Atahualpa Sofía Enciso lives near the Santiago River and is a member of Salto de Vida, a collective that defends it. She holds a book showing what the river used to look like. Tamara Pearson

Atahualpa Sofía Enciso’s children don’t know what a normal river is, she says. Living by the Santiago River in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, which overflows with dense white foam from the hundreds of industries that pollute it, she notes that the area is also getting hotter.

“My father talks about how when he was younger, he didn’t need sweaters, because it was never that hot or cold, but now there are these extremes, because the river is polluted and it can’t regulate temperatures as it used to,” she tells Truthout.

For activists like Enciso, the term “climate change” is insufficient for describing such violence perpetrated by industry against the environment and against residents. Indigenous activists like Nahua grasshopper farmer Miguel López Vega describe the severe droughts, water scarcity, crop failure, and hunger that Mexico is experiencing as “signs of death” of the planet, and say any solutions have to involve direct care of the land while stopping the harm.