This article seeks to challenge the notion that the concept of agro‐extractivism be restricted to crops destined for export with little or no processing. Based on a study of agave and tequila production in Mexico, it argues that the domestic processing of biomass does not change nor necessarily compensate for the negative social and environmental impacts of upstream agricultural activities; it can in fact add to them. We seek to demonstrate this to be the case for industrialized agave–tequila production by adopting an approach that traces the flows of materials, pollutants and money, taking into consideration the degree to which transnational companies control the agave–tequila value chain, the portion of tequila that is exported, technologies, company–farmer and company–worker relations, relevant public policy, and environmental and social impacts. We analyse the polluting consequences of industrialized tequila production and show how the expansion and intensification of agave production since the mid‐1990s has been characterized by increasing volumes of biomass extraction, the emergence or exacerbation of different forms of environmental degradation, the marginalization of small‐scale agave farmers, and deteriorating working conditions for agave‐field workers. In addition, we briefly discuss traditional mezcal production as a socially and ecologically sustainable alternative model.

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Indigenous resistance against neoliberalism reveals numerous social transformations and political contributions in the context of a postcolonial transition from the world-system. The Mexican indigenous movement, inspired by the Zapatista rebellion, renewed conversations between the country's diverse indigenous peoples but also established new alliances with non-indigenous sectors of national society in defense of the commons and alternative ways of life to the civilizational order of capital. The radicalism, led by the indigenous peoples in their process of transformation into a social subject deploys new forms of collective action that break with the ideological discourses and narratives of modernity. As in other parts of the global South, communities in Mexico are actively engaged in consolidating their ability to govern themselves, through strategies of autonomy and self-determination, providing a wide variety of services to improve the quality of life of their members, diversifying their productive base and renewing their cultural heritage, while defending and caring for their territories. The indigenous movement is currently experiencing a conceptual and discursive renewal that inverts the assimilationist thesis implicit in the slogan of “Never again a Mexico without us,” from which their historical exclusion in the project of nation was questioned, to “We, without Mexico" that poses a radical questioning of the worn-out model of the nation-state, which assumes as its main objective to think (and act) beyond the State and capital. As part of international networks and alliances, they are engaged in leaving the world-system.

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