Revolutionary Environments:

The Politics of Nature and Space in the Valley of Mexico, 1890-

1940s

by

Matthew Vitz

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of History

New York University

May, 2010

____________________

Gregory Grandin
 UMI Number: 3408322

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI 3408322
Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest LLC
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346
 © Matthew Vitz

All Rights Reserved, 2010

For my parents

For Lorena

iii
 Acknowledgements

If the act of writing takes place independently, in the closed confines of a

desk or office, the labor that brings one to that point involves the advise,

encouragement, and collaboration of numerous people. I would like to first thank

my high-school European history teacher, Bob Turansky, for introducing me to the

politics of history and Marxist theory. Through his dynamic pedagogy and

booming voice (his lectures could often be heard from across the hall), I learned

that ‘people make history, if not under the conditions of their own choosing.’ At

the University of Wisconsin, two erudite scholars, William Cronon and Florencia

Mallon, piqued my interest in environmental history and Latin American history

respectively.

At NYU, numerous professors have shaped this dissertation. I would like

to thank my advisor, Greg Grandin, for his keen readings of my work and

determination in helping me clarify my ideas. Greg has supported my project from

its vague beginnings and has encouraged me to assert more demonstrably my own

voice in my writing. Sinclair Thomson has generously offered his time in service

of my project. His vast knowledge of popular politics and rebellion shaped my

understanding of environmental politics in the Valley of Mexico. Conversations

with Karl Appuhn helped me to find my place as an environmental historian, and

his sophisticated scholarship has inspired my work. I would also like to thank

Barbara Weinstein and Ada Ferrer for comments at various stages. Ada and other

NYU faculty including Manu Goswami, Kristin Ross, Thomas Abercrombie, and

iv
Martha Hodes deserve special mention for contributing to my formation as a

scholar.

Outside of NYU, several professors in particular have left an imprint on

this dissertation. Pablo Piccato has commented on one chapter and shared his rich

knowledge of Mexican urban history. Chris Boyer led me to a treasure trove of

documentation on forestry in the Valley of Mexico and also provided me with

insightful feedback on my work. I want to give special thanks to Gil Joseph, who

strengthened my knowledge of Mexican historiography, encouraged me to

persevere in my research, and graciously agreed to serve on my committee. In

Mexico, Luis Aboites Aguilar, Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor, and Ariel

Rodríguez Kuri have all led me in new and intriguing research directions.

During the research and writing stages of this dissertation, I have resided in

New York, Mexico City, and Chicago. Countless individuals and institutions have

helped me along the way. Joaquin Chávez has been a wonderful friend and

colleague; our conversations about history, politics, and scholarship have

influenced me in ways he may not realize. Joaquin, Michelle Chase, Sarah Osten,

and Patrick Iber have read numerous chapters at various stages, and their insights

have strengthened the overall project. Other graduate students including Franny

Sullivan, Aldo Marchesi, Ramón Suarez, Jay Diehl, Tracy Neumann, Federico

Sor, Bekah Friedman, and Paul Kershaw contributed to the stimulating intellectual

climate of the NYU History Department. I thank Roberto Gómez Mostajo for

many scintillating conversations and access to critical sources. I would also like to

v
thank Alfredo Escobedo for memorable hiking trips to the Nevada de Toluca and

Ajusco National Parks. Furthermore, this dissertation would not have been

possible without the funding of the Fulbright-García Robles program, an American

Council of Learned Societies/Mellon Fellowship, and NYU’s McCracken

Fellowship.

I am grateful to my parents Robert and Margaret Vitz, whose love,

encouragement, and unwavering support have, throughout many years, kept me

afloat through both rough and calm waters. Mom and Dad, this dissertation is

dedicated to you. I would also like to thank my brother, Andrew, who inspired me

to think about the human impact on nature, and my sister, Krista, who has

encouraged me to pursue what I love.

I am extremely fortunate to have a loving, compassionate, and

intellectually sharp person by my side. Lorena, this dissertation is as much yours

as it is mine. You have helped me work through its numerous problems and

develop better many of its central arguments. You have always known when to

encourage me, when to challenge me, and when to tell me to start from scratch. I

hope that you enjoy this history of Mexico City, the enticing if enigmatic urban

‘monster’ that you know so well. This dissertation is also dedicated to you.

vi
 Abstract

My dissertation examines a half-century of conflict over soil, water, and

woodlands in and around Mexico City during a period of urbanization and

revolution. At the turn of the century, the urban elite privileged exclusionary urban

development through a set of policies and hydraulic projects. I argue that while

the revolution of 1910 reinforced development as a goal, the social upheaval also

provided the opportunity for popular groups, both in the city and country, to

demand productive and livable environments. Although post-revolutionary

governments often promoted earlier projects and policies, they also sought to

create productive and healthy populations harnessed to the state. The tension

between the two objectives encouraged a new environmental citizenship whereby

popular groups, officials, and developers negotiated and disputed local

environments. As urban interests met a pro-business state during the 1940s,

however, environments deteriorated and popular groups lost access to resources.

My project refashions understandings of the revolution, urbanization, and

Mexico City’s environmental challenges. I offer a new understanding of the

revolution whereby urbanization and environmental engineering served as

lightning rods for revolutionary politics. I understand the urban and rural as a tight

web of social, political, technical, and ecological interactions. These intertwined

histories offer a unique view as to how Mexico City modernized and how spaces

were transformed, either in benefit or to the detriment of communities.

Furthermore, my project shows that Mexico City’s current environmental

vii
problems arose from the revolutionary period, which featured the eventual

repression of popular environmental imaginaries and the endurance of

exclusionary urban development.

viii
 Table of Contents

Dedication iii

Acknowledgments iv

Abstract vii

List of Figures x

Introduction 1

Part I: The Porfiriato’s Nature

Chapter 1: Transforming the Valley’s Nature: The Porfirian City 34

Part II: Sanitizing the City: The Politics of Environmental Space

in Mexico City, 1910-1940

Chapter 2: The Nature of the Urban Revolution I 98

Chapter 3: The Nature of the Urban Revolution II 150

Part III: Forests, Springs, and Lakes: The Dual Revolution in the

Hinterlands

Chapter 4: Divided Forests, Contentious Waters: The

Ajusco and Xochimilco in Revolutionary Mexico 201

Chapter 5: “‘The Lands with Which We Shall Struggle’: Land

Reclamation and Revolution in the Lake Texcoco Basin 266

Conclusion 309

Bibliography 326

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 1 Map of the Valley of Mexico, 1909 32

Fig. 2 Map of Mexico City’s cuarteles 50

Fig. 3 The Chinampas of Xochimilco, 1905 71

Fig. 4 Mexico City’s water system, 1914 102

Fig. 5 Advertisement for colonia Portales, 1915 124

Fig. 6 Forest-oriented Ejidos Created in the Ajusco 211

Fig. 7 National Parks in the Valley of Mexico, 1917-1940 228

Fig. 8 Ejidos Created Around Xochimilco 241

Fig. 9 Land Reclamation in Lake Texcoco, 1930s 297

Fig. 10 Afforestation in the Texcoco Bed, 1939 300

Fig. 11 Miguel Alemán visiting the Texcoco works, 1948 302

Fig. 12 Lake Nabor Carrillo, August 2008 319

Fig. 13 Afforestation in the Texcoco Bed, August 2008 320

x
 Introduction

“I define modernism as any attempt by modern men and women to become subjects
as well as objects of modernization, to get a grip on the modern world and make
themselves at home in it.” Marshall Berman (1988).1

“The urban and rural landscapes I have been describing are not two places but
one. They created each other, they transformed each other’s environments and
economies.” William Cronon (1991).2

One October day in 1916, Zapatista troops cut Mexico City’s water supply.

Urban residents, already suffering from years of food shortages and monetary

inflation caused by revolution, watched as their water—pumped in by a newly

inaugurated aqueduct from the nearby farming community of Xochimilco—

slowed to a measly trickle. For the urban population fortunate to have access to the

piped water, the shortage amounted to another urban comfort obliterated in the

near-apocalyptic city where many scavenged to survive.3 For the urban elite who

maintained private wells, water scarcity held as much symbolic as material value.

Clean and abundant water formed a chief component of the urban sanitary ideal, a

set of policies and projects put forth by a cadre of doctors, engineers, and

government officials during the reign of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911). Their sanitary

city had taken a direct hit. More bothersome still for a wide section of the

1
Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
(New York: Penguin Press, 1988).
2
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York:
W.W Norton, 1991).
3
Francisco Ramirez Plancarte, La ciudad de Mexico durante la revolución
constitutionalista (Mexico City: Botas, 1941), 366.

1
populace, Zapatistas—understood to be barbaric Indians from the rural

hinterlands—who first rose up against Díaz and now battled the Constitutionalists,

were responsible. Just as the act of sabotage was symbolic on the urban end, it was

symbolic on the other. The rebels and local campesinos viewed the act as not only

a military tactic—a move to demonstrate their enemy’s lack of control over

important sites in central Mexico—but also a symbol of resistance to the urban-

centric state that had usurped local water in the name of metropolitan growth. A

minor event in the unfolding drama of the Mexican revolution, the act struck at the

heart of Mexico’s urbanizing impulse. It crystallized the tension between the

urban sanitary ideal and Xochimilcan communities that relied on that same water

to nurture their crops, hunt, and fish.

The act of sabotage was a harbinger of what lay ahead. I argue that a dual

revolution took place in early twentieth century Mexico City: one political and the

other urban. The political revolution entailed the reordering of the Mexican state

and the reimagining of Mexican society, with the potential for radical social

change. The urban revolution comprised of an impulse to set Mexico City on a

course of rapid expansion and to guarantee the health of its inhabitants, requiring

massive infrastructural projects and new environmental policies. Both revolutions

unleashed a series of interrelated but ultimately distinct struggles over the

environments of the Valley of Mexico—the site of Mexico City. Peasants and

forest users (campesinos) and urban popular groups negotiated and disputed

environmental rights with government officials and the Valley’s economic elite.

2
The uses of nature—woodlands and water in particular—were tightly interwoven

into the path of urban development. The environmental dynamics of urbanization

were, in turn, inseparable from the prevailing winds of revolutionary reform and

the making of the postrevolutionary state.

Geographical and Historical Context

Mexico City sits in a unique geographical location in central Mexico.

Surrounded by mountains, the “Valley” of Mexico is, in reality, a closed basin at

an altitude of about 7,350 feet. It covers 3,000 square miles of the current-day

Federal District as well as sections of the states of Mexico and Hidalgo. Its

climate is semi-arid, with a dry season from November to April and a rainy season

from May to October. Because of long intervals without rainfall, the Valley has

few permanent rivers, though during the summer streambeds can quickly turn into

torrential flows. Three volcanoes, Ajusco (12,923 ft), Popocatépetl (17,800 ft), and

Iztaccíhuatl (17,700 ft), dominate the Valley’s south and southwestern skies, and

the mountainous terrain around them support forests of pine and oak. The forests

of the Ajusco range, especially, soak up, like a sponge, heavy summer rainfall,

which flows down the slopes to fill the Valley’s immense underground aquifer and

numerous springs.

The history of Mexico City began seven centuries ago with the arrival of

the Mexicas. The Mexica built Tenochtitlan and transformed the Valley into the

center of the powerful Aztec empire. According to the famous Mexica legend, the

3
wandering native group settled in the Valley when they saw the sign that their god

Huitzilopochtli had indicated: an eagle perched on top of a cactus while eating a

serpent. At the time of the Conquest, Tenochtitlan housed around 500,000 people,

and the Valley as a whole—with satellites such as Tlatelolco, Texcoco, and

Xochimilco—supported up to one million. Five interconnected lakes, Texcoco,

Xochimilco, Chalco, Zumpango, and Xaltocan, nourished by springs and

rainwater, covered over half of the Valley’s surface area. Causeways linked the

center to outlying areas, and canals crisscrossed the land. Xochimilco supplied a

vast majority of the city’s food by means of a highly productive agricultural

practice called chinampería, a custom that persisted in a nearly identical form into

the twentieth century. Dependent on abundant fresh water, chinampa

agriculturalists built seedbeds in swamps, canals, and the Chalco and Xochimilco

lakebeds, creating islands of crops. Indeed, the hydrology of the Valley formed

the basis of the entire economy. Fish and waterfowl were sold at markets after

having arrived by boat over lake or canal. Although it would be a mistake to

suggest that the Mexica did not transform their environment, they did build a

society in which the lacustrine ecosystem was indispensable. 4 Plentiful water

equaled life. In fact, even the dikes the Aztecs constructed in the lakes were

4
For example, scientific analysis suggests that deforestation was a problem, and
that sediment had begun to fill lakebeds.

