ABSTRACT
For the crime against nature, Americans and Mexicans share equal responsibility: The ongoing abuse is a binational enterprise, at times part and parcel of the global economy. In 1993, the Journal of American Rivers, a prestigious publication, put the Rio Grande at the top of its list of the "most endangered rivers". Raw sewage dumped by Nuevo Laredo into the Rio Grande jeopardizes the health of both Mexicans and Americans. Failure to enforce the water emissions standards of the federal Clean Water Act led the US Justice Department to file a suit against the City of El Paso in 1989. Ground-water contaminated by American assembly plants on the Mexican side may be responsible for a cancer cluster in Nogales, Arizona. Tijuana, along with Ciudad Juárez and most other communities, already has a problem with toxic wastes, particularly the contamination of its drainage system by deposits from maquiladoras and paint shops.
