The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21st Century Dilemma

the video and other materials to educate indigenous and other Mexican peasant and
farmworker groups to the dangers they may face in the fields of Mexico. xxix
The chemist, Dr. Lilia Albert, whose research was cited in my earlier work, has
gone on to produce other studies showing widespread pesticide contamination in various
regions of Mexico. In her angry and somewhat despairing article published as an
introduction to Diaz Romo’s study of Huichols, Dr. Albert concludes that the problem of
pesticide exposure and contamination is almost certainly very common and widespread
throughout Mexico, but that serious studies and, more important, action to remedy the
situation are few and far between. She complains mightily of the absurdly small budgets
and slight political support given to pesticide regulation and development of better pest
control techniques. xxx Overall, as we will see below, the environmental enforcement and
inspection budgets of the Mexican government have been cut severely since the
implementation of NAFTA.
Industrial accidents have also exposed communities in Mexico to serious levels of
pesticide contamination. Five months after the first publication of The Death of Ramon
Gonzalez, a pesticide factory in the state of Veracruz exploded and burned. The factory
was located near schools, churches, and a prison in a low-income neighborhood. Dr.
Jorge Arturo de Leon Rodriguez, a physician and Professor of Medicine at Mexico’s
national university wrote that “the explosion and fire at the Veracruz National
Agriculture Company, ANAVERSA, involved 19 thousand litres of methyl parathion, 8
thousand litres of paraquat, 3 thousand litres of 2,4-D, fifteen hundred litres of
pentachlorophenol and unknown quantities of malathion, benzene hexachloride, and
lindane. Very highly toxic dioxins and furans, which are a product of high temperature