4
meant—apart from protecting against floods in the rainy season—to conserve

irrigation water during the dry season.5

Cortés and his entourage marveled at the grandeur of Tenochtítlan and its

surroundings, including its temples, markets, and waterscapes. Whereas in Peru,

the Spanish Crown forsook Cuzco and opted to establish a new city, Lima, as

capital of the viceroyalty, the colonists built Mexico City on top of the old Mexica

capital. A gesture of power over the entire region, Spanish authorities saw all the

perils of water and none of its virtues. They may have been awestruck at the

unique water environment but had no intention of continuing Mexica hydraulic

policies. The Crown made huge investments over centuries and deployed

thousands of workers to maintain the colonial city dry. Their efforts rarely

prevented flooding—the flood of 1629 lasted several years—but they did manage

to reduce the surface area of Lake Texcoco, the largest of the five and the one that

posed the greatest danger to the city.

During the nineteenth century, the Valley of Mexico remained an

environment rich in forests along the mountain slopes and abundant in lakes,

canals, and springs. Although colonial-era drainage projects and sedimentation had

reduced the size of these lakes, the saline Lake Texcoco often inundated the city

during the rainy season, extending over 27,000 hectares. During the dry season,

the lakebed shrunk considerably and became the source of dangerous dust storms

5
See Ángel Palerm, Obras hidráulicas prehispánicas en el sistema lacustre del
Valle de México (Mexico City: INAH, 1973); and Alain Musset, El agua en el
Valle de Mexico, siglos XVI-XVIII (Mexico City: Portico de la ciudad, 1992), 63-4.

5
and miasmas that scoured the city. 6 Postcolonial authorities shared the colony’s

aversion to the Valley’s water. They believed that the stagnant water of the lakes

was disease-infested and thus an obstacle to the city’s prosperity. Again, drainage

schemes focused on Texcoco, which, on account of its proximity and low-lying

bed, threatened the city directly. Yet, nearly constant upheaval and rebellion

precluded any serious investment in resolving the city’s water woes.

The liberal victory over the French-conservative alliance commenced an

era of liberal hegemony in Mexico. The kind of liberalism that emerged

victorious, however, viewed progress through the lens of strong government rather

than individual rights under decentralized republican rule. Centralized

government, they believed, would spur economic investment, creating much-

needed wealth and consequently a truly modern nation. After taking power

through military rebellion in 1876, the Oaxacan general Porfirio Díaz proved to be

just the right man to carry out the new liberal agenda. The Pax Porfiriana, where

political freedoms were minimal, opened the doors to capitalist investment in

mining, farming, industry, railroads, and construction. Economic dynamism

turned the pipe dreams of lake drainage and other engineering works into realistic

possibilities, and the centralization of power disposed government to impose

regulations on economic production. With the engines of capitalism fired up and

6
Occasionally dust storms affected the city as early as the sixteenth century, but,
as the lakebed dried at a more rapid rate in the modern era, the dust storms
worsened and the salt content of its soils increased. See Charles Gibson, The
Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-
1810 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964), 306.

6
state power ascending, the nation’s capital, and the Valley as a whole, began a

remarkable transformation.

The work of modernization started and ended in Mexico City. María

Ignacia Rodríguez, an elite creole of Independence-era Mexico (The Fair

Rodriguez as she was known), once remarked “Fuera de México, todo es

Cuautitlán” (Everything is Cuautitlán outside of Mexico City). A small town to

the north, Cuautitlán represented backwardness for urbanites, while Mexico City

represented all that was civilized. 7 The comment was emblematic of Spanish

America’s obsession with cities as fundamentally civilizing spaces, marking a

distinction with Anglo-American visions of pastoral societies and vitiating cities.

Though spoken at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the phrase

ostensibly assumed more import in Porfirian Mexico. The late nineteenth century

marked a period of “urban recovery,” the renewal of civitas, where Mexico City

could once again “speak for the nation.”8 And the city spoke the language of

modernization. Yet, modernization was an expansionist, centripetal force, not one

that estranged Mexico City from its surroundings. Thus the oft-repeated phrase

invoking two Mexicos falsely dichotomized city and hinterland, obscuring their

7
Ironically, the once-quaint town is now an industrial suburb and has come to
denote some of the worst elements of the mancha urbana (urban stain): pollution,
dirt, and overcrowding.
8
See Mark D. Schuzman, “The City as Vision: The Development of Urban
Cultures in Latin America” in I Saw a City Invincible: Urban Portraits of Latin
America (Wilington, DE: SR Books, 1996); and Eric Zolov, “Notas sobre la
capital en su contribución hegemónica,” in Los últimos cien años, los próximos
cien… eds. Rodriguez Kuri, Ariel and Sergio Tamayo Flores Alatorre (Mexico
City: UAM, 2004): 111-126.

7
tight social, economic, and environmental linkages. The growth of Mexico City,

like the growth of any city, depended on an influx of laborers, food, fuel, water,

and innumerable other products from the vast Mexican countryside.9 At the end of

the nineteenth century, railroads connected city and hinterland like arteries

extending out from a heart, and tramlines connected towns like San Ángel,

Coyoacán, Xochimilco, and Villa Guadalupe to the zócalo (main plaza).

As economic dynamism tied the city to its hinterlands in new ways,

Mexico City’s role as financial and real estate giant shaped urban growth. Urban

developments grew seemingly overnight along the tramlines, promoting the

modern comforts that the city offered. Banks and exchange houses (casas de

moneda) proliferated and financed infrastructural projects in Mexico City and

across the nation. Just as some campesinos traveled to and from the city for work,

many hacienda owners did the same. The national elite may have owned large

rural estates, but their most treasured homes were in the cities, especially Mexico

City, where they enjoyed the jockey club, the opera, the shops and restaurants of

Plateros street (later renamed Madero), and other urban privileges that their rural

9
Within ten years of each other, Edmundo Flores, an economist and Claude
Bataillon, a geographer, studied the economic interchanges that linked the central
Mexican rural social formation to the expanding metropolis. See Flores, Tratado
de economía agrícola (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1961); and
Bataillon, La ciudad y el campo en el México central, (Mexico City: Siglo XXI,
1971).

8
wealth had made possible.10 The presence of this powerful elite circumscribed

popular environmental rights through the Mexican revolution and beyond.

Economic expansion was equaled by the state’s aims to create a sanitary

city. A blend of European science and distinctly Mexican political and cultural

experience, the quest for the sanitary city included massive hydraulic

infrastructure—both the harnessing of drinking water and the evacuation of aguas

negras—sanitary codes, and new forestry policies that sought to conserve a

healthy climate and precious water resources under the rubric of rational forest

management. I understand turn-of-the-century urban modernity through the twin

pillars of the sanitary ideal and capitalist vision. These ideas became cemented as

intertwined social processes, radically transforming the Valley’s environments and

regulating their uses. The experience of modernity magnified environmental

inequalities within and without the urban milieu and altered the ways that the

Valley’s population experienced the city.

Scholars do not generally recognize the period under study here as the most

important in understanding Mexico City’s rapid growth or its subsequent

environmental challenges. That era supposedly started in the mid 1940s when

population and industry soared. Jonathan Kandell’s sweeping history of Mexico

City, La Capital, invokes the image of a more manageable, almost quaint,

parochial city of the 1940s in comparison to the contemporary, smog-infested

10
For the cultural life of the urban elite, see William Beezley, Judas at the Jockey
Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1987); and Michael Johns, The City of Mexico in the Age of Díaz (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1997).

9
megalopolis.11 This perception obscures an earlier moment of environmental

concerns and infrastructural development that Carlos Fuentes so elegantly captured

in his description of the 1940s capital: “moon-scar city, city scratched with sewers,

crystal city of vapor and alkali frost…ashing city of slow fire, city to its neck in

water…city new upon sculptured dust…city of dark varnish and cut stone, city

beneath glistening mud.”12 Nature and city in the Valley of Mexico have been

dynamically interconnected for centuries, and the massive environmental projects

and policies that had occupied developers, planners, and city boosters between

1890 and the 1940s underwrote the growth of the post-War era. In other words, in

order to decipher the modern metropolis, it is imperative to examine urban

development between the Porfiriato and the emerging postrevolutionary state.

If the late nineteenth century to the present comprises the long durée of the

city’s growth, a subperiodization captures its quotidian, political dimensions. The

Mexican revolution, a series of heterogeneous movements, battles, and conflicts

between 1910 and 1920, marked a political watershed that allowed alternative,

popular reimaginings of Mexican society. Campesinos called for more productive

local environments based on trees, water, and fertile soil, while the urban poor

demanded sanitary, livable environments. These visions, rarely sustained, often

isolated and disparate, and always locally rooted in popular customs, imposed a

counterweight on exclusionary modernity and its development schemes. Popular

11
Jonathan Kandell, La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City (New York:
Random House, 1988).
12
Carlos Fuentes, Where the Air is Clear (New York: Noonday Press, 1960), 4-5.

10
groups disputed “modernity’s nature,” but once the energy of revolutionary change

fizzled, the urban recovery that was so dominant at the turn of the twentieth

century reasserted itself as an industrial future led by a disciplinary corporatist

state.13

Revolutionary Environments and the Nature of Urban Politics

This story of environmental politics lies at the confluence of urban history,

environmental history, and Mexican revolutionary studies. It produces a fresh

perspective on the history of modernization as well as the urban and environmental

dimensions of the Mexican revolution. The twin concepts of hegemony and

environmental citizenship provide the conceptual framework that ties together the

seemingly disparate case studies that I explore here. The Italian Marxist Antonio

Gramsci explained the failure of the Piedmont bourgeoisie to create a “historic

bloc” of alliances necessary to rule Italy through a combination of coercion and

consent, that is, by hegemony.14 By conceiving of state power as fundamentally

contingent and political, as opposed to deterministic and economic, Gramsci

opened Marxism to a whole new set of conceptual and analytical issues about

class-based political cultures and the evolution of state power, an innovation that

has influenced post-Marxist historians as well. The hegemonic state, in this

13
I borrow the term “modernity’s nature” from John Soluri, Banana Cultures:
Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the
United States, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005).
14
Antonio Gramsci, “Notes on Italian History,” Selections from the Prison
Notebooks ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York:
International Publishers, 1971): 44-120.

11
conception, was not a reified thing, autonomous from social struggle, but a

constantly evolving set of alliances that tapped into popular cultures. Scholars of

Mexico have often interpreted the cultural, political, and social practices employed

to bond Mexican nationals to both nation and state through the lens of Gramscian

hegemony.15 In some scholarly work, hegemony becomes the endpoint of state

formation, a political compromise in which demands from below tend to funnel

through peaceful, institutional channels.16

The notion of hegemony has been fiercely—and often correctly—disputed.

Alan Knight has questioned its universal applicability, suggesting that scholars

approach the concept cautiously and with scrutiny to each concrete case study. 17

The prominent agrarian historian James Scott has preferred to see domination in

terms of coercion (rather than hegemonic consent) where the dominated employ a

15
See Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants,
and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997);
Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen Lewis, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and
Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 (Durham: Duke University Press,
2006); Jocelyn Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Marjorie Becker, Setting the Virgin on
Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacan Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican
Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Ana Maria
Alonzo, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s
Northern Frontier (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995).
16
See, for example, Florencia Mallon, “Reflections on the Ruins: Everyday Forms
of State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” in Everyday Forms of State
Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico ed. Gilbert
M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994).
17
See Alan Knight, “Weapons and Arches in the Mexican Revolutionary
Landscape” in Everyday Forms of State Formation.

12
diverse repertoire of covert, passive acts to resist authority.18 Derek Sayer has

debated the usefulness of the term by questioning the existence of a singular,

national hegemonic “project”—as opposed to multiple national visions—and

subsequently hegemony as an endpoint based on consent.19

I argue that in the revolutionary Valley of Mexico hegemony operated as

two distinct, but intertwined, elite-led orders: one urban-centered and largely

exclusive and the other revolutionary and hegemonic. These orders uncomfortably

cohabited urban and rural space, fusing in some locals and certain moments and

colliding in others. They structured dissent and conditioned political possibilities

without necessarily begetting consent. I favor the term “order” over “project” to

deemphasize the collusion of elites in sustaining a unified national agenda and to

highlight the diverse political arrangements through which popular groups

accommodated to or resisted domination. Thus, I subscribe to William Roseberry’s

suggestion that scholars:

use the concept [hegemony] not to understand consent but to understand

struggle; the ways in which the words, images, symbols, forms,
organizations, institutions, and movements used by subordinate
populations to talk about, understand, confront, accommodate themselves
to, or resist their domination are shaped by the process of domination itself.
What hegemony constructs, then, is not a shared ideology but a common
material and meaningful framework for living through, talking about, and
acting upon social orders characterized by domination.20

18
See James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); and Domination and the Art of
Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
19
Derek Sayer, “Everyday Forms of State Formation: Some Dissident Remarks on
Hegemony” in Everyday Forms of State Formation, 367-77.
20
William Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Contention,” in Everyday
Forms of State Formation, 360-61

13
The hegemonic contest was a multidimensional, unequal and interactive “field of

force,” comprised of a variety of social actors that wielded meanings and symbols

linking rulers and ruled in organic relation.21 It is within this field of force that

social struggle and contestation between rival orders occurred. While disputes

may have unfolded discursively, the “field” that Roseberry describes was far from

metaphorical. Here is where the “material framework” is decisive: the language of

meanings and symbols were molded by and filtered through existing physical

infrastructure and political boundaries. Urban infrastructure, changes in forest and

water cover, and new property markers, for example, conditioned social struggle

and environmental imaginaries.

