Al Jazeera en Tehuacán

Diablo con vestido azul

Bluewater waste from the Lavacolor jeans laundry in Tehuacan. Photograph: Jennifer Szymaszek/Reuters

Hip hop de la maquila

Favor de leerse al ritmo propuesto por el hip hop (suavelongo, combativo y caminando las palabras), todo, en una una atmósfera azul...


La maquila,
que mi vida aniquila,
que mis sueños adormece,
que cual negra flor
por mi cuerpo crece

Ma kill Kill aaaa
aja, aja, aja, ajá

Ma ma ma mamá maquila
que me ama
me enajena
me atrapa
y en mezclilla
cual niña bonita me mece

Mi mente toda azul,
de a poquito en poquito
Es tu pi de ce

Ma kill kill a

Maquila que al río
sin piedad contaminas
que entre gases
y enzimas voraces
mis pulmones a hilachos deshaces

Ma kill kill a

Maquila mi tormento,
mi paga
la alegría de comer por tres días
de comprar mis zapatos
Y hasta un par de colgajos

Ma kill kill a
De amigas,
de sueños
y amores
De patrones
que son... ¡explotadores!

De sudor mal pagado
o de ser un obrero desempleado

Como yerba maligna
me das escozor
y tu azul historia
me provoca ....¡terror!

Ma kill kill a
Maquila de ensambles
que mi vida coses
a una maquina triste,
que de azul demonio
mi vida vistes

Diablo con vestido
con vestido
diablo con vestido azul...
La maquila

Ahora si, después de este entremés... el plato fuerte... ya que lamentablemente la contaminación en Tehuacán, como resultado del proceso de teñido en las lavanderías, son toda una noticia.
Va pues la nota del diario inglés "El Guardián"

Distressed denim trend costs Mexican farmers the earth

Fields affected by chemicals from thriving blue jeans industry, activists claim

• Jo Tuckman in Tehuacán
• The Guardian
• Friday August 17 2007

Mariano Baragán looked down at the blue-grey crust peeling off the field he irrigates from a canal. Nearby factories were the problem - dozens of them, which are dedicated to doing to jeans in hours what used to take years of wear.

"As well as being blue, it burns the seedlings and sterilises the earth," the 67-year-old subsistence farmer said. And the cause? A wry smile hovered on his lips. "It's the fashion."

Fashion is no stranger to suffering, as the peasants in the Tehuacán valley in central Mexico can attest.

Overlooked by volcanoes and laced by underground waterways, the city of Tehuacán was once famous for its mineral springs and spas. The "city of health" was already in decline by the time the area became a hub for the global denim industry in the 1990s.

More recently competition from Asia and Central America has closed some factories, but Tehuacán still has more than 700 clothes manufacturers. Many of these produce jeans for big US brands as well as lesser-known local labels, which copy the new styles set by the bigger players.

"Jeans were born to be used by workers," said a local activist, Martín Barrios. "Now they can cost thousands of dollars and are produced on the backs of exploitation and environmental destruction."

Mr Barrios and his colleagues in the local Human Rights Commission spend most of their time defending workers' rights in the factories, which range from large well-established facilities to clandestine sweatshops that disappear at the first hint of inspection.

Of most concern environmentally are the laundries where the clothes are sent for distressing. There, jeans are sandpapered, marked with mechanical tools and faded with large quantities of potassium permanganate - a bleaching agent once commonly used to trigger illegal abortions.

Then there is the stonewashing, fabric softening and a final crescendo of washing and rewashing. The clean garments are left ready for sale, while in many factories the chemicals used to treat them are left to flow away in bright indigo waste.

Over the years consciousness-raising campaigns, aided by US-based international solidarity groups, have persuaded the multinationals to pressure Tehuacán's most established factories to fulfil minimum international standards.

Last week inspectors sent by Gap were in town to visit Grupo Navarra - the city's biggest manufacturer, which supplies the multinational - prompted by a dispute involving a group of workers who say they were sacked for trying to form an independent union. The company is one of the few with a water treatment plant on site.

"The contamination is mainly the fault of the companies that act outside the law," said Juan Carlos López, the firm's chief of health, hygiene and the environment. He points to the transparent water flowing from his plant. "We are always getting inspected. Nobody inspects the others."

But activists claim the government is simply not prepared to take on the economic interests of the factory owners.

A substantial array of institutions at local, state and federal level have some degree of responsibility. Those contacted all recognised that the problem is serious, but claimed they were doing everything within their jurisdiction while implying that other authorities were not.

"We don't think that the problem is wearing denim," Mr Barrios said, standing on a small mountain of blue pumice stone beside the waste canal leaving Tehuacán's Lavacolor laundry. "The problem is the toxic styles imposed by the big brands."

In pictures

Joe Tuckman visits the factories allegedly polluting the local water supply in Tehuacán. Click here to see the gallery.