Aguakan Water Concession Case Tests Judicial Independence in Mexico

Quintana Roo, Mexico — A central concern for the country’s private and financial sector focuses on how civil, commercial, and administrative matters are processed and resolved in the Judicial Power in states where there has been election and replacement of local judges.

Hence, the case of Aguakan — the concessionaire company for 30 years of potable water, sewerage, and sanitation services in Benito Juárez, Isla Mujeres, Puerto Morelos, and Solidaridad — one of the most controversial in Quintana Roo in recent years, becomes “observable and a reference point” to define the cost of judicial risk when establishing an investment or making a contract in the state governed by Mara Lezama.

It all began with the extension of the potable water and sanitation concession granted through Decree 250 in 2014, which since 2023 the local Congress has sought to reverse with Decree 195. This attempt has led to a legal battle, whose outcome is in the hands of the Judicial Power, and could set a serious precedent regarding legal certainty and the validity of long-term public decisions.

Magistrate Berenice Polanco Córdova knows the Aguakan file well because in 2014, as a legislator of the XIV Legislature of the Quintana Roo Congress and president of the Justice Commission, she voted in favor of the decree that ratified and extended until 2053 the concession for comprehensive potable water and sanitation service in Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, and Isla Mujeres.

Today, more than a decade later, Polanco Córdova is part of the Third Collegiate Tribunal of the Twenty-Seventh Circuit, the same one that should resolve today, if nothing unusual happens, whether the admission of amparo 71/2024 is revoked. This amparo was promoted by one of the companies affected by Decree 195, with which the local Congress intends to annul the extension. That is, the same person could be holding, at two different times, different legal positions regarding the same case. Will it happen?

Furthermore, in the same resolution, now Magistrate Lenin Zenteno Ávila will also intervene. He was the Legal Director and later General Secretary of the Benito Juárez Municipality in Quintana Roo, which was headed as municipal president by Gregorio Sánchez, a figure who in 2010 was arrested on charges related to drug trafficking. Lenin Zenteno has also participated as an advisor and lawyer for the Quintana Roo government and the Benito Juárez municipality. Those who know his career affirm that his rise in the Judicial Power has not been linked to a jurisdictional trajectory or career, but to political appointments promoted from the state government. An obvious conflict of interest is visualized.

The same can be said of Polanco Córdova: her arrival at the tribunal obeys a nomination backed by Governor Mara Lezama, given that she was Undersecretary of Social Development of the state government before occupying her current judicial position. Both magistrates were appointed in September 2025 following the judicial election process.

Therefore, given the relevance of the case, it is not only the trajectory of the judges that is at stake, but also public confidence in the impartiality of the administration of justice by the Judicial Power, which concentrates investments of 36,700 million dollars as of the end of 2025. The possible revocation of a granted amparo is a serious matter.

In public service, decisions are not erased. They are archived… and sooner or later, they return. Today it is the insistence on violating the law to revoke a concession not due to poor administration or popular demand as is wanted to be justified, but because the Lezama government considers it an additional source of state resources where tourism taxes are no longer sufficient.