The dominant order of urban modernity, as already discussed, took shape

through the interaction of the sanitary ideal and capitalist growth. I describe in

some detail the political economy of the Porfirian Valley of Mexico, but my focus

rests on the production of a sanitary city, a goal indispensable for securing urban

economic vitality and fundamentally intertwined with class power. Spearheaded

by a network of scientists, engineers, and doctors, state projects and policies

reshaped, regulated, and ordered the Valley’s environments in a variety of

interconnected ways. Major improvements in urban services prepared the city for

expansion, raised real estate values, and required contracts with national and

foreign capital for goods and services. While the sanitary ideal aimed for general

21
Roseberry, 360.

14
improvements in public health, it remained urban-centric and inextricable from the

spatial inequalities of capitalist urbanization.

By reworking nature, the environmental policies and projects of prominent

Porfirians such as José Yves Limantour, Eduardo Licéaga, Roberto Gayol,

Mariano Barragán, Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, and Manuel Marroquín y Rivera

marginalized some while benefiting others, under the precept of urban sanitation

and growth. Within the city, new hydraulic infrastructure and public health codes,

for example, brought urban comforts to many, heightened environmental

inequalities for others, and forefronted sanitary politics for all. In the countryside,

however, these sanitary measures were far from hegemonic in the Gramscian

sense. They adversely affected and alienated rural communities situated outside

the urbanizing logic. In both spatial contexts, urban modernity created the

infrastructure and forged specific spatial relations and ideologies within which

environmental inequalities were disputed during the revolutionary and

postrevolutionary years.

Social revolution induced a rival hegemonic order, conferring the state a

dual character in the Valley after 1917, the year of the new constitution. Espoused

by members of the emergent postrevolutionary state, ideas of inclusive

development, where Mexico’s population would enjoy the fruits of nature’s

modernity, challenged the exclusionary character of Porfirian urbanization. Post-

revolutionary governments, while often promoting earlier exclusive projects and

policies, also sought, to varying degrees, to create both a productive and healthy

15
citizenry harnessed to the new state. Though generally paternalistic and

incomplete, the new emphasis on production and health had emancipatory

potential. Ideas of public health, land reform, and resource redistribution inscribed

in the 1917 Constitution empowered urban and rural popular groups in their

struggles for environmental rights.

Nation-building efforts resurrected the state as a key actor in environmental

governance. Environmental disputes unfolded within the immensely complex and

oft-competing bureaucracies governing agrarian concerns, water disputes, forest

management, and urban public services. Outcomes, while always ephemeral,

generated new prescriptions for the uses of nature and shifted spatial relations

within and without Mexico City. Changes were determined by the strength of

popular environmental imaginaries and the particular political orientation of the

post-revolutionary leadership.

The revolution widened the streams of social discontent into torrential

rivers while its aftermath at once centralized the state apparatus, strengthened

governance over local space, and reinforced the urbanizing impulse. The Valley’s

urban and rural subalterns maneuvered within the overlapping and contradictory

sinews of local state power. They demanded livable and productive environments,

what I call environmental citizenship, forged amid the tension between the

exclusion and spatial unevenness of urban expansion and the inclusive

developmentalism of the state-building project.

16
 Environmental citizenship in postrevolutionary Mexico, as I have

understood it, was at once experiential and legal-economic. In the former sense,

citizenship was not something one possessed, but something one lived and

negotiated, embedded in conceptions of the rights and responsibilities of

environmental use.22 In the latter sense, urban infrastructural development

expanded the realm of rights within cities while threatening possibilities of

environmental citizenship in the surrounding hinterlands. And, the legal-political

frameworks of the Mexican state, most notably sanitary codes dating back to 1891

and the public health and land reform articles of the 1917 constitution, further

spurred environmental citizenship. The structural and the experiential reinforced

each other in unique ways across the Valley’s landscapes, engendering different

conceptions of environmental rights, demand making, and government response.

Attention to state and citizenship goes against the grain of much of the

heralded work in critical geography where capitalism is fore-grounded in the

production and reproduction of space (and therefore nature).23 Except for the

22
My views on citizenship have been informed by readings of James Holston,
“Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship,” in Cities and Citizenship ed, James Holston
Durham: Duke University Press, 1999): 155-173; James Holston and Arjun
Appuradai, “Cities and Citizenship,” in Cities and Citizenship; Claudio Lomnitz,
“Modes of Mexican Citizenship,” in Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An
Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001):
58-80; Jocelyn Olcott, Postrevolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico;
Serge Tamayo, “Espacios Ciudadanos” in Los Últimos cien: 127-55; and Brodwyn
Fisher, A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth Century Rio
de Janeiro (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
23
See Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota, 2003) and The Production of Space (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007);
David Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge,

17
recent compilation State/Space, critical geography locates the state on the margins

of spatial formations and spatial politics.24 The state, however, often delineated

the markers of spatial politics, and the Valley of Mexico where the state invested

in its soil, water, and trees, was no exception.25 Nature composed the raw material

of both Porfirian-era sanitary projects and inclusive development goals, making

the state not merely an arbiter of purely capitalist dynamics but a cause of

environmental change and conflict in its own right.

Natural resources traded as commodities on the world market, according to

Fernando Coronil, form the basis of third-world states. In his impressive book,

MA: Blackwell, 1996); and Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and
the Production of Space, (New York: Blackwell, 1984).
24
Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon Macleod ed. State/Space:
A Reader (New York: Blackwell, 2008).
25
A number of polítical ecologists and historians have meticulously probed the
role of the state in controlling, transforming, and adjudicating disputes over the
natural world. See, for example, Stuart McCook, States of Nature: Science,
Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760-1940 (Austin:
University of Texas, 2002); Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money,
and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Karl
Appuhn, “Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry, and State Power in Renaissance
Venice” The Journal of Modern History 72, 4, (2000): 861-89; and K.
Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests: State Making and Environmental Change in
Colonial East India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For studies of the
sate and the environment in Mexico, see, Myrna Santiago, Ecology of Oil:
Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); Luis Aboites Aguilar, El agua de la nación
(México: CIESAS, 1998); Casey Walsh, Building the Borderlands: A
Transnational History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexico-Texas Border
(College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2008); Mikael Wolfe, “The Revolutionary
Emblem of a Nation: Narrative, Ecology, Technology, and Politics in the Making
of ‘La Laguna,’ Mexico, 1850-2008” (PhD Diss., University of Chicago, 2008);
and Emily Wakild, “Resources, Communities, and Conservation: The Creation of
National Parks in Revoluionary Mexico Under Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934-1940”
(PhD Diss., University of Arizona, 2007)

18
Coronil examines the politics of oil as a guide to understanding the evolution of

Venezuela’s “magical state,” and proposes that scholars study other critical

resources such as tin, copper, and sugar to throw new light on the evolution of

third-world states.26 While I do not object to Coronil’s suggestion—and one could

certainly do a study of Mexican oil from the same vantage point—I argue for the

importance of non-export nature in the development of the Mexican state. Forests

and water, through codes and presidential decrees between 1888 and 1926, entered

the federal domain or became direct state property. These were resources that the

state controlled to guide development, and, after the revolution, to also redistribute

to marginalized groups and generate income.27 In fact, experiences controlling

these resources likely reinforced revolutionaries’ aims and emboldened them to

regulate oil in the public good, a commodity exponentially more volatile in

international geo-politics. Just as elites emphasized national forest conservation,

the conservation of petroleum resources became a critical component of national

oil policy beginning with Carranza.28

Seeing the politics of nature and space in the Valley through the lens of

dueling hegemonies and environmental citizenship sheds new light on the history

of Mexico City more specifically and of cities more generally. On account of new

directions in environmental and urban history studies of public health and

26
Coronil, 66.
27
In 1939, the Forestry Fish and Game Department, for example, took in 9 million
pesos against just 3 million in expenses. Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, Relato de mi
vida (Mexico, 1943), 84-5.
28
See Santiago, chapter 6 “Revolutionaries, Conservation, and Wasteland.”

19
sanitation have assumed an important place in recent historiography. Historians of

the US, Martin Melosi and Joel Tarr, in many ways the founders of urban

environmental history, have cogently examined the development of sanitary

infrastructure, namely water, sewerage, and trash collection, as well as the

intellectual influences that sustained it. Their studies follow the paths of engineers

and progressive reformers whose decisions radically altered the way urbanites

lived.29 Moving away from a technical, scientific, and intellectual perspective,

scholars of Mexico have studied the state-building motives and political-economic

dynamics of massive environmental infrastructure projects.30 In this view,

sanitation works, derivative of European-inspired modernization, were

“monuments of progress,” “paradigms” of a regime dedicated to validating its own

hold on power, or paragons of external-led development. Despite the growing

field of urban cultural history and the rich tradition of studies of popular protest

and political cultures within Mexican historiography, few scholars have considered

29
See Joel Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical
Perspective (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1996) Tarr and Gabriel
Dupuy ed., Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City:
Urban Infrastructure in America from the Colony to the Present (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2000); and Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse,
Reform, and the Environment (College Station:Texas A&M Press, 1981).
30
See Priscilla Connoly, El contratista de Don Porfirio: Obras Públicas, deuda, y
desarrollo desigual (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997); Manuel
Perló Cohen, El paradigma porfiriano: historia del desague del valle de México
(Mexico City: Porrua, 1999); and Claudia Agostoni; Monuments of Progress:
Modernization and Public Health in Mexico City, 1876-1910 (Calgary: University
of Calgary Press, 2003).

20
the quotidian cultural and political aspects of such projects.31 If the canals, sewers,

and water mains ran underground, scholars have assumed the importance of them

lay not in the thousands of streets and homes they passed—or did not pass—but

rather in the “high” politics of the Presidential Palace on Chapultepec hill.

Such projects in Mexico were neither derivative of Europe nor isolated

from a larger socio-spatial field of urban power. The production of the sanitary

city encompassed the deep historical experience of urban elites and melded North

Atlantic political and intellectual currents with Mexican scientific politics. Just as

a sanitary city had to be “produced” with massive infrastructural projects, it also

invariably had to be “consumed” as well. This study unites production and

consumption to show how the everyday politics of service distribution informed

the production of the sanitary city, and how, in turn, its production informed

environmental citizenship in both city and hinterland.32 Elite visions of the

31
A few recent studies have bucked this trend. See Katherine Bliss, Compromised
Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary
Mexico City (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2001); Christina
Jiménez, “Popular Organizing for Public Services: Residents Modernize Morelia,
Mexico, 1880-1920” Journal of Urban History 30, 4 (2004): 495-518; Ariel
Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto de agua y violencia política. El motín del 30 de
noviembre de 1922 en la ciudad de México: economía moral y cultura política” in
José Ronzón and Carmen Valdes ed., Formas de descontento y movimientos
sociales, siglos XIX y XX (Mexico City: UAM-Azcapotzalco, 2000); and Erica
Berra, “La expansion de la ciudad de México y los conflictos urbanos, 1900-1930
(PhD Diss., Centro de Estudios Históricos, Colmex, 1983). An excellent example
of this type of history for the US is Harold Platt, Shock Cities: The Environmental
Transformation and Reform of Manchester and Chicago (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005).
32
Manuel Castells claimed that organization over urban service consumption
would become the chief mode for revolutionary politics. Although this teleology
of urban revolution never enjoyed much acclaim, his work, along with the urban

21
sanitary ideal and local, popular environmental politics unfolded together in

overlapping and contradictory ways, altering the formation of urban space,

environmental conditions, and changing the urban political landscape.

