Tehuacán

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Tehuacán is the second largest city in the Mexican state of Puebla, nestled in the Southeast Valley of Tehuacán, bordering the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, with a population of 360,000. Originally an Native American settlement, it became officially a city in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1660. According to the Harvard University paleo-botanist Richard McNeish, the Valley of Tehuacán is the first place corn was ever cultivated by humankind. He arrived at this conclusion when he found over 10,000 teoscintle cobs in what is now known as the Cave of Coxcatlan.

In the late twentieth century, the city was well known for its mineral springs. In fact, Peñafiel (now owned by Cadbury Schweppes), a well known soft drinks manufacturer, extracts water from these wells for use in their products.

In the nineties, Tehuacán saw a flood of textile maquiladoras set up shop in the city and surrounding areas. These textile maquiladoras principally put together blue jeans for export. At the height of the maquila (short for maquiladora) boom, there were about 700 maquilas in town. While this situation created a negative unemployment (zero unemployment) and the maquilas sought workers as far away as Orizaba and Córdoba in the neighbhoring state of Veracruz, it also created an urban and environmental nightmare. In one decade, Tehuacán went from being a town of 150,000 inhabitants to a city of 360,000. When the maquilas left in the late nineties, more than half of the city's workers were left unemployed.

Environmentally, the maquilas have used up huge amounts of the Valley's underground water reserves stone-washing jeans. The water that passes through the city in the Dren de Valsequillo is tinted blue and is full of chemicals (such as potassium used for stone-washing the jeans).