Militarization, another drain on the Río Grande
Digital illustration created for Ojalá © Elisa María M.V.
Reportage • Verónica Martínez • May 29, 2025 • Leer en castellano
A persistent hum echoes on the banks of the Río Grande, under the Guadalupe-Tornillo International Bridge. It’s the heavy hauling engines of cargo trucks crossing from Mexico into Texas. Straining your ear, you might still make out the crickets’ song. In the distance, a single turtle dove coos.
“Over there, you can still see water,” said Alejandro González, who lives in the Juárez Valley. He points toward a green-tinged stream over which moths and mosquitoes flutter.
González, who is in his early 30s, has spent almost his entire life in the Valley. He’s tall, thin, and wears glasses. Though it's sunny, he wears a sweater to protect himself from the unpredictable desert springtime.
The spot we met near the international bridge is one of the only safe areas to visit the river in the Juárez Valley town of Doctor Porfirio Parra. The agricultural fields of the Valley sprawl into the nearby municipalities of Praxedis G. Guerrero and Guadalupe. Some residents still carry on the farming tradition, but with each passing year they are fewer, as many go to work in the maquiladora industry, where assembly lines work for an export economy.
González remembers a time when the river was a place where the community could gather, have picnics, and enjoy the water together.
That it’s no longer possible saddens him deeply.
“It's not just because of the drought, it also has to do with violence and militarization,” he said in an interview. “This area has been privatized by drug traffickers. It's not a place where people can be together.”
For three years in a row, a state of emergency has been declared in the state of Chihuahua due to extreme drought, which has impacted the flow of the Río Grande. All the while, militarization efforts along the border have been consolidated by governments on both sides.
The Rio Grande enters Mexico at Ciudad Juárez, at the juncture of the Mexican state of Chihuahua with the US states of Texas and New Mexico. For more than a century, it has been a tributary of interest to the two armed forces. Various civil society organizations have expressed concern about the military occupation of the area.
Activists and ecologists emphasize the importance of the Río Grande as a resting place for migratory birds. The Paso del Norte region is a migratory corridor that extends from the mountains southwest of the towns of the Valley, through the Samalayuca sand dunes, the Sierra de Juárez, the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, and the Organ Mountains in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Israel Moreno Contreras, a biologist from Ciudad Juárez who graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico with a specialization in bird life, describes the migratory routes of birds in the region as ephemeral and adaptable to the available green spaces and water sources. He maintains that the Río Grande serves a vital function within the regional ecosystem, providing a refuge for fauna to feed and rest.
While migratory species seek alternatives to the disappearing Río Grande, the people of Juárez have organized to express their repudiation of the presence of armed forces. Their collective action has created spaces for recreation and resistance south of the US border.
The Rio Grande under siege
First, the mesquite trees were cut down. Then, chain-link fences were installed. Now, feral herbaceous plants begin to tangle in the barbed wire. Passing vehicles stir up dust. Owls no longer hoot at dusk.
The banks of the Río Grande have been disturbed in recent years by excavation and deforestation for the construction of roadways. During much of the year, the river is made dry, contained by the Elephant Dam in New Mexico and by 13 floodgates on the Texas side.
In January, U.S. Border Patrol reported finding a tunnel used by organized crime for human trafficking in Ciudad Juárez on the banks of the Río Grande. In response, the Mexican National Guard began using rods to drill into the ground in search of more tunnels. These drillings impact the habitat of desert species that build burrows underground near the river.
The banks of the Río Grande are one of the natural habitats of the burrowing owl, a brown-plumed species already impacted by other human activities, especially real estate development. Environmentalists have called for the protection of these natural habitats.
“National Guard officers say that they are detecting irregular terrain, but we know that these finds are often burrows and cavities used by local wildlife," said a member of the Sierra de Juárez Collective in an interview with Ojalá.
The construction of border infrastructure, vehicle traffic, and drilling all accelerate soil erosion and affect deposition (the accumulation of new sediments), changing the geological composition of the Río Grande, according to Dr. Adriana Martinez, a researcher in the departments of Environmental Sciences and Geography at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
“Any time a river changes direction, it alters the aquatic habitats,“ Martinez said in a telephone interview in February. ”If we change erosion or earth deposition patterns, we don't know what reaction it could cause elsewhere or how it could affect the creatures that inhabit the river and that depend on it."
