Ricardo Torres Cruz, a native Nahua community leader and fisherman, had just traveled 340 miles to Mexico City so he could enter the federal government’s Attorney General’s Office to affirm a legal complaint against Petróleos de México – Pemex – the state-owned oil company he blames for killing the fish in streams around his home in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz.

On June 29, 2021, Torres went to the nation’s capital as president of the board of directors of the fishing and agricultural collective, Sembradores de Aztapan, in the town of Xochitlán Palmillas in Veracruz state. His task in Mexico City was to officially file a legal challenge he and the presidents of three other Veracruz cooperatives are pursuing after decades of complaining and asking for government action to address toxic mud and dead fish in their waterways