Defiance from Down River: Deflection and Dispute in the Urban-Industrial Metabolism of Pollution in Guadalajara

Mcculligh Mcculligh,Fregoso Fregoso

doi:10.3390/su11226294

Mcculligh Mcculligh, Fregoso Fregoso

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226294

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Abstract

Research in urban political ecology has been important in recent decades in understanding the complex socionatural processes entailed in urbanization, exploring the local and global linkages of the production and consumption processes of urban metabolism. While these studies have explored diverse networks and artefacts in this metabolism, little attention has been paid to the flows of the pollution of water and air, particularly of the industrial emissions that are also key to the socionatures of urbanization in industrialized regions of the Global South. In this paper, we explore two interconnected nodes in the metabolism of the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area in Western Mexico. These are key sites for the flows of resources and emissions, with different levels of social discontent and conflict related particularly to the health impacts of water pollution. Here, government authorities tend to deflect attention from industrial- and city-level sources of pollution, focusing instead on proximate sources and household emissions. Organized social resistance, on the other hand, calls attention to powerful industrial actors and speculative urban development while taking action to imagine new socio-ecological configurations in the region. We focus on the role of the state in maintaining socio-ecological inequities, and the lessons that can be learned about urban metabolism by expanding the frame to include industrial processes in the shaping of urban socionatures.

Highlights

In a clear rejection of the current urban metabolism of the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area (GMA) in Western Mexico, one of the first messages of local organization Leap of Life (Un Salto de Vida) in 2007 read “Your shit pisses me off: government + industry + indifference = death in El Salto and Juanacatlán” [1]
In January 1973, El Informador, one of Guadalajara’s major daily newspapers reported on the “high [levels of] pollution registered in the Lerma and Santiago rivers, resulting from the chemical waste emitted by the industries located on its margins,” where inspectors from the Ministry of Fisheries found “many dead fish floating on its waters, mainly on the Santiago River” [78]
The manager of an American chemical factory in the Ocotlán–El Salto industrial corridor shared his perceptions of environmental regulations in Mexico, reflecting on the period when many laws and standards were passed in the lead up to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, stating in interview that: “New environmental laws that we’d never had appeared overnight, and the government has never had, not and not the ability to verify that the laws are complied with by industries.”

Summary

Introduction

At the other node we explore, where the municipality of El Salto meets Tlaquepaque in Las Pintas, poor air quality, polluted waters and periodic flooding contribute to insalubrious conditions for residents of this urban-industrial fringe. Prevailing winds, intense vehicular traffic, industries and artisanal brick kilns all make this the location of the worst air quality in the GMA, Mexico’s second largest city with a population of 4.8 million in 2015 [3]. Las Pintas is at the confluence of a complex set of canals that bring waters of questionable quality from upstream on the Santiago River into the GMA for “purification” and distribution through the city’s water infrastructure. Unlike in El Salto, in Las Pintas, many residents accept official discourses, laying the blame for water pollution and flooding on local bad habits, such as disposing of garbage in nearby canals

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