Much Mexican and US urban environmental historiography shares a

common thread with historians of commodity production: nature is treated as a

bundle of passive elements that get manipulated by human ingenuity. For the

former group of historians, water is the primary element, either as a resource to be

tapped or an obstacle to be overcome. Nature, for the latter group, consists of a

wide array of separate resources that society reworks for profit. After providing

the raw material for the historical narrative, nature is quickly pushed backstage

while the drama of technology or political economy unfolds. I do not maintain,

however, that nature constitutes an autonomous agent actively impinging upon an

equally autonomous society, as some environmentalists would have it. The natural

world is inextricable from society, and thus, the human decisions that structure

relations among people and their environments. Writing on commodity production,

but in a way that is equally applicable to this study, John Soluri implores historians

to “convey the heterogeneity and historical dynamics of organisms and processes

that tend to get lumped together as ‘resources,’ ‘land,’ or simply ‘space’…. [and

demonstrate] the dynamic interplay between economies and ecologies [and]

sociology of Diane Davis, have influenced my view that the consumption of the
sanitary city was a polítically charged affair. See Castells, The City and the
Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983); and Davis, Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in
the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).

22
landscapes and livelihoods.”33 Engineers and officials constantly reworked

dynamic ecological systems, and the interplay of society and nature produced new

environments as government policies controlled their uses. Meanwhile people

adapted to their new environments and frequently challenged the policies that

maintained them.

If cities are nature reconstituted, then their histories do not stop where the

last street meets the farm, the last home the edge of the woods or the mountain

slope. William Cronon’s groundbreaking Nature’s Metropolis explained in

brilliant prose the ways in which the nature of the “Great West” enabled Chicago’s

nineteenth-century growth. He analytically united city and countryside and

explained their co-dependency through the commercialization of timber, grains,

and meat. Cronon’s tome provoked myriad responses from scholars interested in

urban environmental space.34 Criticism ranged from his omission of

manufacturing and the unequal labor relations of the early industrial United States

to his assumption that nature had no import in cities proper.35 Cronon’s original

contribution got lost in the shuffle as scholars threw out the baby of urban-rural

33
John Soluri, 242.
34
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York:
W.W Norton, 1991).
35
See the review articles in Richard Walker ed. “William Cronon’s Nature
Metropolis: A Symposium” Antipode 26, 2 (April 1994); David Harvey, Justice
Nature and the Geography of Difference, 1996; and Maureen Flannagan,
“Environmental Justice in the City: A Theme for Urban Environmental History”
Environmental History 5, 2 (April 2000): 159-164.

23
interconnection with the bathwater of a power-less and nature-less Chicago. 36

Only recently have scholars begun to reengage the interdependencies that have

historically constituted cities and their hinterlands.37 This new work broadens

Cronon’s focus on economic variables to include political and cultural dynamics.

It demonstrates that cities did not easily impose new orders upon their hinterlands;

the quest to control nature often clashed with antagonistic rural interests and the

intractability of environments. This contribution notwithstanding, rural “interests”

remain murky and their challenges to urbanization underscrutinized.38 Just as the

built city of Mexico is a palimpsest of historical struggle, its surrounding

36
A number of urban environmental historians have since examined the power
relations inherent in urban nature. See, for example, Andrew Hurley,
Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary,
Indiana, 1945-1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Ari
Kelman, A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003); Joanna Dyl, “The War on Rats versus the
Right to Keep Chickens: Plague and the Paving of San Francisco, 1907-1908” in
The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, and Urban Space ed Andrew C.
Isenberg (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006): 38-61; and
Harold Platt.
37
See the articles by Karl Appuhn and Andrew Isenberg in Part II “The
Geography of Power and Consumption” in The Nature of Cities; and Matthew
Klingle, Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2007). A new urban political ecology has, by overcoming the
dichotomous “culture” and “nature” ontology, opened up a world of possibilities
for the study of the ways in which “urbanized nature” constitutes and is constituted
by political power, resistance, and political economy. See Nik Heynen, Maria
Kaika, and E. Swngedouw ed, In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology
and the Politics of Urban Metabolism (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press,
2006).
38
One key exception is the recent dissertation by Andrew Needham, “Power
Lines: Urban Space, Energy Development and the Making of the Modern
Southwest” (PhD Diss., University of Michigan, 2006).

24
hinterlands become enmeshed in a field of struggle over the direction of urban

growth.

The reinterpretation of urbanization that I propose here alters a basic

assumption of the Mexican Revolution. Historians of the revolution have correctly

identified it as a primarily rural event and have centered their attention on

questions of rural authority and land tenure. In this dominant view, cities were

adversely affected by the tumultuous countryside, but they rarely formed the

spaces of revolutionary change.39 A budding group of urban historians has

introduced the city within revolutionary studies. They have explored tenant

strikes, worker organizing, prostitution, and architectural design, among other

important themes.40 Yet, these historians reproduce the assumption of the city as

an enclosed entity, sealed off from its surroundings, and particularly, the

momentous events of the violent and politically volatile countryside.

Revolutionary politics, I argue, were refracted through the prism of the urbanizing

39
See, for example, Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution. 2 vols. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1986); and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto,
hambre, y respuesta política” in Instituciones y ciudad: Ocho estudios históricos
sobre la ciudad de México eds., Carlos Illades and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri (Mexico
City: Sábado Distrito Federal, 2000): 133-64.
40
John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The revolution in Mexico City
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Michael Snodgrass, Deference and
Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism and Revolution in Mexico, 1890-
1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Andrew Wood, Revolution
in the Street: Women, Workers and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870-1927
(Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2001); Patrice Olsen, Artifacts of Revolution:
Architecture, Society and Politics in Mexico City, 1920-1940 (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); Thomas Benjamin, La Revolución: Mexico’s
Great Revolution as Memory, Myth and History (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2000); and Katherine Bliss, Compromised Positions.

25
impulse: real estate development, sanitary codes, forestry policies, and massive

hydraulic engineering projects. The city, its hinterland environments, and the

revolution composed a web of entangled relationships that once explored tells us

more about the meanings, transformations, and consequences of each.

Method and Structure

This dissertation seeks to unveil the multifaceted environmental politics of

an array of urban and rural popular groups as they engaged succeeding Mexican

governments’ projects and policies that regulated and reworked the Valley’s

nature. My study bridges urban and rural spheres, diversifying the kinds of

documents that writing has required. Thus I have relied on a number of archives

and libraries that shed new light on changing environmental governance and

popular imaginaries. At the National Archive (AGN), I consulted the documents

of the Ministry of Communications and Public Works (SCOP), the Ministry of

Agriculture and Development (SAF), the Ministry of Hydraulic Resources (SRH),

as well as the Ramos Presidenciales of each president from Madero to Alemán.

The Historic Archive of the Federal District (AHDF) contains a wealth of

information on water supply and sanitary policies within Mexico City and the

surrounding municipalities that the metropolis has since subsumed. Here, the

sections “Ayuntamiento,” “Municipalidades Foráneas,” “Consejo Superior del

Gobierno del Distrito Federal,” and “DDF Obras Públicas” were crucial

resources. The archive also contains a library where the Municipal Bulletin and

26
other urban governmental reports are stored. The Historical Archive of the Health

Ministry (AHSS) supplemented the municipal archive with data on urban sanitary

conditions and health policies. The neatly and electronically catalogued Historic

Water Archive (AHA), a gold mine for students of environmental history in

Mexico, supplied a wealth of material on national water policy and conflicts over

water rights. For these subjects, the collections “Aguas Nacionales,” and “Aguas

Superficiales” were most useful. The General Agrarian Archive (AGA) is

underutilized by environmental historians. The archive possesses information that

goes well beyond the politics of land tenure to include questions of soil quality,

forest rights, and water usage. Through researching the documents in “Dotación”

and “Ampliación,” I gained a clearer picture of community social relations,

environmental citizenship, and inter-community affairs.

I used newspaper articles to not only deepen my source base but also

crosscheck information acquired in the archives. The Hemeroteca Nacional and,

especially, the Archivos Económicos of the Lerdo de Tejada Library supplied most

of my newspaper material. Together, this extensive source base has allowed me to

follow a half century of conflicts over water, soil and forests during Mexico’s dual

revolution: one urban and one political.

This dissertation is comprised of three parts. The first part, “The

Porfiriato’s Nature,” consists of one chapter: “Transforming the Valley’s Nature:

The Porfirian City.” This chapter traces the development of Porfirian urban

modernity. The twin pillars of urban modernity, capitalist expansion and the

27
sanitary city, most frequently reinforced each other. They embraced Mexican

scientific politics and championed the nation’s capital as the locus of progress.

Within the city, however, there emerged a kernel of conflict between these two

forces. Sanitary codes, if their letter were enforced, had the potential to clamp

down on unfettered real estate growth, which exacerbated urban sanitary

inequalities. During the Porfiriato, the urban poor began to adopt the goals of an

ordered, hygienic city, embodied in sanitary policies and the development of

crucial hydraulic infrastructure, to obtain more livable environments. If the

Porfirian urban ideal cracked the window of opportunity for the urban poor, it

worked in tandem to close it for an array of rural communities who saw their

productive environments increasingly encroached upon.

The second part of the dissertation, “Sanitizing the City: The Politics of

Environmental Space in Mexico City,” is comprised of two chapters whose

dividing line is 1928, the year the postrevolutionary state abolished the city’s

municipal government and replaced it with a centralized Federal District authority.

The first of these chapters, “The Nature of the Urban Revolution I,” argues that the

politics of water supply in post-revolutionary Mexico were enmeshed in the

growth economy of urban real estate, public health discourse, and the climate of

social reform. The dominant ideology of public health established during the reign

of Díaz, in tandem with popular organization, structured environmental demands

at a time in which maintenance of the existing systems suffered and the economics

of growth precluded their extension. The tensions culminated in the water riot of

28
1922, when hundreds—perhaps thousands—protested the breakdown of service.

Far from alleviating sanitary inequalities, the riot further demonstrated the

instability and negligence of municipal governance, justifying the centralization of

urban authority under the Federal District Department (DDF).

The second chapter, “The Nature of the Urban Revolution II,” follows the

politics of the urban environment through the formation of the corporatist state in

the 1940s. I argue that the 1929 decree marked a turning point in sanitary politics.

Municipal governments filtered improvements to urban environments through the

prism of revolutionary justice, but popular expectations eclipsed concrete action.

Populist President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) continued earlier municipal

policies while his supporters increasingly organized and pressed environmental

demands. Instead of calling for local demands that stopped at the boundary of

each urban community—the hegemonic form of previous urban environmental

organizing—Cardenista organizations demanded sanitary services for all urban

residents, the capaciously defined “working class.” If social change was evident at

the bottom of the social strata, policy change from the top did not follow. Rather,

Cárdenas solidified the political strategy underway since 1929, ensuring the party

discipline and vertical orientation of popular organizations. These groups

succumbed to the machinery of the urban state.

The third and final part, “Forests, Springs, and Lakes: The Dual Revolution

in the Hinterlands,” examines the dialectic of revolutionary change and the

dominant paradigm of urban modernity manifested in sanitary ideals. The first

29
chapter, “Divided Forests, Contentious Waters: The Ajusco and Xochimilco in

Revolutionary Mexico,” argues that the tension created by the contradictory

hegemonic orders operating in the Valley engendered unique forms of

environmental citizenship in which local development figured prominently. The

pendulum of development swung, between about 1917 and 1940, ever so slightly

and unevenly toward popular uses of woodlands and water in the Ajusco and

Xochimilco. But during the 1940s, it swung back decisively to exclusive

development schemes, in which industrial resource uses fit like a glove with

sanitary objectives.

The final chapter, “‘The Lands with Which We Shall Struggle’: Land

Reclamation and Revolution in the Lake Texcoco Basin,” follows the unique case

study of Texcoco land reclamation, a forty-five year project that sought to reclaim

saline lands for agricultural production. The project initially excluded the

lakeshore poor, but the lands gained by communities during the early years of the

agrarian reform propelled them into the political limelight of reclamation during

the 1930s and early 1940s. Texcoco land reclamation, a long and immense

undertaking, captures the collision of the urbanizing impulse and rural

revolutionary justice. Yet, the project also represented the precarious and short-

lived political interdigitation of the rural and the urban. The Cardenista state

supported ejido agricultural pursuits while simultaneously solving the endemic

problem that Texcoco posed to urban prosperity. Similar to what happened around

Xochimilco and the Ajusco, however, the fleeting power of popular alternative

30
imaginaries disintegrated with the conservative turn in government and the

dominance of urban, industrial interests.

