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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/17\/world\/americas\/mexico-city-endho-dam.html?emc=edit_nn_20260921&nl=the-morning&segment_id=226815",
    "parsed_content": "Locals Call It the World\u2019s Largest Cesspool, and Blame It for Surging CancerFor decades, the Mexican authorities have sacrificed a rural valley to flush away the capital\u2019s waste and power the economy. Now, local communities are paying for that decision \u2014 often with peoples\u2019 lives.The old church of San Francisco Bojay in Hidalgo state, in Mexico, was partially submerged after the area was flooded in the 1950s for a reservoir called the Endh\u00f3 Dam.Locals Call It the World\u2019s Largest Cesspool, and Blame It for Surging CancerFor decades, the Mexican authorities have sacrificed a rural valley to flush away the capital\u2019s waste and power the economy. Now, local communities are paying for that decision \u2014 often with peoples\u2019 lives.The old church of San Francisco Bojay in Hidalgo state, in Mexico, was partially submerged after the area was flooded in the 1950s for a reservoir called the Endh\u00f3 Dam.Credit...Supported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTListen \u00b7 10:30 min Share full articleBy Emiliano Rodr\u00edguez MegaVisuals by Alejandro CegarraThe reporters visited several communities surrounding the Endh\u00f3 Dam, in central Mexico, which locals call the world\u2019s largest cesspool.Published Sept. 17, 2026Updated Sept. 18, 2026Leer en espa\u00f1olSee more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Yury Uribe traced an invisible map of death in her neighborhood, pointing to house after house, nearly all of them touched by cancer, she said.On that corner lived Do\u00f1a Agustina, claimed by cancer in her stomach just like Coco, her neighbor across the street. Farther down was Eva, whose death from a ruptured throat tumor left her autistic son on his own. Colon cancer took Do\u00f1a Juanita, who went to the hospital on a Friday and died the following Monday. And Estela lived over there until about two years ago, when lung cancer spread through her body.By the end of the tour of her hometown, General Pedro Mar\u00eda Anaya, Ms. Uribe had tallied an incomplete yet grim ledger: at least 42 cancer-related deaths, 15 survivors and six active cases, all clustered within a few blocks.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of pain,\u201d said Ms. Uribe, 45, a former seamstress who turned to activism after seeing her town besieged by unexplained illness. \u201cIt\u2019s not normal to have this many sick people in a community\u201dImageYury Uribe at her home in General Pedro Mar\u00eda Anaya, Mexico.For many residents of more than 20 communities surrounding a reservoir known as the Endh\u00f3 Dam in Mexico\u2019s Hidalgo State, cancer is just another symptom of a crisis decades in the making.In the 1970s, the federal authorities quietly diverted Mexico City\u2019s storm runoff and wastewater into the region, effectively transforming it into the dumping ground for more than 20 million people. Effluent from a heavy industry corridor \u2014 including more than 100 factories and an oil refinery fueling Mexico City and other states \u2014 has compounded the crisis, with the vast majority of those plants dumping their untreated waste into the Tula River, which empties into the Endh\u00f3.The resulting stew has turned the reservoir into what residents call the world\u2019s largest cesspool.ImageThe Atotonilco wastewater treatment plant treats only about 60 percent of Mexico City\u2019s wastewater before it enters the Tula River system, which drains into the heavily polluted Endh\u00f3 reservoir. The United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights has classified the Endh\u00f3 basin as one of Mexico\u2019s longest-running \u201csacrifice zones,\u201d an area where local health and ecosystems are intentionally compromised to benefit the capital and its surrounding industries.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSacrifice zones are a trade-off of modern urban planning. Areas where some people lose so the majority can thrive. The pattern spans the globe, from Louisiana\u2019s \u201cCancer Alley\u201d and Italy\u2019s steel plants, to Canada\u2019s oil sands and Mexico\u2019s Endh\u00f3 Dam.Around the reservoir, the air is thick with sulfur and rot. White clouds of chemical foam float by homes and roads, while heavy organic waste in the water feeds an unstoppable carpet of aquatic weed. \u201cWhat we live through day after day is hell,\u201d said Magnolia S\u00e1nchez, 51, a resident of San Mateo La Curva, another riparian community, whose cousin Maira died of breast cancer.Older residents still remember when the polluted water arrived unannounced. Feliza Camacho was a newlywed in 1972 when she noticed the reservoir turning murky and smelly.ImageFoam churning as polluted water from the Endh\u00f3 reservoir flows through an outlet channel in La Loma, Mexico.