Editing Environmental racism (section)

==== Mexico ====
The [[Cucapá]] are a group of indigenous people that live near the U.S.-Mexico border, mainly in [[Mexico]] but some in [[Arizona]] as well. For many generations, fishing on the [[Colorado River]] was the Cucapá's main means of subsistence.<ref name="Muehlmann">{{cite book|last=Muehlmann, Shaylih |title=Where the river ends : contested indigeneity in the Mexican Colorado Delta|date=23 May 2013|isbn=978-0-8223-7884-6|location=Durham|oclc=843332838}}</ref> In 1944, the United States and Mexico signed a treaty that effectively awarded the United States rights to about 90% of the water in the Colorado River, leaving Mexico with the remaining 10%.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Muehlmann|first=Shaylih|date=May 2012|title=Rhizomes and other uncountables: The malaise of enumeration in Mexico's Colorado River Delta: The countdown at the end of the Colorado River|journal=American Ethnologist|language=en|volume=39|issue=2|pages=339–353|doi=10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01368.x}}</ref> Over the last few decades,{{clarify|date=October 2021}} the Colorado River has mostly dried up south of the border, presenting many challenges for people such as the Cucapá. Shaylih Meuhlmann, author of the ethnography ''Where the River Ends: Contested Indigeneity in the Mexican Colorado Delta,'' gives a first-hand account of the situation from Meuhlmann's point of view as well as many accounts from the Cucapá themselves. In addition to the Mexican portion of the Colorado River being left with a small fraction of the overall available water, the Cucapá are stripped of the right to fish on the river, the act being made illegal by the Mexican government in the interest of preserving the river's ecological health.<ref name="Muehlmann" /> The Cucapá are, thus, living without access to sufficient natural sources of freshwater as well as without their usual means of subsistence. The conclusion drawn in many such cases is that the negotiated water rights under the US-Mexican treaty that lead to the massive disparity in water allotments between the two countries boils down to environmental racism.

1,900 maquiladoras are found near the US-Mexico border. Maquiladoras are companies that are usually owned by foreign entities and import raw materials, pay workers in Mexico to assemble them, and ship the finish products overseas to be sold.<ref>{{cite book|last=Strömberg, Per.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51868644|title=The Mexican maquila industry and the environment : an overview of the issues|date=2002|publisher=Naciones Unidas CEPAL/ECLAC|isbn=92-1-121378-9|location=Mexico, DF|oclc=51868644}}</ref> While Maquiladoras provide jobs, they often pay very little. These plants also bring pollution to rural Mexican towns, creating health impacts for the poor families that live nearby.

In Mexico, industrial extraction of oil, mining, and gas, as well as the mass removal of slowly renewable resources such as aquatic life, forests, and crops.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Tetreault|first=Darcy|date=February 2020|title=The new extractivism in Mexico: Rent redistribution and resistance to mining and petroleum activities|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104714|journal=World Development|volume=126|pages=104714|doi=10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104714|s2cid=211317717|issn=0305-750X}}</ref> Legally, the state owns natural resources but is able to grant concessions to industry through the form of taxes paid. In recent decades, a shift towards refocusing these tax dollars accumulated on the communities most impacted by the health, social, and economic impacts of [[extractivism]] has taken place. However, many indigenous and rural community leaders argue that they ought to consent to companies extracting and polluting their resources, rather than be paid reparations after the fact.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021}}