The border town of Matamoros, located in northeastern Mexico across the river from Brownsville, Texas, was once a quiet ranching and agricultural community. Over the last decade, however, it has undergone a startling transformation. Under Mexico’s border industrialization program, which provides incentives to U.S.-based companies to set up manufacturing operations along Mexico’s northern border, Matamoros now has over 90 maquiladorafactories,
Mary E. Kelly is the executive director of the Texas Center for Policy Studies.
many of which are owned by U.S. corporate giants such as General Motors, AT&T and Zenith. Mexico’s woefully underfunded and politically weak environmental regulatory program has not kept up with the rapid industrialization. Maquiladoraplants in Matamoros operate without the scrutiny and environmental controls they would have faced had they stayed in the United States.
The town’s residents are now feeling the consequences of this neglect. Behind the Stepan Chemical plant, and just yards from the small, broken-down mental tests revealed the presence of xylene at levels more than 50,000 times the U.S. standard for safe drinking water. About half a mile away, in a canal near General Motors’ Rimir plant, investigators discovered xylene at levels more than 6,000 times the U.S. standard.
The pollution is visible to the naked eye–orange and purple slime pours out of discharge pipes and flows down open canals, eventually discharging into a sensitive coastal lagoon south of Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico. One can often see dead animals in these ditches. Children, oblivious to the contamination, play at the edge of the murky water. When the Matamoros city dump is on fire, as it often is, the billowing black smoke can be seen from the north side of the river in nearby Brownsville. A visit to the dump itself is like stepping into a nightmare of industrial society run amok. People scavenge among the acres of municipal trash and industrial waste, slogging through pools of black-grey water to find the most sought-after prize-a used industrial chemical barrel in which to collect water at their homes on the edge of the dump.
In the face of these horrendous environmental conditions, some residents of Matamoros have begun to mount a campaign for stronger environmental protection. Working with religious, environmental and political groups in the United States, neighborhood leaders have developed a “toxic tour” of Mata-moros. “We have had visits from countless major Mexican, U.S. and foreign media organizations, environmental activists, and U.S. Congressional delegations,” said Maria Teresa Mdndez, one of the organizers. “No visitor goes away unmoved.” Efforts to call attention to the border’s environmental problems have begun to bear fruit. U.S. House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt took the toxic tour of Matamoros in the fall of 1991. He met with colonia and ejido leaders while officials of the Mexican, U.S. and Canadian governments were negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In a major trade policy speech to the Institute for International Economics in Washing-ton in July, Gephardt spoke about the environmental devastation he had witnessed. “In Matamoros, some of
America’s biggest corporations dump toxic waste directly into the water supply-water that turns the colors of the rainbow,” he said. “When I stood outside the homes of families living near
Mexican factories owned by U.S. chemical corporations, the emissions made my skin burn.” Gephardt went on to outline specific initiatives he argues should be enacted before Congress can approve NAFTA [see “Gephardt’s Proposals,” this page].
Environmental issues have moved to the center of the public and Congressional debates over NAFTA, with much of the focus on the U,S.-Mexico border region. Critics of NAFTA in both the
United States and Mexico are concerned that the trade negotiations have been put on a fast track to bolster the political fortunes of PresidentBush andMexico’s
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In the rash to complete NAFTA, these critics argue, the governments have failed to develop meaningful proposals to address the border’s current environmental and health problems, or to provide the necessary resources and infrastructure to handle what is expected to be a significant increase in U.S. industrial investment in Mexico under a free-trade accord.
Low wage rates in Mexico, often less than one dollar per hour, combined with the Mexican border region’s proximity to U.S. markets, have already made the area an attractive “off-shore” manufacturing base for U.S. companies. Favorable customs and tariffs for border industry have strengthened the pull. There are now over 1800 maquila-dora plants along the border, compared with fewer than 500 in 1982.
The plants employ over 380,000 people, and have become Mexico’s second largest source of foreign exchange, eclipsed only by oil export revenues.
