Stepan Chemical:The Poisoning of a Mexican Community
Produced and directed by Mark R. Day
San Antonio, TX: Center for Justice in the Maquiladoras, 1992
18 minutes
IRENEO SANCHEZ COMPLAINS OF CHRONIC HEADACHES, nausea and stomach cramps. His daughter describes a 1991 explosion at a chemical plant near their home that occurred when workers improperly mixed chemicals together and sent debris flying across their land. The Sanchez family lives in Colonia Privada Uniones, a community in Matamoros, Mexico . The colonia was built about 30 years ago in an area made up of a cluster of small cotton fields. That area is now home to Matamoros’s infamous "Chemical Row," a string of chemical plants spewing poisons into the air and water of the surrounding communities. Chemical Row is a distressing symbol of Mexico’s maquiladora program, which allows U.S. companies to relocate to towns like Matamoros to escape stricter U.S. environmental regulation.
Matamoros lies directly across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. The region has suffered a dramatic rise in the birth of anencephalic babies (infants born without brains). In the Brownsville/Matomoros area, confirmed cases of anencephalic births now stand at 50 since January 1989 - the largest cluster of anencephalic babies ever documented, and four times the U.S. national average. Physicians and health activists believe the industrial chemical xylene - used at the Matamoros facility of the Chicago- based Stepan Chemical and also known to cause liver and kidney damage - are linked to the birth defects. Samples taken from a drainage ditch at Stepan’s Matamoros facility contained xylene at 53,000 times the allowable U.S. level, according to the National Toxics Campaign.
Stepan Chemical: The Poisoning of a Mexican Community is a short video documenting the appalling environmental history of Stepan Chemical. The video, produced by the San Antonio-based Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), chronicles the efforts of the Sanchezes and their neighbors to demand an end to the contamination of their community and a full environmental accounting from Stepan and environmental agencies in the United States and Mexico. Stepan Chemical is a grim account of the massive chemical buildup along the maquila zone on the U.S.-Mexico border, and a frightening indication of the potential human costs of the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Stepan’s Matamoros plant produces chemical agents used in detergents and pesticides. Community residents have long borne witness to the company’s practice of dumping chemicals into open, unlined canals that run through the colonia; they claim that contaminated soil samples can be found just a few feet below ground level.
Stepan’s owners have repeatedly denied responsibilty for poisoning the water and ground around the plant, claiming that the area around the facility was already contaminated when they bought it in 1988. Yet the CJM video contains 1990 footage of Stepan workers dumping wheelbarrow loads of contaminants into open drainage ditches. At that time, Stepan faced a proliferation of community complaints and unfavorable local press coverage; yet rather than clean up its mess, or even undertake an environmental assessment of the site, Stepan bulldozed the drainage ditches in an apparent attempt to cover up the toxic sludge pools it had created.
The video traces the efforts of Privada Uniones residents to force Stepan to account for its toxic build-up in Matamoros, as well as to simply obtain information on what chemicals the company used, and by what methods Stepan disposed of them. This type of information would be accessible through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if the facility were located in the United States.
While Stepan officials met with community activists and CJM members a number of times between 1990 and 1992, the company has steadfastly refused to provide the requested information. Recently, pressure from the community and the CJM has had some effect on Stepan. According to the CJM’s annual report, the company presented proposals for a site assessment in late February 1993. Colonia leaders are now examining these proposals to determine whether they will contribute to resolving the contamination problems around the facility.
The video is most effective in showing the brutal human cost of the maquila system, which will expand across Mexico under NAFTA. Maquila workers and their families, attempting to get by on paltry wages, live in shanties in border communities. There is no running water or sewers in the colonias. Stepan’s waste canal runs through the center of Colonia Privada Uniones.
According to the video, residents bathe and do their washing in the canal’s water, which is rarely boiled. A particularly disturbing image shows children playing and washing in the waste water. Another segment contains an interview with a colonia resident who says that pigs which fall into the canal invariably become sick - so their owners frequently kill and eat them before they die of disease.
This video has played an effective role in the joint community/CJM pressure campaign against Stepan, and is a valuable resource for activists fighting the maquiladorization of Mexico or working to raise awareness of the issue in the United States. Its hardhitting images of conditions in the colonias, and its depiction of appalling corporate indifference provide a strong counter to U.S. policymakers’ arguments that the North American Free Trade Agreement will improve conditions for Mexcian workers and their families. For the vast majority of the people of Matamoros, this video makes shockingly clear, free trade has meant nothing less than the devastation of their community.