Mexican Indigenous groups battle polluting extractive projects and push back on 'sustainable' fracking

In the Santiago River basin of Jalisco, residents like Atahualpa Sofía Enciso witness foam-filled waters and rising temperatures that they attribute to unchecked industrial discharge from companies including Hershey, Honda and Nestlé. Indigenous farmer Miguel López Vega links severe droughts and crop failures across regions such as Puebla and Guerrero to the same extractive violence. Despite President Claudia Sheinbaum’s recent ratification of a specialist report allowing fracking with only salt water, activists argue the policy merely masks continued exploitation.

Mining operations, exemplified by Silverco Mining’s reopening of a silver mine in Chihuahua, and water-intensive firms such as Danone’s Bonafont, are blamed for sinkholes, water scarcity and health crises. Communities respond with protests, legal actions and ecological restoration, planting native forests and opposing projects like an ammonia plant in Sinaloa, while criticizing superficial government initiatives such as the Sembrando Vida tree-planting scheme.