31
Fig. 1—Map of the Valley of Mexico (1909). Archivo Histórico del Agua, Aguas
Nacionales, 32, 412.

32
Part I: The Porfiriato’s Nature

33
 Chapter 1: Transforming the Valley’s Nature: The Porfirian City

In 1876, the victorious Tuxtepec rebels, led by Porfirio Díaz, unseated

Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada in what was seen by most Mexicans at the time as one

more rebellion, one more changing of the guard. But just as 1876 marked a

turning point in Mexican politics, the rise and consolidation of the Díaz regime

initiated the renewal of Mexico City as the embodiment of national modernity.

Díaz, the coarse Oaxacan general adopted the ways of the capitalinos and made

their dreams of a modernized Mexico City his own.

The travails of urban flooding captured the watershed moment in Mexican

urban and environmental history that Díaz’s hold on power represented. In 1856

under Ignacio Comonfort, the Mexican engineer Francisco de Garay proposed a

desagüe project consisting of a canal that would depart from the edge of Lake

Texcoco at San Lázaro and a tunnel that would rush water out of the Basin and

into the Gulf of Mexico. The ten million-peso project was approved, but

construction stalled amid rampant civil strife. Porfirian engineers modified de

Garay’s failed project in the early 1880s, only this time counting on stable

financial backing and foreign technological assistance. Heightened efforts to

produce a sanitary, ordered city were accompanied and enabled by capitalist

growth. These twin pillars of urban modernity drastically altered environments,

shaping the political parameters and possibilities for the Valley’s population.

Economic development and the sanitary city, comprised of hydraulic engineering

34
projects, sanitary codes, and forestry regulations, reinforced each other and

produced a dominant order of exclusive urban development that encroached upon

subsistence economies and worsened urban sanitary inequalities.

The city’s population rose dramatically and its commerce steadily grew

beginning in the 1870s. Money was freed for industrial and agricultural projects

all over the country, and many, not surprisingly, were initiated within the

mountainous walls of the Basin. Textile mills and haciendas expanded their

operations to meet growing urban demands by harnessing water resources; paper

factories began to exploit woodlands with the adoption of cellulose-based products

in 1891; and new railroads required wood for construction and fuel.

Undoubtedly, the period between 1876 and 1911 witnessed an increase in

nation-wide development spearheaded by a cadre of financial and economic elites,

both nationals and foreigners. But scholars have also shown that the state played

an increasing role in guiding and ordering the nation’s development.41 Nature, as

environments transformed and social uses regulated, constituted one central, if

understudied, realm of state intervention. In the Valley of Mexico, a space the

Porfirian elite often deemed threatening to prevailing urbanist paradigms, progress

depended on maintaining a health-giving, ordered city, what I call the sanitary

ideal. Such concerns were not unique to Mexico; cities around the world struggled

to sanitize and “tame” their surrounding environments. “Atlantic Crossings,” the

41
See, for example, Paul Garner, Díaz: Profiles in Power (London: Pearson,
2001); and Alan Knight, US-Mexican Relations, 1910-1940 a interpretation (La
Jolla: University of California, 1988).

35
kind Daniel Rodgers describes in his wonderful book on North Atlantic

progressivism, also involved Mexico, whose engineers, doctors, and officials had

long looked to Europe (and increasingly the United States) for visions of urban

modernity.42 Yet, the plans, programs, and ideas of an important section of

Mexico’s urban elite did not solely—or even primarily—derive from the

modernizing Atlantic World but rather from their own experiences of dirty

floodwaters, intolerable drinking water, economic oligarchies, and deforestation.

Nor did they contradict the reigning political philosophy of the day: scientific

politics, the term historian Charles Hale denotes for the unique blend of Mexican

liberalism, positivism, and social Darwinism. While historians have emphasized

the fiscal, economic, and educational goals of scientific politics in Mexico, the

rational management of society by a cadre of experts undergirded the philosophy.

Influenced by the tenets of positivism, the Porfirian elite hoped to govern society

by means of a “‘scientific plan of administration and politics, based on the

knowledge of the biological, social, and economic conditions of the country.’”43

In Mexico City, administration took the form of boards of experts guiding

important hydraulic engineering works, dictating sanitary policy, ordering urban

growth, and managing forests to prevent overexploitation.

42
See Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in the Progressive Era
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998).
43
La Libertad, June 13, 1878 quoted in Charles Hale, Transformation of
Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1989), 31.

36
 Administrative and technical interventions in the Valley simultaneously

reinforced social and spatial hierarchies, constituted through varying uses of

nature, and forged a set of concepts about sanitation and urban growth that both

popular groups either appropriated or contested, contingent upon their particular

socio-spatial location. By virtue of a new comprehensive sewerage system, for

example, some city residents could have their wastewater evacuated in a “modern”

fashion, while others remained mired in their own dirt, subjected to disease. In the

hinterlands, urban-motivated hydraulic works and forestry protection codes stifled

local lake-based and forest economies, which the urban technical elite cast as not

only backwards but also increasingly as impediments to urban progress. Because

of reinforced social hierarchies, the concepts of the ordered and hygienic city were

hotly contested. Whereas many rural communities protested prevailing

environmental policies that favored urban growth and industrial interests at their

expense, poor city dwellers excluded from development schemes appropriated the

sanitary ideal that their urban homologues espoused from above. As opposed to

what many elites who followed the “más administración, menos política,”

positivist dictum had hoped for, politics, in the form of social disputes over livable

and productive environments, increased toward the end of Díaz’s reign. The

disputes that marked the Porfiriato continued, albeit under distinct political

conditions, well into the twentieth century.

37
Part I: Sanitary Services, Hydraulic Infrastructure, and Urban Development,
1876-1910

Despite ongoing desiccation, Mexico City’s surroundings remained

covered by a few important lakes, numerous streams, and an interconnected

system of canals. At the same time, Mexico’s capital held the dubious distinction

as a grave public health menace whose mortality rates rivaled for the highest in the

world. Late nineteenth-century urban expansion magnified the city’s sanitary

deficiencies. To combat the environmental impediments to growth, Porfirian

governments—both municipal and national—invested over 40 million pesos

(roughly thirteen times the entire municipal budget of 1900) in urban hydraulic

infrastructure: the tripartite of sewerage, drainage, and drinking water. Concerns

over sanitary infrastructure created the conditions for environmental disputes

within the city and set off a series of distinct but related conflicts between urban

government and the surrounding hinterlands.

Sanitary Services in the Growing City, 1876-1900

By the first decade of the twentieth century, Mexico City passed from the

“City of Palaces,” Humboldt’s famous description of the capital of New Spain, to

the “City of Suburbs” (La ciudad de las colonias). This was the name Guillermo

Puga y Beltrán, head of the Public Works Department, bestowed upon the city in

1908 in reference to its explosive demographic and spatial expansion over the

previous several decades. In 1858 the city covered a mere 8.5 square kilometers

and had 200,000 residents. Fifty years later the area of the city had increased

38
nearly five fold to 40.5 square kilometers, and the population more than doubled to

almost 500,000.44 This was a sign of “modern progress” for Puga, who

imaginatively told of a colonial resident brought back to life in his now completely

“unfamiliar city.”45 The growth of Mexico’s capital exemplified the fast pace of

capitalist modernity where the city became the epicenter of investment and capital

flows in tandem with its traditional role as administrative and cultural hub. But

another symptom of modern progress hid behind Puga’s amazement: the

increasing spatial and social inequalities that capitalist urbanization brought about.

Mexicans and foreigners alike saw great potential for easy wealth in the

capital city once Díaz brought stability to the country. Wealthy individuals began

to buy up cheap land from ranchos and old haciendas around the outskirts. Before

long, companies formed to urbanize the land in a more comprehensive fashion.

The richest and most renowned elites of all of Mexico got involved, including the

Macedo, Noriega, and Braniff brothers, Fernando Pimentel, Guillermo de Landa y

Escandón, and Finance Minister José Yves Limantour.46 With tax breaks, little

regulation, and other indulgent concessions, this simple method reaped a bonanza

for its executors.47

44
María Dolores Morales, “La expansion de la ciudad de México en el siglo XIX:
el caso de los fraccionamientos” in Ciudad de México: Ensayo de Construcción de
una historia ed. Alejandra Moreno Toscano and Carlos Aguirre (Mexico City:
Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1978), 190.
45
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Colonias: 520/44.
46
See Jorge Jiménez Muñoz, La traza del poder: historia de la política y los
negocios urbanos en el Distrito Federal, de sus origenes a la desaparicón del
ayuntamiento (Mexico City: Codex, 1993).
47
See María Dolores Morales.

39
 While residents felt their city changing before their own eyes, some daily

services such as waste disposal and water supplies remained constant until the turn

of the century. The city’s waste disposal, similar to systems elsewhere, was a

hodgepodge of services consisting of septic pits (fosas sépticas), open gutters, and

in some central sections, underground pipes.48 Few inhabitants enjoyed a personal

drainage connection from their home to the municipal pipe or canal. However,

these pipes were porous, the bane of public health officials who wanted to

maintain the city’s water system pure and the ground free of waste. Many denizens

used fosas sépticas, which were emptied at night and the wastes often dumped at

the edge of Lake Texcoco. Lacking a fosa séptica, others simply deposited their

wastes into the open gutters or directly onto the street. For those familiar with

Mexican slang, the phrase “Aguas” (watch out) derives from such historical waste

disposal practices. Outdoor defecation was commonplace, since most poor homes

and tenements lacked toilets, and public restrooms were scarce and poorly kept.

When toilets existed, feces and urine were often carried through buildings in open

sewers, which terminated in the street.49

The city’s drainage canals emptied eventually into Lake Texcoco, the city’s

“ultimate sink.”50 Yet often in the dry season, the sewage became stagnant, lifting

a pestilent miasma across entire blocks and neighborhoods. While miasma theory

48
See Joel Tarr, “Sewerage and the Development of the Networked City in the
United States, 1850-1930,” in Technology and the Rise of the Networked City
49
Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2001), 28.
50
See Joel Tarr, The Search for the The Ultimate Sink.

40
dominated late nineteenth century Mexican—and international—epidemiology,

residents no doubt feared more than noxious vapors. 51 Prevailing northerly winds

during the dry season lifted up briny dust from dried Texcoco and in mixing with

the city’s animal and human waste formed a deadly cocktail, contaminating shops,

homes, and restaurants. In the rainy season, the opposite—but no less terrifying—

occurred. The canals and Lake Texcoco itself would overflow their banks, and the

city would be submerged in its own waste. One of these giant floods occurred in

October of 1886, provoking one major city paper to ask facetiously, ‘Is this city a

seaport?’52 The municipal government, in response, raised some central streets,

but this temporary solution only worsened flooding on streets that had not been

raised.53 The year before, incidentally, Mexico City was ravaged by drought, and

pestilent miasmas pestered city residents. The great stink of 1885 induced the

Mexican Academy of Medicine to call upon the scientific community to discover

the source of these disease-causing miasmas. They identified Lake Texcoco,

which had become a stench-filled salt flat that year, the primary culprit.54

51
Paul Ross examines the transition from miasma theory to Pasteur’s
bacteriological theory of disease in Mexico. From Sanitary Police to Sanitary
Dictatorship: Mexico’s Nineteenth Century Public Health Movement (Ph.D Diss.,
University of Chicago, 2005).
52
Moíses González Navarro, “México en una laguna,” Historia Mexicana 4
(1955).
53
See Johns for quote, 44; and also see Diego López Rosado, Los servicios
públicos de la ciudad de México (Mexico City: Porrua, 1976), 197.
54
Margarito Crispin Castellanos, “Cloacas y letrinas en la ciudad de México: el
problema de las excretas humanas (1769-1900)” in Cuadernos para la historia de
la salud ed. Margarito Crispin Castellanos and Teresa Hernández Elizalde (Mexico
City: Secretaría de Salud, 1994).

41
Miasmas, drought or no drought, were so extant that one newspaper, spoofing

Humboldt (apparently a common practice) renamed it “the city of the miasma.”55

Scientists also believed miasmas contaminated the public water fountains

and open-air aqueducts.56 Public officials aimed for a rational distribution of water

whereby the combination of pipes, fountains, hydrants, and registered private wells

would ensure an adequate and safe supply to the populace from the myriad sources

around the Valley of Mexico. Order and public health were of the utmost

importance, but the built-in spatial inequalities of the city, reproduced by new

development, and administrative deficiencies often interfered with the ideal.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Mexico City relied on water sources

that placed its prosperity on the delicate balance of the economic and social

relations of the hinterland. The springs of the mountainous woodlands of Desierto

de los Leones and Santa Fé, the newly inaugurated Hondo River system as well as

the historic Chapultepec Park, all to the west and southwest of the urban center,

provided the city with its water needs. Seasonal variation beset the supply, and the

eastern and northern sections suffered the most during the dry season.57 The

55
El Ferrocaril, Sep 8, 1870, quoted in Memorias y encuentros: La ciudad de
México y el Distrito Federal (1824-1928) vol. 2. ed. Hira de Gortari and Regina
Hernandez (Instituto Mora: DF, 1998), 92.
56
Peñafiel, writing in 1884, cautioned of the “putrefaction” of those waters from
among other sources, the foul Lake Texcoco. Antonio Peñafiel,
“Aprovechamiento de Los Manantiales de Xochimilco para Abastecer de Agua
Suficiente a la Ciudad de México” Memoria de la Sociedad Científica Antonio
Alzate (MSCAA) 11 (1897): 254; and Memoria sobre las agua potables de la
capital de México (Mexico City, 1884) 124, and 127
57
José Lorenzo Cossio, “Las aguas de la ciudad” Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana
de Geografía y Estadística (BSMGE) 45 (1935-1937), 40.

