So the government gave Coke the permits, Coke used under 80% of the agreed amount, and now it's a crisis? It has the markings of some severe utilities planning blunder.
> "The city has been growing significantly since the 1970s," he says in an interview at his office, which has a view of Huitepec mountain, where Coca-Cola extracts its water. "But in San Cristobal, there was no urban planning. And that's been aggravated by public policies that don't pay attention to the Indigenous people of the state."
That sort of gets at the real problem.
There are a lot of questions. Would things would actually get better if Coke were to shut down operations? How many people would stop drawing salaries? How much tax revenue loss does the government face with halted operations? Would the freed up water volume be enough to avert disaster? Does the drought affect everyday citizens or farmers the most? Are there any other environmental externalities that result from the Coke plant?
These are some of the tough questions that we need to answer before we can readily assign blame to megacorps. It's easy to hate large companies, and I dislike my fair share, but boiling this situation down into a headliner shaming corporate avarice may not be the best way to make progress. Maybe they should shut down the plant, or maybe they shouldn't--I don't know, and it shouldn't be for armchair economists thousands of miles away to decide. It just seems more complicated than the solicited visceral emotions may suggest.