Strange! Even As Major Polluters Claim Full Compliance, Mexico's Atoyac River Reduced To A Ribbon Of Toxic Wastwater
On the outskirts of Puebla in central Mexico sits an area on the Atoyac River known as Nueva Alemania, or “New Germany”. Between two factories, under-construction houses pepper streets with names such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kiel, Hanover and Berlin. New Germany is part of a broader region, an industrial district covering about 4,000 square kilometres that has been a hub for Mexican and global multinationals – notably German conglomerates – since the 1960s. Spanning 47 municipalities in the state of Tlaxcala and 22 in the state of Puebla, it is home to 1.1 million people.
Running through the area is the Atoyac River. But it is not a river that the community is proud of. “People used to wash clothes as the water was crystal clear, and they even bathed in the river,” remembers María Ocotlán, a Mexican snack shop owner on Munich Street. “Now, you can’t even wash your hands. The deterioration has been going on for 20 years.” The Upper Atoyac basin is one of 30 regions identified as being in a state of socio-environmental and health emergency in Mexico, polluted by sewage and waste from homes, farmland, and, above all, factories.
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In October 2023, the National Council of Science and Technology (Conahcyt), a public body of the Mexican government, acknowledged in a report that the region’s pollutants posed severe threats to public health. The report showed that the mortality rate from chronic kidney diseases among people aged 15 to 49 in Tlaxcala regions within the Upper Atoyac basin was almost five times higher than the national average. High mortality rates from acute leukaemias in individuals under 19 were also more common in the southern part of the basin, particularly in Puebla and Tlaxcala, where the levels of metals and arsenic in the river are significantly higher.
“Over the last decades, the inhabitants of the Upper Atoyac basin have witnessed the constant increase of industrial settlements such as the arrival of Volkswagen in 1965, the creation of the Independencia Petrochemical Complex in 1969 or the installation of the Audi company in 2016, among others,” says the document. “The region witnessed an economic development of apparent prosperity, but the organisation of global mercantile processes that privileged the profitability of transnational companies promoted health, social and environmental ‘externalities’ with serious effects for local communities.” The report noted: “The scientific evidence presented in this first report demonstrates that these high [mortality] rates are caused by exposure to toxins and polluting processes from industries located in the region. The automotive, electrical, chemical and textile industries have the highest pollutant emissions.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/oct/31/you-cant-even-wash-your-hands-is-a-global-industrial-hub-responsible-for-the-destruction-of-mexicos-atoyac-river