A supporter of General Porfirio Díaz since a few days after he launched his Plan de la Noria, on 8 November 1871, Colonel Conant supported without hesitation the proclamation and the call to take up arms against the government of the reelected President Benito Juárez according to the final ruling of 7 October 1871 by the scrutinizing commission of the 1871 Mexican general election.
With this position, he arrived on 22 January 1883 in the town of Pinos Altos ("High Pines"), where he suffocated a strike of miners and had three workers shot in the Las Lajas neighborhood: Blas Venegas, Cruz Baca, and Ramon Mena.
Upon learning that the Porfiriato government (the long term of General Porfirio Díaz in office) began to grant concessions for the use of the waters of various rivers, giving ownership of the demarcated land in exchange for the cost of the technical work and construction of the works for the irrigation of those lands, presented his project for the southern region of Sonora called Valle del Yaqui.
On 22 August 1890, by means of a contract signed by Conant and General Carlos Pacheco, Secretary of Development, Colonization and Industry of the regime of Porfirio Díaz, the Federal Government granted the concession to open 300 000 hectares of land (741 290 acres) for cultivation and open irrigation canals taking advantage of the waters of the Yaqui and Mayo rivers, in the State of Sonora, and the Fuerte River in the State of Sinaloa.
[5] Conant undertook the first demarcations on the Yaqui River lands, with his own resources, those of his brother Benito and those of fellow shareholder Santos Valenzuela, but the magnitude of the project required more financing.