42
municipal government (Ayuntamiento) generally compensated shortage from one

source by augmenting the production of others so that on average the city

consumed about 34,000 liters per minute. Under a perfect distribution system,

each person would have enjoyed an average of 131 liters per day, but waste and

public uses severely reduced this figure to well below the 150 liters that public

health authorities recommended.58

The problem of ensuring an adequate and sanitary water supply started at

the source and continued down the line, linking “production” and consumption.

Landowners and the rural poor separately challenged the urbanization of water.59

A top priority of the Ayuntamiento during the era of Porfirian growth was to

capture titles over precious sources of water that the city would need in the future.

In 1882, the city successfully petitioned the government for the right to expropriate

any water source that it saw fit.60 At first glance, it would seem that such a

categorical decree would have conferred upon the municipal government utter

domination over the water resources of the Valley of Mexico. The reality was

much fuzzier, however. Landowners stood behind contradictory legislation that

defended their property rights and, capitalizing off their privileged possession of

58
See José Alvarez Amezquita, Miguel E. Bustamante, Francisco Fernandez del
Castillo and Antonio López Picasos, Historia de la salubridad y de la asistencia
en Mexico (Mexico City: 1960), 85. Regardless, without bathrooms and showers
in a majority of residences, 150 liters per person would have been unattainable for
most urban residents. And the fact that a minority had private bathrooms
excacerbated consumption inequalities.
59
See the recent compilation In the Nature of Cities for theoretical and empirical
studies on the way nature is transformed and reassembled in the making of cities.
60
In Hira de Gortari Rabiela and Regina Hernández Memorias y encuentros vol 2.,
339

43
an essential urban resource, demanded substantial sums of money in return. When

in the late 1890s, the city searched for sources to compliment the existing supply,

landowners did not hesitate to demand upward of 2 million pesos. In dismay over

the prohibitive demands, the Ayuntamiento accepted only two offers: the waters of

the Río Hondo and several springs in Desierto de los Leones. Land in the latter

was especially important because it included forests crucial to the conservation of

the springs.61 One opportunistic landowner, Rafael Chausal, took advantage of his

position as personal secretary to Díaz, as well as the city’s dire thirst, to dispossess

smaller landowners of their water and to sell it to the Ayuntamiento. While

profiting to the amount of several hundred thousand pesos through the

underhanded dealings, the city only minimally increased its supply, at the overall

cost of nearly a million pesos.62

The tribulations of supplying sufficient and sanitary water continued in

route to the city. The next obstacle was vigilance and maintenance, as industry

and villages competed for use of the city’s water. Two principal aqueducts

connected the sources to the city’s network of pipes. Uncovered for most of the

journey, mills and numerous villages utilized legally and illegally the city’s “agua

delgada,” the supply line from Santa Fe, Desierto de los Leones and later the Rio

Hondo.63 For example, the Santa Fé mill used “without any right” the city’s

61
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas, Desierto de Los Leones (DL) and Santa Fé (SF),
52, 35, “Juan Rondero to city council: June 26, 1886.
62
José L. Cossio, “Las aguas de la ciudad,” 43-5.
63
Colonial naturalists divided drinking water into two categories based on mineral
composition: agua delgada and agua gorda—comparable to our soft versus hard

44
waters to wash wheat while the Ayuntamiento frequently cited the “abuses” of the

Belen Mill. In another instance, the town of Santa Fé, in exchange for use of its

property to construct the aqueduct, had reached an agreement with the city to open

a connecting pipe of 2.8 centimeters in diameter. Several decades later, city

inspectors discovered that the pipe actually measured 5.4 centimeters, which

translated into a much more significant supply to the town.64 In Cuajimalpa, a

pueblo southwest of Mexico City, the city’s water guard reported that villagers

were stealing water to irrigate their fields, “under the pretext that it is their right.”

Defending himself, the guard claimed that he could not stop the abuse because “he

would have to go against the entire town.”65 Another guard reported soldiers

taking baths in the aqueduct while a government official reported the constant theft

of water by hacendados in the municipality of Tacubaya.66 The urbanization of

water was, and would continue to be, a contentious affair, one pitting property and

village rights against the city government. The city did not always win the battle.

water. While the water from Chapultepec, the agua gorda, was thought to be
heavy and not as digestible due to sodium and calcium content, Santa Fé and
Desierto water was considered excellent in quality. See Musset, 77.
64
Ignacio Pozo, Informe sobre el ramo de aguas presentado al ayuntamiento de
1887 (México: Ireneo Paz, 1888): 7-14. For an account of the negotiations
between Santa Fé and the city, see AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Aguas DL and SF, 53,
22, “Dictamen del Ayuntamiento de Santa Fe,” May 21, 1880.
65
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Aguas, Cuajimalpa, 50, 25 “Guardamontes to Comision
de agua,” March 1, 1874. The city council legalized the village’s claim to the
aqueduct the following year. See Ibid., expediente 26.
66
See AHDF: Aguas, DL and SF, June, 1877; and Aguas, DL and SF 53, 24,
“Ramón Fernandez to Ayuntamiento,” April 13, 1883. When authorities got word
of the bathing episode, the city cut the water for four hours.

45
Numerous rural interests competed for their perceived right to use the urban

infrastructure.

Just as waste disposal varied by class and across space, residents faced

segregated water distribution. In the mid 1880s, 1600 of 7150 of the city’s

residences (about 20%)—homes of the wealthy and convents primarily—received

direct connections to the municipal supply, a long-standing marker of social

status.67 Chronic leaking debilitated an already feeble supply system, leading

many wealthier residents, businesses, and convents to open their own private

wells.68 Estimating the number of private wells was no easy task, as demonstrated

by the divergent statistics of the era. According to one estimate, the city counted

331 private wells in 1893, but only nine years later, the government counted

almost 1,400.69 The vast majority of the population obtained water from the

67
José Lorenzo Cossio, “Las aguas de la ciudad,” 40; Ariel Rodríguez Kuri,
“Gobierno local y empresas de servicios: La experiencia de la ciudad de México
durante el Porfiriato” in Ferrocarriles y obras públicas eds. Priscilla Conolly and
Sandra Kuntz Ficker (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1999), 172; and Alain Musset,
87. It must be noted that the count of 7,150 residences provided by Lorenzo
Cossio was likely much too low, considering the city had about 350,000 people.
By 1900, city boster Jesús Galindo y Villa counted 6,324 homes with connections
out of a total of more than 14,000 residences. See Galindo y Villa, Reseña
histórica-descriptiva de la ciudad de México (Mexico City: Díaz de Leon, 1901),
167. This represented a significant increase in connections, percentage of homes
with connections, and number of residences over a mere 15 years. While Galindo
y Villa’s figure on the number of homes appears more credible, both indicate that
only a minority had access to private water taps.
68
Nearly half of the private wells in 1883 were found in the seventh and eighth
cuarteles on the western side of the city. See José L. Cossio, Guía retrospectiva de
la ciudad de México, (Mexico City: Segumex, 1990, 2nd edition), 139.
69
Luis Salazar, On the Distribution of water in the City of Mexico Trans. by Alfred
Sears (International Engineering Congress of the Columbia Exposition, 1893),
178.

46
approximately 80 public fountains or the unknown number of hydrants that dotted

the city.70

The Ayuntamiento tolerated these wells for the relief they gave the

municipal supply, but, concerned about the spread of disease, began to regulate

them. While an 1897 law exempted properties with a well from soliciting a

municipal connection, a reform in the 1902 sanitary code made such a connection

mandatory, despite the pre-existence of a pure water source. Evidently, the reform

had the purpose of guaranteeing the health of urban denizens, but it may also have

represented an income boost to the municipality, given the surge in taxpayers. The

reform was ultimately overturned since, as the sanitary engineer Roberto Gayol

observed, “the properties that solicit service will not improve their hygienic

conditions, in fact, many will worsen their condition, and the general water service

of the city will feel sharply the considerable increase in connections that

undoubtedly will make the water shortage be felt even more.”71 Instead of

stretching the municipal service to the limit, the government opted to regulate the

private well system. Since 1897, municipal law required that property-owners

verify the drinkability of their well water using a test of chemical and mineral—

not yet bacteriological—composition, but this regulation was poorly enforced.

70
This number is from 1887. See AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Aguas, Fuentes
Públicas, 59/143: Report from the Water Commission,” April 19, 1887. The most
famous fountain was the Salto de Agua, the resting point of the Chapultepec
waters. The fountain has been preserved, and the nearby metro stop now carries
its name.
71
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Consejo Superior del Gobierno del Distrito Federal
(CSGDF), Aguas, 585, 2, “Gayol to the Secretary of Consejo,” August 31, 1903.

47
Once the municipal supply improved and bacteriology triumphed, a 1911

regulation mandated that owners both test bacterial levels and ensure an adequate

supply.72

Many private wells were in better condition than the public fountains,

which public health advocates maligned for their lack of cleanliness and scant

water flow. With about 80 in 1887, the public fountain was a vibrant social

meeting place in Porfirian Mexico City.73 Their benefactor was the aguador (water

carrier), “one of the purest types of folkloric flavor” and a fixture of social life in

nineteenth-century Mexico City. The business was lucrative for those who could

enter its ranks, as they charged a steep price for bringing the precious liquid to the

tables and kitchens of homes and restaurants. 74 The city held the aguadores

responsible for ensuring the cleanliness of the fountains, but in poor areas—where

aguadores had less incentive to operate—many fountains were left unattended. It

was common to see women washing clothes in them, and sanitary inspectors often

found garbage littered inside. Municipal officials also targeted the public health

threat that the fountains posed. In 1889 the Ayuntamiento began to replace the

fountains with street taps (or hydrants), whose virtue was the protection of the

72
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, CSGD, Aguas, 586, 27, July 3, 1911.
73
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas, Fuentes Públicas, 59, 143, “Informe de la
comision de aguas,” April 19, 1887.
74
See Manuel Carrera Stampa, Los planos de la ciudad de México (desde 1521 a
nuestros días) (Mexico City: Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y
Estadística, 1949), 189; and Antonio García Cubas, El libro de mis recuerdos
(Mexico City: Porrua, 1904), 271-75. The aguadores dressed the same and carried
a chochocol, a spherical clay vessel for the portage of water.

48
water supply from external pollution.75 The aguador thus lost his raison d’etre.

Once more residents had access to either personal or communal taps, this “fixture

of social life” disappeared.

Even as taps replaced the derelict and polluted fountains, obtaining water

proved a difficult task for a majority of the populace living in the northern and

eastern section (cuarteles 1, 2, 3, 5). The extravagant culture of water use among

the wealthy, whose residences stretched westward from the central square (zócalo)

combined with the spatial distribution of the city to exhaust the municipal supply.

The poor—lacking in nearby taps and fountains—often clandestinely obtained

water from the city’s fire hydrants, a common practice that Guillermo Beltrán y

Puga was quick to deride. He castigated sanitation employees for leaving the

valves open, allowing any person “to obtain water easily and in abundance” thus

causing “grave alterations (transtornos) in the water distribution regime.”76

75
See AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas, Fuentes Públicas 59, 145 and 148, reports of
Comisión de aguas; and Salazar, 11.
76
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas en General 42, 571, “Beltrán y Puga to the
Secretary of Ayuntamiento,” May 10, 1901.

49
 Fig. 2—Map of Mexico City’s cuarteles. López Rosado, 1976.

With access to aqueducts as they entered the city, many property-owners in

the sixth, seventh, and eighth cuarteles boasted a superior supply for their domestic

uses. Some enjoyed the privilege of maintaining gardens. But even among the

capital’s wealthy classes, supply was an important concern. Many landlords and

homeowners had to supply residences with pumps to compensate for the lack of

pressure in the pipes.77 Sometimes, even then, there was simply no water at all.

