At the US/Mexico border, in the 2,100 miles of export processing zones called maquiladora, only 12 percent of residents have reliable access to clean water and many have no sewage systems whatsoever. Water is so scarce that it is delivered only by truck or cart on a sporadic basis. Sevenry-five percent of maquiladora factories dump untreated toxic waste directly into rivers and streams. Families there live on riverbanks swollen with poisonous industrial waste, garbage, industrial runoff and carcasses of animals killed by drinking the water. At the border where thousands of Mexicans attempt to cross, a steep cement drop leads to a slow-moving river of chemical sludge and raw sewage about rwo feet deep. On the US ~hthe concrete wa~l rises
by a J1Uge elecyiGed barbed wire electric fence and floodlights. 1 . e stench a ong tne stnp IS unbearable; human and animal excrement, used condoms and needles and piles of garbage mix with the stinking river sludge the mostly men run through to get to the other side. People hang around selling tacos, condoms, drugs-and plastic bags. Even the poorest would-be immigrants will shell out what little they have to wrap their feet in plastic bags, for protection from the
It a 90 degref angle and is topp.ed
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