Healthy agricultural soils normally contain a plethora (millions) of diverse bacterial communities. Taxa typically found include Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacilli. Recent studies show the amplified moisture and available nutrients of the Mezquital’s wastewater agriculture system to contain a number of microorganisms not normally found in rain-fed soils. These bacteria include multi antibiotic-resistant isolates which pose health risks in conjunction with wastewater irrigated crops that are consumed raw. [1] These new bacterial communities intermingle with those vital to both soil and human health, and represent the challenges of using global and European standards by which to assess idiosyncratic communities that have emerged over multiple generations in concert with the Mezquital’s unique set of circumstances. Here especially, a perspectival shift to bacteria is necessary. As scholar Myra Hird writes on the participatory and creative capacity of bacteria within globalized waste systems, “Bacteria trouble our familiar forms of communication, identity, sociality (community organization), reproduction, sexual reproduction, movement, metabolism, and just about everything else. [2]

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