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This paper proposes a reading of dispossession processes and injustice in water sector in Mexico, drawing on the approach of the institutional resource regimes. Mexico has a set of institutional rules to regulate the use of water resources and to solve rivalries that emerge between users. Nevertheless, these rules do not enable the sustainable use of water resources because the institution in charge of enforcing, the Comisión Nacional del Agua (CONAGUA), don’t apply them. In some cases, the CONAGUA even get much further by modifying the rules or breaking them in order to promote urban development and extractive activities. The paper shows how the non-appliance of the rules contributes to water grabbing and leads to a resource reallocation from peasant and indigenous communities to political and economic elites. It also evidences that in a context in which the CONAGUA is both judge and party, affected users have few means to stop this reallocation process and defend their water access.