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThen came the first victims.\u201cThe lake was white with dead fish,\u201d said Ms. Camacho, 73. The decision to route Mexico City\u2019s sewage lines and industrial runoff to the Endh\u00f3 was initially seen as a win-win. As the capital grew, engineers desperate to shield the city from catastrophic flooding also realized the reservoir\u2019s waters, loaded with organic nutrients from the sewage, could double as irrigation and a free fertilizer for the naturally arid valley.Decades later, the massive influx of nutrients has sustained the region\u2019s agricultural boom while also transforming the Endh\u00f3 into an environmental dead zone.Microbes have depleted the dam\u2019s oxygen reserves. Aquatic life has vanished. In 2024, a thick carpet of invasive water hyacinth choked out the surface, growing over 27 times its initial size in just a few months, according to government estimates.ImageWater hyacinths choke the water in the Endh\u00f3 dam reservoir, creating a breeding ground for mosquitoes.The labyrinth of crannies, nooks and holes within the tangled vegetation has turned the Endh\u00f3 into a prolific mosquito factory.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhen evening falls, people lock themselves inside. Cookouts and quincea\u00f1eras have been canceled because of the swarms. Families burn cardboard indoors, hoping the smoke scares off the insects, and purchase up to three cans of bug spray per week \u2014 a severe drain on their finances. Bedroom walls are speckled with people\u2019s own dried blood, marks of their nightly battle with the creatures.ImageEsteban Cer\u00f3n\u2019s flock of 60 sheep was decimated over the course of a year after mosquitoes infested them, causing about 20 to bleed profusely, lose their wool, and die. To prevent further losses, Mr. Cer\u00f3n, 71, built a netted corral for a handful of survivors and sold the rest. By late August, only nine remained.\u201cWe are living on edge. Being shut inside like this, we\u2019re becoming aggressive. I see it in my own children, I see it in myself,\u201d said Pablo Tinajero, 59, the community leader in Santa Mar\u00eda Daxth\u00f3, a town by the dam.At a nearby primary school, Daniela \u00c1lvarez, a teacher and principal, struggles to keep her students focused. Children constantly shift in their seats to shake off the mosquitoes, she said, and going to the bathroom, where the bugs congregate, has become a source of dread. Even Ms. \u00c1lvarez, 41, avoids pulling books from shelves for fear of releasing hidden insects.\u201cWe\u2019ve normalized the pollution, the bad air and the bad water,\u201d she said. \u201cBut normalizing a plague is going too far. We shouldn\u2019t have to teach our kids that this is normal.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTImageDaniela \u00c1lvarez, the principal of the Felipe \u00c1ngeles school, struggles to keep students focused amid the swarms of mosquitoes. When Leticia S\u00e1nchez Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s right breast swelled last year, the pain was so intense that she said she had to quit her two jobs. Doctors told her not to worry, she said. It was likely an infection.In June, new tests confirmed her suspicions: cancer. Her oncologist prescribed six rounds of chemotherapy to be followed by a mastectomy.\u201cSo many people are getting sick now,\u201d said Ms. S\u00e1nchez, 48, who lives near the dam in Santa Ana Ahuehuepan. \u201cYou have it, but so does the neighbor.\u201dImageLeticia S\u00e1nchez Gonz\u00e1lez has been diagnosed with breast cancer and faces chemotherapy and a mastectomy.