US Mining Plan Will Sacrifice Mexico’s Environment for Weapons and Tech

A new mining agreement provides no benefits for Mexico and fails to address health and environmental impacts.

By Tamara Pearson , Truthout, April 18, 2026

The U.S. and Mexico have established a mining agreement which has Indigenous and other residents of the Sierra Norte mountains, as well as activists around Mexico, worried.

Announced on February 4, the U.S.-Mexico Action Plan on Critical Minerals aims to guarantee the U.S.’s supply of minerals for its arms industry, technology like data centers and smartphones, and the so-called energy transition. It sets out price floors, identification of mining projects, geological mapping coordination, and mineral location identification for the U.S., but provides no benefits for Mexico and fails to address health and environmental impacts.

“They want us to show these gringo companies where the minerals are and then go and hand over everything, all without a fuss,” said Miguel Sánchez Olvera, a Totonac man from the Sierra Norte region who has been at the forefront of struggles that have expelled mines from the area. “That’s concerning, because where does it leave us, as Mexicans? Basically, they are going to keep stealing from us.”

The beautiful Sierra Norte — teeming with rivers and sprawling forests, and where a majority of people speak Indigenous languages — has massive amounts of minerals that the U.S. has identified as “critical,” such as manganese, gold, silver, and copper.

According to NATO, manganese is one of 12 minerals critical for the weapons industry; it is used in submarines, fighter aircraft, tanks, and torpedoes. For Mexico, however, manganese is a source of distress before it is even processed. In the lush Sierra Norte cordillera, stark black mountains of manganese ore and slag piles are set off by smoking chimneys from a plant run by Autlán, a major Mexican mining company. Homes nearby are drenched in black stains. Residents describe mornings of black clouds along the ground and black dust covering their windows.

Autlán operates four electric furnaces in its Teziutlán plant to smelt manganese ore, producing ferroalloys. Manganese is also on the U.S.’s critical minerals list and aside from weapons, it is vital to batteries and other steel applications.

Mexico as a whole is the top silver-producing country, and among the top producers of copper, lead, and zinc — all on the U.S.’s list. Silver is vital for new weapon systems, hypersonic missiles, bombs, fighter jets, satellites, torpedoes, radar systems, AI data centers, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, and smartphones. Demand for copper for munitions is skyrocketing as the U.S. restocks its arsenal, and it is essential for armor and electronics. Copper supply problems can cause significant weapon production delays, and supply chain vulnerabilities for weapons manufacturers.

The U.S. is home to 6 of the top 10 global arms companies and 13 of the top 15 global tech companies. The White House’s 2027 budget includes over 18 billion U.S dollars for the Department of Defense to stockpile minerals that are critical to the military industry. That figure is up from the current 2 billion U.S. dollars.

A few days before the U.S.-Mexico plan was signed, the White House had also announced Project Vault, which will establish a public-private partnership to stockpile critical minerals for U.S. businesses. These moves “imply hyper-extractivism — or basically, renewed extractivism,” César Enrique Pineda, a researcher and professor of geopolitical and capitalist intersections with the environment at the José María Luis Mora Research Institute, told Truthout……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Nobody Benefits From Weapons Except Weapons Companies

But while the mining industry is being heard, the mines bring no economic benefits to the country or to nearby communities.

“I very much doubt that Mexico would benefit economically from this plan because it has never been that way with mining projects. Extraction only contributes 0.9 percent to the GDP, for example,” said Olivera. “Mining represents just 0.66 percent of formal employment, and in terms of taxes, they contribute very little.” There are 22,247 active mining concessions in Mexico, with a total surface area of 10.2 million hectares, or 5.2 percent of Mexico’s territory………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Mining’s Legacy of Environmental Disaster

The U.S.-Mexico action plan “benefits investors, but it doesn’t benefit us at all,” said Urbano Córdova Guerraas, a local resident and also a member of Servicios Ambientales Amelatzin Hualactoc as we chatted in a small eatery near the Autlán plant. To extract copious amounts of manganese, Autlán has destroyed whole mountain tops in nearby Hidalgo state, buying off local politicians in order to do so. In Zoquitlán, Autlán chopped down 77 hectares of forest for a hydroelectric plant…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Imposing Destruction

In order to operate without disruption, mining companies in Mexico are often involved in the disappearance of activists and with organized crime. The top minerals that attract organized crime groups are the same critical minerals that Mexico plans to supply to the U.S…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Over the years, thousands of organized communities have declared themselves “mining-free territory” to legally prohibit mining in their territory.

Stopping mines after the fact is much harder, but many communities are willing to wage the legal and organizational battle. Even after victory, the struggle continues.

“We want to clean our rivers, so that the Sierra Norte de Puebla can be a paradise again,” said Sánchez. https://truthout.org/articles/us-mining-plan-will-sacrifice-mexicos-environment-for-weapons-and-tech/