The groups, including the Movement No to the Atitalaquia Garbage Site, the Environmental Awareness Network Vamos Vivir, Fundación Apaztle and Río Tula Restoration and Socioecological Justice, recognized the federal government’s decision to respect the popular will expressed in the consultation and clarified that their opposition to the park was not ideological, but rather based on the possible environmental and health impacts.
“We are not enemies of the government, we are allies. We want to work together to achieve environmental justice in our region,” they stated.
As part of the diagnosis, specialists warned that the Toltec region is experiencing a health and environmental emergency, with more than 500,000 people directly affected by the operation of the refinery, thermoelectric plants, cement plants, wastewater discharges and more than 300 industries installed in the region.
“It is a toxic cocktail that has caused diseases and chronic exposure in the population,” they warned.
Faced with this scenario, the groups proposed working on a comprehensive socio-environmental justice plan that prioritizes life and health, and that is built jointly between communities, researchers and authorities.
Among the axes proposed are the real sanitation of rivers, the reduction of industrial emissions, attention to diseases associated with pollution, the guarantee of the right to water and the end of the logic of “regions of sacrifice.”
