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Afinidad Política

🌾 Issue

Water, farming and indigenous peoples: what each party thinks

By Fadrique Garcia Font ·

The ban on GM maize, selling or inheriting water concessions, consultation with Indigenous peoples and guaranteed prices for staple grains.

4 questions, 32 party positions and 1 complete disagreement (how they are assigned).

What divides the parties on this issue

On genetically modified corn, the PRI sides with the governing coalition and leaves the PAN on its own. In February 2025 the constitutional amendment banning GM corn planting and protecting native varieties passed with the votes of the three ruling parties, with no dissent in their ranks, and with 33 PRI votes in favor and one against. Movimiento Ciudadano backed it in the general vote and opposed the reserved articles, so it sits one notch lower. The PAN voted no and is the only party that disagrees, and strongly. PAZ, newly registered, stays in the middle with a source of its own: its program calls for research into the biosafety of modified organisms, neither banning nor allowing them.

Water puts the PRI back in its usual place. The general law passed in December 2025 stops a concession holder from transferring the title to another private party: whoever buys or inherits the land must ask Conagua for a new one. The PAN and the PRI voted no and strongly defend letting a concession be sold or inherited with the land; their argument centered on farmers who could no longer pass the well on to their children. Morena, the PT and the PVEM, which passed the law, disagree without going to the extreme. Movimiento Ciudadano lands in the middle again: it voted against the law, but its platform condemns the hoarding of water.

On Indigenous consultation and grain prices, blocs barely form. No party objects to a community's rejection in an Indigenous consultation stopping a project: the opposition, SOMOS and the PT agree, and the PAN and the PRI speak explicitly of free, prior and informed consent. Nor does anyone want staple grain prices left to the market alone. Seven parties hold a sourced position against that idea, and the most emphatic is SOMOS, which in April 2026 sided with growers demanding guaranteed prices. Reading this theme as a contest between state and market works for water and fails for grain prices.

Estimates lie behind six positions out of 32, among them those of Morena and the PVEM on Indigenous consultation, which their platforms address without saying whether it can halt a project, and the PAN's on guaranteed prices.

Written from the documented positions of the eight parties on the questions in this issue; where part of it rests on estimated positions, that is stated. It does not include the answers of people taking the test.

What each party proposes on this issue

A summary of their positions on the questions in this issue, based on their electoral platforms, founding documents, votes in the Chamber of Deputies and public statements. The numbers refer to the questions below, each with its details and sources.

PAN

Agrees: 2, 3

Disagrees: 1

In between: 4

PRI

Agrees: 1, 2, 3

Disagrees: 4

PVEM

Agrees: 1

Disagrees: 2, 4

In between: 3

PT

Agrees: 1, 3

Disagrees: 2, 4

MC

Agrees: 1, 3

Disagrees: 4

In between: 2

Morena

Agrees: 1

Disagrees: 2, 4

In between: 3

PAZ

Disagrees: 4

In between: 1, 2, 3

SOMOS

Agrees: 3

Disagrees: 4

In between: 1, 2

1. Planting genetically modified maize should remain banned in Mexico.

In February 2025 the Chamber passed a constitutional reform that bans planting genetically modified maize in Mexico and protects native maize varieties. Imports of maize for consumption were not banned.

Of the 8 parties with a position on this question: 5 in favor, 2 in between and 1 against.

2. Holders of a water concession should be able to sell it or pass it on together with the land.

The General Water Law passed by the Chamber in December 2025 ends the buying and selling of water concessions between private parties: any change of holder goes through Conagua. Farmers blocked roads in 17 states.

Of the 8 parties with a position on this question: 2 in favor, 3 in between and 3 against.

3. A project on indigenous land should not go ahead if the community rejects it in the consultation.

Mexico ratified ILO Convention 169, which requires consulting indigenous peoples before measures and projects that affect them. In 2026 a General Law on the Rights of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples is under consultation.

Of the 8 parties with a position on this question: 5 in favor, 3 in between and 0 against.

4. Prices for staple grains should be set by the market, without government guaranteed prices.

Since 2019 the federal government has paid guaranteed prices to small producers of maize, beans, wheat, rice and milk: a minimum price, above what the market usually pays.

Of the 8 parties with a position on this question: 0 in favor, 1 in between and 7 against.

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Who do you agree with on this issue?

The questions in this issue are part of the full test. On 1 of them the parties hold opposite positions, so your answer matters.

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