2008 marked Mexico’s completion of a fourteen year transition to an open market system with the US and Canada. Under NAFTA, tariffs on corn, beans, sugar, and milk were lifted. These trade deregulations sparked widespread farmer protests and the Zaptista rebellion in southern Mexico, which attracted international solidarity around issues of indigenous oppression, racism, land tenure, and rural poverty. Due in part to the land reforms that created the land tenure ejido system of usufruct rights, the majority of Mexican farmers work small plots of land, many less than one hectare. In contrast to American heavily subsidized industrial agriculture, the Mexican government has not provided subsidies for small-scale producers, effectively shutting many out from competing in an open market. A major consequence of the resulting pressures on farmers has been high rates of outmigration to the US. [1] Going hand in hand with NAFTA, Mexico also privatized the ejido system in 1992, issuing titles of ownership, and allowing ejidos to be sold and used as collateral. The looming threat for Mezquital farmers is now the privatization of the wastewater itself, which combined with revoked indigenous water rights in perpetuity, would likely be the last nail in the coffin for many small-scale Mezquital farmers already struggling to stay on their land. [2]