Losing Control
Industrialization of the border has greatly increased the amount of hazardous waste being generated in the region, but tracking is woefully inadequate.
Mexico does not keep an inventory of hazardous waste and, unlike the United
States, Mexico does not have a law requiring industries to publicize basic environmental data on their operations.
Many of the plants use large amounts of toxic solvents, acids, metal-plating solutions and other chemicals that result in hazardous by-products. The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), using information compiled by Mexico’s environmental agency,reports thatabout
half of the approximately 2000
maquiladoi-as in Mexico may generate hazardous waste, The limited environmental testing that has been done near maquiladora parks in the border region also shows the presence of high levels of toxic contaminants associated with hazardous waste.
Mexico’s ground-breaking 1988 environmental law requires that most hazardous waste generated by U.S.-owned maquiladoras be returned to the
United States. But Mexican and U.S. environmental officials acknowledge that they cannot account for most of the waste. According to data from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), only 91 of the 600 maquiladoras along the Texas-Mexico border have returned waste from Mexico through
U.S. Customs ports in Texas since 1987.
The GAO concludes that, although
Mexico is trying to create a stronger waste-managementprogram, the Mexi-can government does not know how many maquiladoras are generating hazardous waste, the amount of waste generated, or the final disposition of that waste.
Hindering efforts to legally dispose of toxic waste is the lack of approved final disposal facilities in Mexico for toxic waste. According to law, the waste must be sealed in barrels and transported to landfills. There are currently only two authorized sites in Mexico-one in San Luis PotosI, and the other in
Monterrey in the border state of Nuevo
Leon. Rene Franco, an environmental consultant in JuOrez, Mexico, says “the geographic location of these facilities, as well as their installed capacity, are far from satisfactory for existing industry, much less for the industry that will result from a free-trade agreement.” The
Mexican border had a toxic-waste incinerator in Tijuana, but its permit was revoked this June after neighboring residents protested. Proposals for two large waste dumps in Texas have generated vocal opposition from communities on both sides of the border [see “Proposed
Waste Dumps Spark Protest,” page 61.
Much of the hazardous waste generated by maquiladoras and other border industries is being disposed of illegally. This January, in a public environmental forum in Monterrey, Mexico, then Subsecretary of Ecology Sergio
Reyes Lujan said only 10% of the toxic waste generated by industry in
Mexico goes to authorized disposal facilities.
The vast desert region of northeastern Mexico is a favorite location for clandestine dumps. In May, forexample, environmental officials discovered a dump of over 600 barrels of toxic waste located about 20 miles south of Judrez, across from El Paso, Texas. Investigators have begun to trace many of the barrels back to U.S.-owned tnaquiladora plants.
Health Risks
Exposure to illegally disposed hazardous waste can occur in a variety of ways. In the border region, children play in open sewage canals which con-tam waste from industrial parks, and people fish in contaminated streams or use old hazardous-chemical barrels for storing drinking water. Exposure to such waste can have serious health ramifications, including various forms of cancer and birth defects. Recent investigations have begun to bring potential problems to light.
Health-care workers in Brownsville,
Texas have documented a sky-rocketing rate of birth defects, particularly in the number of babies born with undeveloped brains, a condition known as anencephaly. Researchers have found that anencephaly rates in Brownsville are over three times the U.S. national average. In Matamoros, across the river, researchers have documented at least 42 cases of anencephaly over the last year and a half
“To date,” says GregoriaRodrfguez, a health-care doctoral student and a volunteer at the Brownsville Community Health Clinic, “our research mdi-cates that environmental toxins which are emitted by many ofthemaquiladoras operating in Matamoros may indeed by one possible cause of this tragedy.”
After the Brownsville/Matamoros anen-cephaly investigation received national attention in both the United States and
Mexico, health-care workers in other border cities such as Ciudad Acufla and
Judrez began reviewing their limited records, and discovered similar anomalies.
