antonio Tatengo Ureña: “We are demanding public works that were promised more than four years ago, and if our authorities don’t respond with dialogue and communication, we will take much more drastic measures,” summed up Alfaro.

Fishermen want Tatengo to provide a coherent strategy for rescuing the lake, stop sewage dumping immediately, and come up with written proof that the terrain for a treatment plant was indeed purchased. (While rumors of the mysterious terrain abound, nobody in the community appears to know where it is.)

If they receive no answers by this Friday, protesters say they will resort to forcing a response from the government: blockading area highways, seizing public buildings and perhaps plugging up the offending sewage outlets at the lake.