Indigenous activists and water defenders in Mexico are organizing to combat what they call “signs of planetary death.”
By Tamara Pearson
This article was originally published by Truthout
Atahualpa Sofía Enciso’s children don’t know what a normal river is, she says. Living by the Santiago River in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, which overflows with dense white foam from the hundreds of industries that pollute it, she notes that the area is also getting hotter.
“My father talks about how when he was younger, he didn’t need sweaters, because it was never that hot or cold, but now there are these extremes, because the river is polluted and it can’t regulate temperatures as it used to,” she tells Truthout.
For activists like Enciso, the term “climate change” is insufficient for describing such violence perpetrated by industry against the environment and against residents. Indigenous activists like Nahua grasshopper farmer Miguel López Vega describe the severe droughts, water scarcity, crop failure, and hunger that Mexico is experiencing as “signs of death” of the planet, and say any solutions have to involve direct care of the land while stopping the harm.
Meanwhile, President Claudia Sheinbaum is pushing for “sustainable” fracking around the country just as Mexico’s oil company Pemex has finally extinguished a gas leak at an exploratory oil well in the state of Veracruz after it burned for 150 days. In August, Sheinbaum ratified her push for fracking with a report by 54 government-chosen specialists recommending that fracking proceed, so long as only salt water is used.
Violence Against the Land
Most activists here see “sustainable” fracking as only more greenwashing.
“In Mexico, we live in a system based on the exploitation of our Mother Earth and the imposition of megaprojects, mining, illegal logging, water hoarding … and violence against those of us who defend our land. This represents a permanent war that threatens our existence as communities and as humanity,” wrote hundreds of water defenders in the final declaration of the 7th National Assembly for Water, Life and Land, in August.
Anti-fracking activist Yesenia Jocabet Antonio Pérez argues that respect for nature is key. Antonio, who is also a Nahua community judge and a member of Sedepac Huasteca, which is in the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking, says, “Mother Earth provides for us, and we should also care for and respect her. The people who don’t respect, who just go ahead and loot and plunder the land, water — They are abusing the earth.”
López, who lives among volcanoes in the Cholulteca region, where the Spanish committed massacres in 1519, says, “We organize in this region because corporations have come here to plunder and pollute … which we don’t permit.”
He describes a giant sinkhole in the area, some 45 meters deep, that appeared overnight in 2021, following over-exploitation of local water, especially by companies like Danone, owner of Bonafont.
“These changes are signs of [planetary] death,” says López. Describing things merely as “climate change,” he argues, makes the process sound passive and abstract, whereas pointing to specific events like the sinkhole indicates that “our Mother Earth is screaming about the huge dispossession that is occurring to our people.”
To the north of López, in Chihuahua state, Canada’s Silverco Mining has just announced it will re-open its Cusihuiriachi silver mine. The government announced in August that an unnamed company will spend a billion dollars in the state on silver mining. Mexico is the top silver producer globally, but this mining causes severe environmental harm, including water pollution, excessive water and electricity consumption, emissions, and land clearing.
Transnational mining and energy corporations treat Indigenous and farmer communities as “expendable obstacles,” Luis, a small farmer from Tepetixtla, Guerrero and a member of the National Indigenous Council, tells Truthout. His full name has been withheld for his safety.
Signs of Death in Mexico
In Luis’s region, people are now going hungry or eating less due to climate changes, he says. Irregular and sparse rain is causing beans, corn, and Mexican squash harvests to fail, and families are eating fewer tortillas.
In his state of Guerrero, on September 8, Indigenous families were forced to leave their communities and migrate in three buses to the north of the country to work for the agro-industrial company Divemex, after the current drought meant they couldn’t grow enough corn….
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