Observers say the border’s toxic-waste crisis stems from two basic problems. First, Mexico lacks sufficient financial resources for a strong environmental enforcement and oversight program. Burdened by a foreign debt of over $100 billion, Mexico spent much less on environmental programs per capita in 1991 than the United States did, even though funding levels in
The disparity between the amount that each country budgeted for hazardous-waste management is striking. In the United States, the EPA had a 1991 hazardous-waste budget of over $300 million, supplemented by significant state spending on hazardous-wasteregulation. Mexico, by contrast, had a 1991 hazardous-waste budget of only $2.3 million.
Limited resources also impede Mexico’s ability to clean up illegal disposal sites. For example, at the recently discovered 600-barrel dump outside of Jutrez, Mexican environmental investigators have been severely hampered by the lack of money needed for testing the ground water and soil samples for contamination. Moreover, Mexico does not have an equivalent to the U.S. Superfund Law, which requires those responsible for generating me waste to pay for the clean-up of abandoned disposal sites. Therefore, “it is not clear whether the land will ever be fully cleaned up,” says Texas Water Commission Border Affairs Director H6ctor Villa, whose agency has helped Mexico’s environmental authorities transfer the barrels to an authorized disposal site.
Agreements Lack Teeth
Another basic problem is that the United States and Mexico have relied strictly on informal cooperation to deal with toxic waste in the borderlands. Under the La Paz Agreement, signed in 1983 by then presidents Ronald Reagan and Miguel de la Madrid, the two countries agreed to work with each other to address a range of environmental problems in the region. Yet neither country devoted sufficient resources to set up an adequate binational system that would track the generation and disposal of toxic waste in the region.
This year, after the border’s environmental woes were spotlighted during the debate over NAFTA, the two countries’ environmental agencies agreed to deal with pollution with a new “Integrated Plan for the Mexico-U.S. Border.” Included among the plan’s goals for the next few years are improved surveillance and tracking of cross-border movements of toxic waste, as well as the ability to determine the amount of waste being gener-ever, the plan remains strictly an informal agreement.
The integrated plan is the centerpiece of efforts by presidents Bush and Salinas to convince the public in both countries that they are addressing border environmental issues. The Bush Administration also argues thatNAFTA will improve Mexico’s ability to deal with environmental problems because Mexico’s revenues from foreign investment and trade with the United States will increase as a result of the agreement.
Some critics claim both countries should permit greater cross-border cooperation among state and local governments. “It is the border communities that are feeling the impact of this rapid industrialization on a day-to-day basis,” says Helen Ingram, director of the Udall Center for Public Policy at the University of Arizona. “It is those communities that can best make concrete progress in protecting their shared environment. But they can’t do that if Wash-ington, D.C. and Mexico City continue to insist on tight federal control over U.S.-Mexico environmental relations.” Calls for change are also being heard in Mexico. Alberto Szdkely, one of Mexico’s leading environmental law experts who helped negotiate the agree-although U.S. and Mexican environmental agencies have opened lines of communication since 1983, a new agreement is needed that would deal more forcefully with border environmental issues, particularly toxic waste.
Roberto Sdinchez, the director of Urban Studies at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, recommends creating a new binational environmental agency. Sdinchez says this new agency could be given oversight authority for environmental and worker-health issues in the borderlands, and could help to coordinate the efforts of various federal, state and local authorities.
Many observers feel that without a strong new agreement or treaty on border environmental issues to accompany NAFTA, problems such as the illegal disposal of toxic waste, and battles over new disposal sites will continue. Those concerned with the welfare of border communities acknowledge that the NAFTA negotiations provide a golden opportunity to grab the attention of federal officials in both countries. Says Ingram: “We have not had this much attention to the border in years-and now is the chance for us to get some fundamental changes in the way we try to protect our shared environment. We just hope Washington and Mexico City are taking us seriously.”
