Mexico City Has a Toxic ‘Sacrifice Zone’ Where Cancer Is Surging

Mexico City Has a Toxic ‘Sacrifice Zone’ Where Cancer Is Surging - The New York Times

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Mexico City Has a Toxic ‘Sacrifice Zone’ Where Cancer Is Surging

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/world/americas/mexico-city-endho-dam.html

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!A ruined stone structure stands in a wide, dark lake, with patches of green plants. Hills and a cloudy sky form the distant background.

Mexico City Has a Toxic ‘Sacrifice Zone’ Where Cancer Is Surging

For decades, the Mexican authorities have sacrificed a rural valley to flush away the capital’s waste and power the economy. Now, local communities are paying for that decision — often with peoples’ 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 Endhó Dam.*

Mexico City Has a Toxic ‘Sacrifice Zone’ Where Cancer Is Surging

For decades, the Mexican authorities have sacrificed a rural valley to flush away the capital’s waste and power the economy. Now, local communities are paying for that decision — often with peoples’ 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 Endhó Dam.

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By

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega

Visuals by

Alejandro Cegarra

The reporters visited several communities surrounding the Endhó Dam, in central Mexico, which locals call the world’s largest cesspool.

Sept. 17, 2026

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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 Doña 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 Doña 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 María 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.

“It’s a lot of pain,” said Ms. Uribe, 45, a former seamstress who turned to activism after seeing her town besieged by unexplained illness. “It’s not normal to have this many sick people in a community”

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!A person in a blue-green shirt sits at a table, looking forward. In the background, a sofa, a television, and framed art are visible.

*Yury Uribe at her home in General Pedro María Anaya, Mexico.*

For many residents of more than 20 communities surrounding a reservoir known as the Endhó Dam in Mexico’s Hidalgo State, cancer is just another symptom of a crisis decades in the making.

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