November 16, 2007 (LPAC)--Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours yesterday continued the campaign for construction of the tri-state North West Water Project (the PLHINO), calling such infrastructure projects the key to increasing Mexico's ability to feed itself.

Speaking to agricultural producers in the south of the state, the governor warned the global raw materials crisis faced by Mexico will not be short, but this represents an opportunity, as well as a problem for Mexico, he said. We must reformulate our agriculture policy, and increase our food production capabilities, and infrastructure projects such as the PLHINO are the best way to do that. Mexico also needs a State policy of promoting more value-added agricultural production (i.e., more industrialization, less raw materials), because right now it is exporting everything cheaply--including its own people, said the governor.

On Nov. 9, at the Regional Forum on Water, Energy and Food organized by the 21st Century Pro-PLHINO Committee, Gov. Bours endorsed completion of the PLHINO--first proposed in 1960!--as the task which this generation must fulfill.

Briefed on the mobilization for the PLHINO by many of Sonora's leadership coming off the Pro-PLHINO Committee's forum, Lyndon LaRouche today reiterated his decades-long support for national water projects in Mexico such as the PLHINO and its counterpart, the North Gulf Water Project (PLHIGON), which would transfer water from the south of the country north. These projects are a matter of national security for the United States itself, LaRouche has said, because of the security they would bring to its neighbor, Mexico.

The flood, which devastated the south of Mexico, just as representatives of northern Mexican states gathered to discuss the regional water projects required to end the drought devastating their region, demonstrates my point, LaRouche said: Mexico has water! If these infrastructure projects had been built, as his friend Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-1982) had set out to do, the flooding would not have occurred, jobs would have been created, and agriculture would have expanded. It should have been done before, and it should be done now, he said. And this should be pushed internationally.