Accustomed to irrigating their gardens with tap water, wealthy residents from the

77
See Manuel Marroquín y Rivera, Memoria descriptiva de las obras de provision
de agua potable para la ciudad de México (Mexico City: Müller Hermanos,
1914), 4

50
centrally located “Portal de Las Flores” reluctantly sought water from the public

fountains of the zócalo when their taps ran dry.78

Moreover, the quality of the water was rarely uniform across the city. The

water from the springs of Chapultepec was renowned for its apparent purity

(though it often had hidden bacteria as bacteriologists would later discover), while

water from distant mountainous sources—while believed to be easily digested—

would often arrive laden with both bacteria and clay. On Vergara street, “where I

bathed,” engineer José Cossio recalled, “upon drying off with a towel, it turned

completely muddy.”79 The south side of the city had the advantage of using the

Chapultepec water while the water in the northern section north was often “the

color of tepache” (a brownish-yellow alcoholic beverage).80 The ideal of a clean

and ordered water system broke down in the face of the spatial inequalities of

urban life and administrative deficiencies.

The coupling of poor sewerage and water systems chagrined public health

officials of Porfirian Mexico. Díaz had created the Superior Health Council,

which devoted almost the entirety of its financial and human resources to

safeguarding the well being of the nation’s capital. Health inspectors conducted

yearly inspections of each cuartel, shining light on the sanitary conditions of

streets and neighborhoods. Naturally, the most atrocious conditions followed

areas with poor drainage and deficient water. And poor drainage followed scarce

78
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Aguas en General, 41, 502, “Complaint to Water
Commision,” May, 1898.
79
José L Cossio, “Las aguas de la ciudad,” 40.
80
Ibid.

51
water connections since without a residential connection waste stagnated inside

residences. An adequate supply of water was also essential for washing streets,

sidewalks, and patios of human and animal (primarily horses’) waste as well as

dust and garbage.81 Explaining his observations of the first cuartel, J. R de

Arellano noted the scarcity of both water and drainage, “the two highest ideals of

hygiene.”82 Yet in typical elitist fashion, Arellano did not hesitate to place the

blame for the wretched conditions on the inhabitants themselves. Apparently

unaware of any contradiction, Arellano scorned their lack of cleanliness, “the true

domestic virtue.”83 While the second cuartel received an equally appalling grade,

the seventh and eighth received high marks, in part, because of the adequate flow

of clean water into neighborhoods and the flow of dirty water out. The wealthy

and growing west side took advantage of the water supply closest to its source, and

sent dirty water eastward toward Lake Texcoco, a double sanitary strike to

spatially disadvantaged residents.

Porfirian water and drainage systems both represented and constituted

the spatial inequalities that prevailed within Mexico City and between the city and

its hinterlands. The stark divisions were often met with negotiation or clandestine

resistance on the part of industry and popular groups who sought to protect or

81
In May, 1903, the gendarme of the Plazuela de la Concordia reported to the
Direction of Water that the local public fountain lacked water, which residents had
to use for street cleaning. See AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas en General, 42, 613
“Gendarme to Dirección de Aguas.” See also 42, 614, “Residents of Plazuela de la
Sociedad to the President of the Ayuntamieno,” January 20, 1903.
82
Informes Rendidos por los inspectors sanitarios de Cuartel (Mexico City:
Imprenta del Gobierno, 1898), 12.
83
Ibid., 11.

52
expand their perceived rights to water. For health officials, the sanitary ideal,

although it embraced the rational administration and expansion of sanitary

services, simultaneously supported the city’s spatial divisions by portraying the

poor as responsible for their own dirt, disease, and death. They were a convenient

scapegoat, a way for officials close to Díaz to deflect responsibility for the

atrocious conditions. Yet, for sanitary officials, if the poor had to be educated,

government also had to inject a large dose of technology that could transform the

capital into a modern city, on par with major European metropolises. The

historian Claudia Agostoni has revealed the essential contradiction: the urban elite

created a discourse about the city “in which hygiene, health, morality, order, and

cleanliness were woven together as goals to be achieved, and the threat posed to

the city (civilization) by the proximity of an untamed environment and by its

inhabitants (barbarians) had to be dealt with.”84

The Problem of Sewage

The so-called untamed environment of the Valley of Mexico topped the list

of Porfirian engineering challenges. The governing elite had to find a way to put

an end to the incessant Texcoco problem, an intricate quagmire that encompassed

public health knowledge and conceptualizations of urban modernity. Flooded

streets brought on the dubious commentaries of foreign dignitaries and tourists.

As long as the inhabitants’ own excrement might be in public view, the late

84
Agostoni, 41.

53
nineteenth-century vision went, Mexico City could not be a first-rate city. And,

according to prevailing miasmatic public health precepts, disease literally rose

from dirty—and especially stagnant—water. The Porfirian elite, therefore, carried

out two related hydraulic projects to rid the city of both floodwater and

wastewater.

Historians have interpreted the general desagüe of Mexico City, a canal

and tunnel to evacuate floodwaters out of the Basin, in a variety of lights. It has

been characterized as a “monument of progress” for the Porfirian elite who

claimed to have overcome an important menace to public health.85 Others have

similarly depicted it as a physical embodiment of Porfirian modernity, where goals

to demonstrate the power of the Porfirian state merged with the ideal to dominate

nature in the Faustian sense.86 Still others have categorized the desagüe as an

example of external-led development, or as an environmental disaster for the local

ecology with grave consequences for the sustainability of the contemporary city.87

By synthesizing these diverse perspectives, a more complete understanding

of the desagüe emerges. The high-profile engineering project was the

crystallization of the interaction of late nineteenth-century science, Porfirian state

formation, and concerns over urban prosperity. Doctors and engineers such as

85
See Ibid
86
See Elizabeth Mansilla, Como Porfirio Díaz dominó las aguas (Mexico City,
1994); and Perló Cohen, El paradigma porfiriano. As much as Mansilla
champions the drainage works, Perló Cohen is as critical of them.
87
See Patricia Romero Lankao, La obra hidraúlica de la ciudad de México y su
impacto socioambiental, 1880-1990 (Mexico City: Mora, 1999); and Vuelta a la
ciudad lacustre: memorias del congreso, Octubre 1998 (Mexico City: Instituto de
la Cultura de la Ciudad de México, 1998).

54
Antonio Peñafiel, Roberto Gayol, Luis Espinosa, and Eduardo Licéaga linked

Texcoco’s foul waters to the city’s sanitary misery. If public health, according to

this distinguished elite, rested on massive new urban infrastructure, public displays

of technical advancement unveiled Díaz’s power as a ruler as well as the progress

of his regime. In order to secure urban prosperity, the desague, like other technical

interventions that followed, radically disrupted local environments, and, as a

consequence, altered city-hinterland relationships in ways that had profound

consequences in the decades to come. Yet, neither a vague notion of the conquest

of nature, an idea that pits society against nature, nor unsustainability as such, an

idea that tends to cloud social relations, defined the project. Rather, such

engineering works entailed specific transformations of local ecologies that served

first and foremost to reproduce certain social and spatial relations. In this case, the

project aimed to further Mexico City’s prosperity in relation to environments and

their attendant uses that undermined prevailing notions of urban modernity.88

Díaz authorized the creation of the Junta Directiva del Desagüe del Valle

de México (The Directive Board of the Drainage of the Valley of Mexico) in 1886.

Presided over by Limantour, the board comprised of many of the nation’s leading

88
The idea of the domination of nature by society presupposes that the Valley’s
ecosystems were in some way autonomous entities that could be easily controlled.
Floodwaters were socio-ecological phenomenon generated from centuries of
deforestation, erosion, failing hydraulic infrastructure, and urban growth over the
dried lakebeds. Drainage projects thus attempted to control the consequences of
an already dynamic socio-ecology. They did not represent human ingenuity
conquering an a priori nature. For related questions on the problematic of the
domination of nature, see Reiner Grundmann, Marxism and Ecology (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991).

55
engineers including Luis Espinosa and Miguel Ángel de Quevedo. Mexican

engineers oversaw the canal and tunnel project that would carry Texcoco’s waters

out of the Valley and into the Gulf of Mexico. Soon thereafter, the Junta

contracted the British business magnate, Weetman Dickinson Pearson to execute

the project under its direct supervision. Pearson brought over colossal dredge

machines, one of which was named for the president’s wife Carmen, and steam

shovels.89 Despite British technical prowess, the massive project was laden with

environmental obstacles, including, above all, landslides.90 After over a decade of

digging, dredging, and mountain moving, the Porfirian elite celebrated this unique

feat of hydraulic engineering.91 At its inauguration in 1900, Díaz pronounced the

end of inundations, boasted of the project as “the highest achievement of his

government,” and called it one of the “greatest that modern man has been able to

carry out.”92 The capital’s newspapers joined in admiration of the project,

testament to Mexican progress and urban sanitation. The city’s chief booster and a

major politician, Jesús Galindo y Villa, stated that “while the grand work was not

89
Shawn William Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 143-4.
90
For environmental obstacles, see Romero lankao, 47. We know that labor
control issues dogged previous drainage attempts dating back to the colonial
period, but the labor regime of the late nineteenth century project still needs to be
written. See Vera S. Candiani “Bad Neighbors: City and Country in the Desagüe
de Huehuetoca” (Unpublished paper: New York Workshop in Latin American
History).
91
The project was unique by virtue of the lack of any natural outlet towards the
sea.
92
See Perló Cohen, Paradigma porfiriano, 27; and González Navarro, 516.

56
carried out, the city could not prosper, more still its very existence was seriously

threatened.”93

Yet the city flooded again in 1910, the year of the centennial celebrations.

While minor in comparison to previous ones, the continued flooding and

persistently high mortality rates upended the rhetorical flourishes of public

officials. Indeed, in 1910 supporters of Díaz’s opponent, Francisco Madero, used

the city’s unsanitary conditions as fodder for their critique of the regime.94

The desagüe system, for the most part, succeeded in its task of reducing

flooding in Mexico City, but its deficiencies showed up after a few decades. First,

the project did not account for urban growth. Espinosa’s canal design allowed for

17.5 cubic meters of wastewater flow (and even less for the tunnel), in comparison

to Garay’s earlier design that would have doubled the potential flow. If Espinosa’s

design served its purpose in 1900, by the 1920s, it had begun to show signs of

stress. Second, the sedimentation of the canal bottom required constant

maintenance, something succeeding governments were not always disposed to

carry out.

If for many the desagüe represented the advance of urban modernity, for

others on the outskirts of the capital city, the public works project further strained

local means of subsistence based on the moribund lacustrine system. Contrary to

popular belief, the Junta did not intend to entirely drain the lake. Engineers drew

93
Boletín Municipal, “Las obras públicas en el Valle de México,” May 29, 1903
94
Miller, 145. Of course, the high mortality rates were caused by more than
simply drainage and water deficiencies. Poor nutrition, lack of medical service,
and infected food also loomed large in disease and death.

57
on the ideas of the creole naturalist José Antonio de Alzate and Alexander Von

Humboldt, which recognized the importance of maintaining a significant part as a

regulator of the Valley’s hydrology and a buttress against bacteria- and salt-ridden

dust storms. Yet, by evacuating excess floodwaters, the lake did drain at a faster

rate, disturbing hunting and fishing economies and exacerbating dust storms.

Villages such as San Juan Aragón, Peñon de los Baños, Ecatepec, and Salvador

Atenco relied on the hunting of waterfowl, bug collection for sustenance, fishing,

and salt extraction, all of which required the conservation of the lake

environment.95 As we shall see in chapter five, the drainage project marked just

the beginning of public works projects in the Texcoco basin. Post-revolutionary

governments found the drainage system to be incomplete and sought to reclaim the

land for agriculture, a project that engaged more directly with local communities.

The vast historiography of the desagüe has occluded the city’s other

drainage project: the sewage system responsible for the evacuation of wastewater

into the Gran Canal.96 Designed and executed by Roberto Gayol, the system was

the necessary complement to the general drainage. After all, what good would the

Gran Canal serve if the wastewater of over 300,000 people continued to stagnate

95
See Alfonso L. Herrera, “Fauna del lago de Texcoco,” in Instituto Médico
Nacional, Estudios Referentes a la desecación del Lago de Texcoco (Mexico City:
IMI, 1895): 45-47; Luis Murrillo, El pato silvestre: Notas arregladas para los
maestros principaintes (Mexico City: A Carranza, 1910), and Ursula Ewald, The
Mexican Salt Industry, 1560-1980, a Study in Change (New York: Gustav Fisher
Verlag, 1985), 39-41. For colonial era descriptions, see Charles Gibson, 338-44
96
Due to Mexico City’s unique geography, the city upgraded its sewer system
before its water system. In most North American cities, comprehensive drinking
water networks were constructed before sewerage.