In addition to environmental effects, Martinez highlighted the binational impacts of a change in the river’s course. The border between Texas and Mexico is defined by its course.
A river with no water
González remembers how the river was once closely connected to villages nearby. Members of the community crossed with ease to reach towns like Fabens, Texas; they waded in to cool off. Local farmers depended on its water to irrigate cotton fields, wheat, alfalfa, and other crops. Now, they resign to irrigate with dirty water that leaves a black crust when it dries. The idea of irrigating with clean river water seems like a distant dream.
“Today’s gray tributaries have to do with the fact that for more than 100 years [the Juárez Valley] has had access to 10 percent of the river, if they’re lucky,” said González. Ten percent is the amount of water assigned to Mexico under the widely-criticized 1906 Binational Water Treaty. The rest goes to the U.S., and Mexico’s share isn’t always respected.
“The gringos began their infrastructure projects with the great American canal, and since 1906 have kept most of the Río Grande for themselves,” said Gonzalez. “Juarez gradually came to terms with the idea that it would be left without a river.”
Growing militarization
The military occupation of the Río Grande by Texas authorities began in December 2022, carried out by the state’s National Guard. The deployment of armed forces on the Texas border with the northern states of Mexico has taken place under the pretext of deterring irregular migration and curbing drug trafficking.
For its part, the Mexican government increased the annual budget allocated to the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) and the Secretary of the Navy since 2018. Last year, the budget allocated to the armed forces nearly doubled compared to 2023.
Through an analysis of SEDENA’s public contracts carried out with the support of the investigative watchdog PODER, we found military investment in infrastructure on the northern border amounted to 31.4 billion pesos (USD$1.6 billion) of public funds, including for the buildup of 21 customs offices on Mexico’s north border.
SEDENA has been consolidating its hold on northern Mexico since 2022. Ciudad Juárez in particular has become familiar with the presence of the military, which has carried out joint operations with state police. In February, Claudia Sheinbaum deployed an additional 10,000 troops to the northern border’s National Guard to stem the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States.
“There is a tendency by the state to seek primarily to quiet the population through control mechanisms, which is to say, using the army and the police,” said Ileana Espinoza of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center during a discussion on militarization in Ciudad Juárez. “Here on the border, we know these aren’t civilian security policies, rather, they’re imposed on us.”
The cost of border militarization is not limited to the investment of public resources. It can also have an environmental and social toll on border communities.
Living things need resting places
A variety of ducks nest on the banks of the artificial lake in Juárez Central Park, located 10 kilometers from the Río Grande. Some, like the Tepalcate duck with its distinctive copper-black plumage and pale blue beak, live permanently in the border region.
Others, like the Canadian, the rainbow and Mexican ducks that swim in the constructed water body are passing through, explained Isaac Miramontes, a biology student at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez who leads the park's wildlife department.
For Miramontes, the most important natural body of water in the region remains the Río Grande, despite its alteration by human activity having reduced resting habitats for migratory birds.
“The drought, water diversion, and other factors on the Río Grande cause birds to seek other bodies of water,” Miramontes said. “In years of drought, more birds flock to our Central Park.”
Even with just a trickle of water in the riverbed, the Río Grande continues to shelter some species, such as the American avocet, a water bird that hunts crustaceans in the sandy riverbed. They, too, are only passing through before seeking refuge in the mountains of the Samalayuca sand dunes and the Sierra de Juárez to the west.
But the people in the Valley don’t have that kind of mobility. Gonzalez says he feels like he lives in a narrow corridor, with the river to the north and mountains to the south, but unable to inhabit either.
“We realize [young people] need a relationship with nature,” Gonzalez said. “It's sad, because that disconnect is caused by the limitation of their freedoms, and I don't know if they've realized that without nature, nothing exists.”
The Okupa Cultural Valle de Juárez (OKUVAJ) was born out of this need, founded by Gonzalez with the objective of reviving cultural lifestyles and artistic activity. OKUVAJ comes alive at night, with film screenings and occasional lunadas, outdoor nights dedicated to stargazing.
This revival is one example of the work being to repair the damage done by militarization and the war on drugs in the border area around Ciudad Juárez. There is hope that the next generations will be able to reconnect with nature. Keeping these spaces alive, in this context, is an act of resistance.
This is the fifth and final article in a series made possible by support from the Resilience Fund.