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe true extent of the illness is unclear.According to raw data from Mexico\u2019s statistics agency, cancer death rates in Tula de Allende \u2014 one of the two municipalities where the dam sits \u2014 have surpassed the national average every single year since 2016, at times spiking more than 50 percent higher than the rest of the country. In the neighboring municipality of Tepetitl\u00e1n, mortality rates for kidney failure and urinary tract diseases have routinely dwarfed the national average, sometimes doubling it.No public health data exist for the towns in the immediate vicinity of the dam, however.The results of a census conducted by state and federal health brigades in 2024 were never disclosed. And the government has refused to fund epidemiological studies in the region, according to two researchers who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing public funding. Without that evidence, it remains close to impossible to know whether the surge in cancer cases is indeed caused by the pollutants in the Endh\u00f3, something else entirely or the result of random chance.But to others, there is a clear connection between the Endh\u00f3\u2019s polluted waters and the public health disaster. \u201cThe pattern is unequivocal,\u201d said Juan Francisco Mart\u00ednez, Hidalgo\u2019s former director of epidemiological surveillance. \u201cThere is a correlation that is obvious, strong and coherent, even if there are no epidemiological studies to prove causality.\u201dMexico\u2019s Ministry of Health and the country\u2019s health regulatory agency did not respond to a list of detailed questions.ImageA bridge in front of the discharge of wastewater from the Miguel Hidalgo refinery into the Tula River, which feeds into the Endh\u00f3 damn.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAs for residents, they say the proof they need is in their own backyards.After Mexico City\u2019s waste arrived, communities dug seven wells seeking clean water as the reservoir fouled. Yet for nearly 20 years, government studies have repeatedly confirmed that the wells \u2014 the main source of drinking water \u2014 are contaminated.Arsenic, mercury and lead have all been found in the wells, violating maximum limits set by Mexican safety standards, according to reports by the country\u2019s federal water authority seen by The Times. So have toxic levels of nitrates and fecal bacteria, as well as industrial solvents and byproducts of the petrochemical industry.In 2024, an official report detected an identical chemical and molecular fingerprint shared between the reservoir and the local drinking supply, concluding that the Endh\u00f3\u2019s toxic brew has seeped into the towns\u2019 wells.But Mayela God\u00ednez, an official with Mexico\u2019s water authority, dismissed that research as flawed, insisting that the agency\u2019s technicians had assured her the well water \u201cis not contaminated, that the quality is good.\u201dImageA water well contaminated with heavy metals in La Ermita, Mexico.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHowever, change may be slow.Former President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador signed a decree in 2024 legally binding the government to remediate decades of environmental neglect at the dam, eliminate the weeds and the mosquitoes. So far, the government has fumigated 27 communities and extracted the equivalent of 42 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water hyacinth.But the plan, which the authorities called \u201cthe most important act of environmental justice in the history of the country,\u201d feels hollow, critics say. The decree prohibited allocating new funding to clean up the dam, relying instead on exhausted public budgets. Efforts to treat the wastewater face fierce resistance from farmers who depend on the nutrient-rich runoff as crop fertilizer. And crucially, the program excludes public health initiatives.\u201cOnce the environment is restored, our health will improve, they tell us,\u201d said Ms. Uribe, the activist. \u201cIt\u2019s an insult to our pain. Cancer doesn\u2019t wait. Illnesses don\u2019t wait.\u201dVideoA water mower that state authorities deployed to shred the invasive water hyacinth \u2014 despite warnings by federal authorities that chopping it can accelerate its spread.CreditCredit...From the commentsEmiliano Rodr\u00edguez MegaReporter covering Mexico and Central AmericaBefore joining The Times, I worked as a science reporter for years, covering health and environmental issues across Latin America. But I had never quite seen something like the Endh\u00f3 Dam. In a way, this story is a global one: a region that has been sacrificed for the benefit of the majority. I\u2019m fascinated by what that tells us about our own societies.Chantal Flores and Alejandro Cegarra contributed reporting.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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    "ai_headline": "Locals Call It the World\u2019s Largest Cesspool, and Blame It for Surging Cancer",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Mexican Authorities Sacrifice Rural Valley for Capital's Waste",
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