"Sin agua no podemos hacer nada"

From the Tecate Records, 2 of 3

This story came out of the research for The Paper Trail, which followed the Adams name from Yuma to Tecate. Óscar Eyraud Adams has no documented connection to Carlos Adams, the 2026 Yuma mayoral candidate. He's here because his story deserves telling on its own.

"Yo soy indígena, yo soy kumiai, yo soy indígena de Nejí."

I'm Indigenous, I'm Kumiai, I'm Indigenous from Nejí. That's how Óscar Eyraud Adams introduced himself everywhere he went, according to his mother, Norma Adams Cuero. "Nunca se avergonzó de sus orígenes," she said in an account published by the group Global Witness. He was never ashamed of where he came from.

Nejí is a Kumiai community in the hills east of Tecate. Óscar was born there, at a place called Rancho Los Baños, according to the Mexican outlet Pie de Página. His family moved to Tijuana when he was about 2, then to Tecate. He was the oldest of six. His father died young, and he learned a lot from his grandfather. He trained as an agronomist.

Then, about a decade before he died, he went home.

The ranch

"Acá vamos a sembrar y cosechar," he told his mother. "Acá vamos a salir adelante, mamá." We're going to plant and harvest here. We're going to make it here, Mom.

He grew nopal, squash and fruit trees on about five acres and sold what the family didn't eat, Pie de Página reported. He watered by drip line from a spring and two wells behind the house.

The water didn't last. The wells kept dropping. He'd plant and couldn't bring in the harvest. "Ahí empezó a luchar por el agua y el territorio," his mother said. That's when he started fighting for water and land. "Sin agua no podemos hacer nada," he used to tell her. Without water, we can't do anything.

He applied for a permit to drill a deeper well, and in the process learned who did hold the water rights around there. Then he went public. He accused Mexico's national water commission, Conagua, of turning down his community while big users pulled from an overdrawn aquifer, and he named the Heineken-owned brewery that makes Tecate beer. "Heineken tiene más de 12 pozos," Pie de Página quoted him. Heineken has more than 12 wells. A later Pie de Página story put the brewery's yearly allotment at about 1.89 million cubic meters from 13 wells. Those are the reporters' numbers. We haven't checked the water registry ourselves.

"Las grandes compañías tienen acceso al agua mucho más fácil," his mother remembers him saying. "Esto no es justo, necesitamos el agua para sobrevivir." The big companies get water a lot easier. It isn't fair. We need water to survive.

He went to Mexicali to meet with officials. He brought reporters out to see the dry land. The community asked him to research its right to govern itself, and he talked with agrarian lawyers. Once, his mother said, a lawyer showed up offering a project that would profit off their land, and Óscar sent him packing: "A mí nadie me va a decir qué debemos hacer en nuestra casa." Nobody's going to tell me what to do in our own home.

The man

The people who knew him liked him. The activist Mauro Cuevas Luna called him "de esos con los que te avientas todo el día risa," the kind of guy you spend the whole day laughing with. Another activist, Adrián Zapata, said he was tough, "correoso, igual que el clima de la Baja California," like Baja's weather.

"Nunca lo vi enojado," his mother said. I never saw him angry.

His aunt, Yolanda Meza Calles, said she'd been afraid for him. "Me dijo que él ya había perdido miedo." He told me he wasn't afraid anymore.

His mother was afraid too. "Pensé que podrían pegarle, secuestrarlo," she said. I thought they might beat him, kidnap him. "Pero nunca imaginé hasta donde llegarían." I never imagined how far they'd go.

Sept. 24, 2020

Baja California's state prosecutor, the Fiscalía General del Estado, reported that Óscar Eugenio Eyraud Adams, 34, was shot and killed in Tecate on Sept. 24, 2020. An emergency call came in around 7:07 p.m. Investigators found him with several gunshot wounds and recovered 13 shell casings. An uncle told investigators he'd been Óscar's guardian since Óscar was 6. Reforma reported, citing the autopsy, that he was shot six times.

Pie de Página later reported that the killers took his phone, his wallet and his notebook, and that his body sat in the morgue a week before the family could bring him home.

Less than a day later, his brother-in-law was shot and killed in a Tecate store. ZETA reported that investigators were treating the killings as separate cases, with no sign then that they were connected.

What isn't known

As far as we can find, as of Oct. 29, 2026, nobody has been charged with killing Óscar Eyraud Adams.

Global Witness, which counted him among the land and environmental defenders killed in 2020, said no arrests had been made as of its 2021 report. Pie de Página reported in 2024 that the investigation hadn't produced results, and that early theories from investigators pointed to motives other than his activism. ZETA reported in October 2020 that a man on its list of the region's most-wanted homicide suspects had come up early in the investigation. That's a reported lead, not a charge, so we're not naming him.

His mother has her own answer. "Lo mataron por su lucha por la autodeterminación y por el agua," she told Pie de Página, "porque a mucha gente no le convenía su trabajo." They killed him for fighting for self-determination and water, because his work got in a lot of people's way. That's her belief, shared by many who knew him. No court or prosecutor has said why he was killed.

Home

A year after he died, his community held a traditional 12-hour ceremony for him. He's buried at Nejí, in a cemetery that, according to Gatopardo, holds his Adams ancestors. His family put a can of Tecate and cigarettes on his altar, Pie de Página reported. Two of his favorite things.

"Mi obligación era traerlo de vuelta," his mother said, "para que descansara en su casa y junto con su comunidad." My job was to bring him back, so he could rest at home with his community.

"Yo quiero justicia para él, y quiero que sea pronto, antes de que asesinen a alguien más." I want justice for him, and I want it soon, before they kill someone else.

The scorecard

Verified

• The prosecutor's office reported his killing on Sept. 24, 2020, and opened an investigation.
• His mother's account, published by Global Witness.
• His public complaints about Conagua and the brewery's wells, as reported.

Not verified

• Who killed him, and why.
• Whether his killing and his brother-in-law's were connected.
• The water figures, which come from reporters, not records we checked.
• His civil birth record and any court record of his uncle's guardianship.

Our read

• His mother believes he was killed for his work. No official finding says so, or says otherwise.

Questions still open

• Who killed Óscar Eyraud Adams, and why? Baja California's Fiscalía holds investigation 03-2020-3538.
• Were the two killings connected? A later statement from the Fiscalía would say.
• What happened to his well permit? Conagua's files would show.

These questions are for the Fiscalía and Conagua. We haven't contacted them, or Óscar's family, for this story.

Next from the Tecate records: Tecate's Deadliest Years, by the Numbers

Where this comes from

• Global Witness, Última línea de defensa, September 2021, Spanish edition pp. 19 to 20, Norma Adams Cuero's account. Report. Testimony. Translations are ours.
• Pie de Página, Daliri Oropeza Álvarez, Sept. 26, 2020. Article. Reporting.
• Pie de Página, Aitor Sáez, "La penúltima cerveza de Óscar," March 16, 2024. Article. Reporting.
• Fiscalía General del Estado de Baja California, Sept. 25, 2020. Bulletin. Official statement.
• Reforma, Sept. 26, 2020. Article. Reporting; seen only as an excerpt.
• ZETA, Sept. 26, 2020 and Oct. 19, 2020. Article, article. Reporting.
• Gatopardo, Aug. 10, 2021. Article. Reporting.
• La Jornada, Sept. 29, 2020, column by Luis Hernández Navarro. Column. Opinion.
• Our search for later reporting on arrests, Oct. 16, 2026. Nothing found.