Mexico’s Río Santiago: river from Hell or heavenly river?
Mexico’s Río Santiago: river from Hell or heavenly river? by John Pint The Ahogado Creek, filled with industrial waste and raw sewage from toilets, flows out of the Ahogado Dam toward the Santiago River. A new movement is afoot to clean up Jalisco's Rio Santiago, widely considered the most polluted river in Mexico. Salvador Peniche of CUCEA, the University of Guadalajara's Center for Economic Sciences (under the leadership of Gustavo Padilla and Margarita Hernández) has teamed up with his colleagues in the International Society of Ecological Economics to issue a clarion call to government, business and the public at large: “¡Verguenza! Shame!” they are crying, over the toxic waste and raw sewage that flows through what used to be one of Mexico's most beautiful rivers. Public outrage focused on the sad state of the Santiago River in 2008 when Miguel Ángel López, an eight-year-old boy, waded into the river to recuperate a soccer ball. He died eighteen days later, not from d