Honoring those impacted by Trichloroethylene (TCE)

Contacts:

Alisha Vasquez, Museum Co-Director
MexAmHistoryMuseum@gmail.com, 520-404-9948

Holly Schaffer, Pima County Public Library Community Relations Manager
holly.schaffer@pima.gov, (520) 594-5610

Honoring those impacted by Trichloroethylene (TCE): A yearlong educational and healing retrospective for the Tucson community

(Tucson, AZ) Los Descendientes de Tucson’s Mexican American Heritage and History Museum is partnering with local organizers, artists, scholars, political leaders, institutions, and Dr. Sunaura Taylor to present Survival and Resistance: Remembering the Southside’s Environmental Justice Movement to examine Tucson’s historic Trichloroethylene (TCE) groundwater contamination.

Survival and Resistance events seek to generate conversation and knowledge transmission 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, build new connections. Further, Dr. Taylor will share what she learned working with this community to research her book, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons From a Wounded Desert. 

2025 marks the 40th anniversary of local investigative journalist Jane Kay’s explosive series in the Arizona Daily Star that publicly confirmed what communities on the southside had known for years: pollution from nearby defense industries was contaminating the aquifer, making people sick, and in too many cases, killing them. While many in Tucson remember the pollution, fewer know of the powerful environmental justice movement that emerged from it.

This yearlong commemoration  honors the work of Tucson’s southside community, which beginning in the 1980s, organized a historic fight against TCE water contamination and environmental racism. Through free community programming across Pima County, Survival and Resistance celebrates 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 southside resistance, survival, and healing. 

Join us for free workshops and events across Tucson throughout 2025. Help create a permanent memorial to those impacted by or lost to TCE pollution and to honor southside resistance.

Visit the TCE Archive located at the Valencia Library. More information at: https://www.library.pima.gov/content/pollution-in-tucson-water/

Exhibit Schedule

Artmaking Workshops with Alex! Jimenez

At three facilitated workshops with artist Alex! Jimenez, community members will make clay tiles that honor the lives and experiences of those lost to or impacted by TCE. These tiles will be used on Jimenez’s memorial tile mural, to be located in Mission Manor Park (unveiling, December 13, 2025). While making the tiles, the group will be 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.

  • Wednesday, March 26 from 2 to 4 pm
    Valencia Library, 202 W. Valencia Rd.
  • Saturday, April 26 from 10 am to noon
    Quincie Douglas Library, 1585 E. 36th St.
  • Thursday, May 29 from 5 to 7 pm
    Nanini Library, 7300 N. Shannon Rd.
  • TBA (May 2025)
    Alex community, Los Des/TMA workshop

Register for these workshops and get more details at: www.LosDesTucson.org/tce

Additional events

  • April 23, 2025 from 4 to 6 pm: Pima Community College Desert Vista Campus: Conversations between historic southside organizers and current local environmental justice organizers. Open Spaces Coalition, Rep. Betty Villegas, Eva Carrillo-Dong, Nellie JoDavid, Flowers and Bullets will be in conversation.
  • September 2025: At 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.
  • September 2025 through February 2026: Museum exhibitions open at MOCA to feature art by southside film maker Franc Contreras, environmental justice scholar Denise Moreno Ramirez & filmmaker Sandra Westdahl, artist Sunaura Taylor, and local artist Alex! Jimenez.
  • December 13 (time TBA): TCE Exhibit at Mexican American Heritage and History Museum at the Sosa-Carrillo House
  • March 2026-July 2026: TCE Exhibit at Mexican American Heritage and History Museum at the Sosa-Carrillo House 

About Survival & Resistance

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; and numerous local artists, researchers, and community organizers, as well as impacted community members themselves.

About Pima County Public Library

For more than 100 years, we've been here for people just like you. Today, in our libraries, online, or out in the community, our dedicated staff and volunteers are always looking ahead to help you find what you're looking for. Every day, we're making our mission a reality by educating and connecting people and inspiring ideas.