Survival and Resistance:
Remembering the Southside’s Environmental Justice Movement is a yearlong commemoration that honors the work of Tucson’s south side community, which beginning in the 1980s, organized a historic fight against trichloroethylene (TCE) groundwater contamination and environmental racism. Through free community programming across Pima County, Survival and Resistance will celebrate the undertold story of residents that fought for decades for the health of their community and their drinking water. Working in partnership with those directly impacted, this project celebrates south side resistance, survival, and healing.
WHY Survival and Resistance?
While many people in Tucson have heard the story of historic groundwater contamination on the south side of Tucson in the 1980s, far fewer know that a movement formed in the impacted community, which would become one of the earliest and most successful environmental justice movements in the United States. Survival and Resistance is a yearlong, community-engaged commemoration of this history, as there is an urgent need to honor and learn from the aging Mexican American elders who led this vital part of the south side’s story.
From the 1950s-1970s, various defense industries and electronics manufacturers contaminated the groundwater of Tucson's south side, leaving untold numbers of residents with a variety of serious health conditions, some leading to death. While the exact numbers are unknown, estimates of people impacted are in the tens of thousands.
2025 is the 40th anniversary of the south side pollution and the environmental justice movement that emerged from it. Over the years many impacted community members have asked for public recognition of the pollution’s harms and a place to honor those who died. Originally, public officials blamed the people themselves for their illnesses, even citing the community’s diet of “beans and chiles” as the reasons for their illnesses. This racist victim-blaming established a sense of distrust of the official responses and narratives of the contamination. By providing avenues for community members to share their own experiences and stories, this commemoration aims to meet their requests that this history not be forgotten, and their stories shared and honored. Additionally, by coming together with intention towards healing, we are hoping to break generational silences and begin new conversations across younger generations of community organizers working today.
This project will entail community testimonios and analysis of the south side’s history of pollution, illness, and resistance, celebrating and learning from the historic work of the southside’s battle for health and water. The commemoration seeks to generate conversation and knowledge about environmental justice, health and illness, water justice, and Tucson’s Mexican American history by bringing people together across institutions, generations, and communities to remember, create, heal, and build new connections.
Arizona Daily Star articles on TCE contamination on Tucson’s southside. Top: 1985; Bottom: 1985
Help create a tile mural in honor of people impacted by or lost to TCE contamination
Join the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum and local artist Alex! Jimenez at local libraries to create clay tiles in memory of those lost to or impacted by TCE contamination. As part of the Museum's yearlong retrospective about Trichloroethylene (TCE) water contamination in Tucson's south side from 1950s-1970s, this free art workshop and community conversation is in partnership with the Pima County Public Library and their Nuestras Raíces Team.
Jimenez will lead a free workshop on making clay tiles that will be permanently displayed on a mural at Mission Manor Park honoring those lost to TCE contamination. Museum Co-Director, Alisha Vasquez will lead the group in conversations about TCE, sharing stories of how the community created one of the US's first successful environmental movements to hold responsible parties accountable for the cleanup of TCE and care for the people affected.
Valencia Library on Wednesday, March 26 from 2pm-4pm
Quincie-Douglas Library on Saturday, April 26 from 10am-12pm
Nanini Library on Thursday, May 29 from 5pm-7pm
Events
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Valencia: March 2025
Quincie-Douglas: April 2025
Nanini: May 2025
Main Library: June 2025
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Wednesday, March 26, 2025, 2-4pm at Valencia Library
Saturday, April 26, 2025, 10am-12pm at Quincie-Douglas Library
Thursday, May 29, 2025, 5-7pm at Nanini Library
Register for the event and get more details!
Three community conversations on the south side’s pollution and resistance history, followed by a facilitated workshop run by artist Alex! Jimenez, which will give participants the opportunity to respond to and add to the history through art making. They will create the clay tiles to be used on Jiminez’s memorial tile mural to those lost to or impacted by TCE, which will be located in Mission Manor Park, and unveiled December 13, 2025.
Join the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum and local artist Alex! Jimenez at the Valencia Library on Wednesday, March 26 from 2-4pm to create clay tiles in memory of those lost to or impacted by TCE contamination. As part of the Museum's yearlong retrospective about Trichloroethylene (TCE) water contamination in Tucson's south side from 1950s-1970s, this free art workshop and community conversation is in partnership with the Pima County Public Library and their Nuestras Raíces Team.
Jimenez will lead a free workshop on making clay tiles that will be permanently displayed on a mural at Mission Manor Park honoring those lost to TCE contamination. Museum Co-Director, Alisha Vasquez will lead the group in conversations about TCE, sharing stories of how the community created one of the US's first successful environmental movements to hold responsible parties accountable for the cleanup of TCE and care for the people affected.
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An intergenerational conversation between historic southside organizers and current local environmental justice organizers in the Sonoran Desert. Eva Carrillo-Dong, Rep. Betty Villegas, Tucson Birthplace and Open Space Coalition, Flowers & Bullets, and Water Protector Nellie Jo David will discuss and draw connections between Tucson's historic TCE groundwater pollution with what modern day communities are experiencing when it comes to pollution, land use, and water.
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Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson will feature art by southside film maker Franc Contreras; environmental justice scholar Denise Moreno Ramírez & filmmaker Sandra Westdahl; artist Sunaura Taylor; and local artist Alex! Jimenez.
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At the September 2025 MOCA opening, historian Lydia Otero will be in conversation with Jane Kay, the Arizona Daily Star journalist who broke the TCE contamination story in 1985.
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This healing commemoration at Mission Manor Park will include an unveiling of a permanent memorial created by Alex! Jimenez to those lost to and impacted by TCE. Filmmaker Franc Contreras, Robin Young, and a group of Sunnyside High School alumni will lead the planning. Local dignitaries and impacted community members will speak.
Information on TCE from our project organizers
Inside Climate News article on Denise: How an Arizona Medical Anthropologist Uses Oral Histories to Add Depth to Environmental Science
Sunaura Taylor about her new book “Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert” that details the pollution, the community campaign and the networks of disability, both human and wild, that are created when ecosystems are corrupted and profoundly altered.
Disabled Ecologies tells the story of this contamination and its ripple effects through the largely Mexican American community living above.
Learn more from Dr. Sullivan’s Team’s “Physical & Mental Health Concerns Following Historic Contamination in Southside Tucson” Factsheet.
Pima County Public Library TCE Community Archive at the Valencia Library
Access all of Dr. Moreno Ramírez's Voices Unheard Oral History Interviews
“In 2020, 73 million Americans lived within 3 miles of a site designated for remediation by the federal government.”
Sponsors:
Survival and Resistance is a year-long project that aims to provide healing through collective historical storytelling, memorial creation, and the building of new collaborations. It is supported by Los Descendientes de Tucson and the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum; the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA); Nuestras Raíces and the Pima County Library System; the Disabled Ecologies Lab at UC Berkeley; Ward 1 Councilmember Santa Cruz; District 5 Supervisor Adelita Grijalva; Dr. Daniel Sullivan; Arts Foundation for Tucson & Southern AZ; and numerous local artists, researchers, and community organizers, as well as impacted community members themselves.
