Will Privitization Force Pemex to Clean Up Its Act?
This month Mexico’s giant state-owned oil company, Pemex, is privatizing the first of dozens of plants in a region that some environmentalists view as a potential Love Canal. Concern is mounting that Pemex will simply use the sale to hand over an environmental time bomb before it explodes. PNS associate editor Joel Simon’s book “Bordering on Destruction: Exploring Mexico’s Environmental Crisis,” will be published by Sierra Club Books next year. COATZACOALCOS, MEXICO — Eusebio Gonzalez, a grizzled 66-year-old fisherman, hardly ventures into the polluted Coatzacoalcos River anymore. Chemicals dumped by Pemex petrochemical plants have wiped out most of the fish, he says, and those which have survived are not fit to eat. “You cut the fish open and a smell like ammonia comes out,” says Gonzalez, sitting in front of a quiet boathouse. “If you eat it, your stomach swells like a balloon. Still, we have to sell it. What else are we going to live on?” This month, one of the four massive petroch
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