58
in the lake basin, or, worse yet, within the city itself? Just as the Gran Canal

transformed hinterland ecologies, Gayol’s sewer system transformed the urban

environment through the more efficient circulation of waste underground. This

project had its limitations as well. The network not only reproduced urban spatial

inequalities but also disregarded the rapid contemporaneous expansion of the city.

The primary difference between the two hydraulic projects, for our purposes, was

the distinct ways in which popular groups engaged them. Whereas the Gran Canal

signified diminished subsistence economies for lakeshore villages, urban

communities, espousing cleanliness, public health, and their own idea of urban

progress, sought to connect their neighborhoods to the new sewage system. The

contradiction between the sanitarian ideal and the city’s segregated sanitary

geography encouraged environmental citizenship—in this case, prior to the

revolution.

As the general drainage works got underway, the city council hired Gayol

to study the options for a new sewer system that would work in tandem with the

soon-to-be completed drainage system. Seven years later, in 1895, the council

approved his combined system proposal.97 The combined system comprised of

vitrified clay sewers to collect house refuse, brick collectors to receive the refuse

and carry it outside the city, as well as flushing pipes. Authorities boasted that the

97
Gayol found that the “combined” system, which carried both waste and
rainwater, was more suitable to Mexico City than the “separate” system. For the
historical uses of and the debates surrounding the two methods of waste disposal
in the United States, see Joel Tarr, “The Separate vs. Combined Sewer Problem: A
Case Study in Urban Technology Design Choice” Journal of Urban History 5, 3
(1979): 308-339

59
system was the first of any to flush its pipes on a regular basis, for which the

plentiful water of the Valley was advantageously used.98 In his vision, no longer

would wastewater sit in open canals at street level, no longer would animal and

human excrement seep into the ground, and the filthy waters of Lake Texcoco

would be a fading memory. The application of science, as Gayol exclaimed,

would “resolve the material difficulties with which humanity has to struggle” by

conquering “physical obstacles.”99

The Junta Directiva del Saneamiento de la Ciudad de México (The

Directive Board of Sewerage of Mexico City), established in 1896 and directed by

Gayol, managed the works.100 But, like the Junta del Desagüe, this Board

contracted out much of the work to a foreign enterprise, in this case the French

firm Letlier and Vezin. Construction began immediately but was anything but tidy.

Both the Junta and the city’s Public Works Commission reported that contractors

left rubble and machinery strewn about construction sites. One official requested

that the Junta inform the contractors that “the streets are dedicated for transit and

are not to serve as a permanent deposit for any type of material.” Another report

claimed that major thoroughfares such as Balderas had been obstructed and that

98
The landowner Iñigo Noriega was granted permission to drain Lake Chalco in
order to expand his capitalist agricultural endeavors. One of the stipulations of the
contract, however, mandated that Noriega allow the city to use the drained waters
to flush the network.
99
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Desagüe de la Ciudad, 744, 148 Roberto Gayol, “Breve
descripción del proyecto de desagüe y saneamiento de la ciudad de México,”
December 14, 1895.
100
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Desagüe de la ciudad, 744, 148, “Formación de la Junta
directiva,” April 15, 1896.

60
rubble prevented the repaving of streets.101 Street repaving was a particularly

prickly issue. Streets had recently been paved (many for the first time) only to see

them torn up for the new sewer system. 102 Dust filled the atmosphere, and after

heavy rains, rubble-filled streets became rivers. Curiously, the construction of the

city’s first comprehensive sewerage project temporarily worsened the problem it

sought to amend.

Construction nuisances were the least of some inhabitants’ worries. The

city issued eminent domain (expropiación) decrees in over 90 cases, some of

which met with protest by the affected individuals. In one case, officials forcefully

removed a tenant who had refused to comply.103 Expropriated property included

both residences of the wealthy and poor, and their estimated value ranged from

300 to 10,000 pesos, suggesting that many were tenement buildings rather than

one-family units. An untold number of tenants were evicted from their homes.

For much of the urban populace, the project symbolized hope that they too

could prosper from the sanitarian goals of turn-of-the-century Mexico City. Both

individuals and small groups raised their voices against the malfeasance or neglect

of the contractors. They complained of flooded streets and homes due to poorly

101
See AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Desagüe de la ciudad, 746, 174, “Comisión de OP
to Junta,” October 8, 1901; and 765, 168, various documents.
102
See Lopez Rosado, 191; and González Navarro. About ten years later, the
same streets were torn up again, this time for the city’s water pipes.
103
See AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Desagüe de la ciudad, 746, 174, 180, and 191,
various documents; and 746, 170, “Sala de comisiones to city council,” June 1,
1900.

61
placed or obstructed sewers and the absence of necessary connections.104

Residents served the role of watchdogs during the construction process, revealing

breaches in the company’s contract. Many complaints resulted in improved and

more egalitarian service. Urban inhabitants thus participated in the engineers’

putatively unique domain of resolving “material difficulties.”

Many of the outlying sections of the city were bereft of sewer connections.

Residents of the recently constructed subdivision, la Bolsa, infamous for its

abysmal condition, complained to Gayol that they had not received a connection to

the collector that passed by their neighborhood. The engineer’s vague and

supercilious response emphasized that the residents should remain hopeful just by

the fact that a collector had been constructed in their area, thereby implying the

despair that subdivisions farther from the system must have experienced. Gayol

later stated that la Bolsa would have connections within two months. As the

emptiness of Gayol’s promise sunk in, residents again petitioned for service. At

the height of the rainy season, the waters had “invaded the interiors of many

rooms,” and residents asserted that “undoubtedly the diseases will be quick to take

hold in this colonia, perhaps the poorest and thus the most worthy of connection

[to the system].”105 Employing a trope of lurking disease, residents of la Bolsa

challenged the system’s reproduction of sanitary inequalities. Gayol’s promise of

104
See AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Desagüe y Sanamiento, Junta Directiva, 758, 81,
various documents.
105
See AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Desagüe y Sanamiento, junta directiva, 758, 81,
Gayol to La Bolsa” June 28, 1899; and “La Bolsa to the Junta,” September 2,
1899.

62
two months turned into two decades, and la Bolsa, just steps from the city center,

kept its infamy as one of the city’s most wretched neighborhoods.

The urban elite extolled the new sewer system. Jesús Galindo y Villa

remarked that the hygiene and health of the population depended on it while

Licéaga declared that it would position Mexico City “almost to the level of the

most healthful cities in the world.”106 Such exaltations elided the stark sanitary

inequalities that the system reinscribed onto urban space. While the government

could bask in the international publicity of having the only self-cleaning system,

thousands of residents continued to know sanitation through open pits and foul

gutters. The residents of Santa Julia, for example, complained that a recently

opened mill was spilling fecal matter and other run-off into an open canal that

passed by their homes. Authorities expressed hope, much as Gayol had expressed

to the residents of la Bolsa, that a new collector under construction “would put an

end to the disastrous conditions of the neighborhood.”107 Many neighborhoods

were uneasily positioned between the hope of improved environments and the

pitiful conditions that they faced, a recurring experience that, as we shall see,

marked urban environmental politics well into the twentieth century.

106
Boletín Municipal, May 3, 1903, Jesús Galindo y Villa “Las obras públicas del
Valle de México;” and AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Desagüe de la ciudad, 744, 150
Eduardo Licéaga to Gobernación,” February 15, 1896.
107
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Consejo del Gobierno del Distrito Federal, Desagües y
Albañales, 605, 12 “Obras Públicas to Consejo de Gobierno,” December 7, 1911.

63
“Water for a Million Inhabitants”

These were the words of Secretary of Development Carlos Pacheco to the

engineer and doctor Antonio Peñafiel in 1889.108 Pacheco assigned Peñafiel to

study the waterworks of great European and North American cities and determine

which was most transferable to Mexico City. The secretary understood that the

capital’s growth, public health, and prestige on the world stage rested, in part, on

its water, whose condition at that moment was considered intolerable. At the turn

of the century, engineers and government officials called for a new water supply

system that would provide abundant, healthy water to the entire city. Peñafiel, for

his part, had long been an activist in the cause of improving Mexico City’s water

supply. His prescient 1884 text poignantly illustrated the unsanitary and

insufficient conditions of the water supply system, asserting that the only feasible

solution involved utilizing the pure springs to the south, around Lake

Xochimilco.109 The urban sanitary ideal, in tandem with technical and financial

capacity, again drove engineers and public officials to action, this time to construct

a massive drinking water system that could quench the thirst of the growing city.

The government’s short-term fix to the water problem was to complement

the city’s supply with the waters from the Hondo River, one of the many streams

that flowed into the Basin, in 1899.110 Two years later, due to high mud and sand

content, Guillermo Beltrán y Puga, cut the supply of the river water to the

108
Antonio Peñafiel, “Aprovechamiento,” 254
109
See Antonio Peñafiel, Memoria.
110
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas en General, 41, 530

64
distribution pipes, which otherwise would become obstructed. Ramón Corral, then

Governor of the Federal District was disturbed by the shortage afflicting the

capital and ordered city council to begin filtering the river water so as to avoid

these types of scarcities. With suddenly a third or more of the city’s supply

withdrawn, many users became apprehensive, flooding the government with

distressed complaints over “receiving less water than is their right.” Corral

affirmed that the only way to attend to the “just reclamations of the users” was an

entirely new system.111 For the following two summers, Puga, in accord with The

Superior Health Council, decreed the suspension of service from The Hondo river,

whose soil-heavy waters continued to foul the system.112

By 1900, most Mexican doctors and hygienists agreed that bacteria were

the chief cause of disease, although the theory that miasmas from decaying matter

brought about illnesses co-existed with bacteriology for several more decades.113

Mexican scientists revealed more insidious and frightening problems with Mexico

City’s water, problems that exceeded the capabilities of a simple filtration system.

Bacteriological analyses deemed the river water “impure” while the water from

Chapultepec and the Desierto de Los Leones was of merely average quality.114

111
See AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas en general, 42, 574; and 42, 575.
112
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas en General, 42, 595; and 42, 611. See also
Marroquín y Rivera, 3
113
See Paul Ross, From Sanitary Police.
114
José Alvarez Amézquita et al., Historia de la salubridad y asistencia en
México, 86. Chapultepec’s supply contained up to 4,300 bacteria per cubic
centimeter.

65
 In 1900, with the traditional sources of drinking water both insufficient and

hygienically unsafe, Gilberto Montiel Estrada, a city councilman and head of the

Water Commission called on sanitary engineers to submit proposals for a new

comprehensive water system. The decision came down to two projects: that of

William Mackenzie, a US-based engineer, and the Mexican architect Manuel

Marroquín y Rivera. Mackenzie offered to capture 2,000 liters of water per second

from the springs of Amoloya, the source of the Lerma River in the Valley of

Toluca. Marroquín y Rivera’s plan was to obtain the same amount, but from the

closer springs of Xochimilco.

A commission composed of top engineers including Gayol and Espinosa

studied the two projects, and their painstaking analysis serves as a window into the

sanitation goals of the capital’s elite. Whereas the commission found Marroquín’s

plan not only feasible but desirable, it judged Mackenzie’s to be wanting in details,

logical coherence, and the fundamentals of public health. Mackenzie provided no

map or description of how the water would be distributed to the many

neighborhoods, or how it would service fire hydrants with sufficient pressure. In

response to a question the commission posed to him regarding the projected use of

an uncovered aqueduct for much of the journey, Mackenzie erroneously assumed

the city wanted the cheapest water possible. To this reply the commission called

out Mackenzie’s gaffe, affirming that “what the city needs and wants is to have the

66
purest water that is possible and this can not be obtained bringing the liquid

through an open canal 15 kilometers long.”115

As if it were not enough that the proposal failed the tests of reason,

cohesion, and sanitation, it also flew in the face of the city’s enduring commitment

to public ownership. The commission reiterated what the city council had

preached since the issue last came up in 1884, the year the businessman Carlos

Medina sought to take control of the municipal system. “For no reason,” the

commission wrote, “must it be permitted that the provision of potable water be

made by individuals or companies that convert into a speculative business a public

service that has such great influence over the health and prosperity of any

population.”116 Evidently, water obtained a higher public value than public transit

or electricity, both of which remained privatized during the period. The

commission perceived the trend in Europe and the US during the Progressive Era

where municipal authorities had been reincorporating water service because of

extortionary and unequal private service. London, where the service was

municipalized in 1903 (one of the last major British cities to do so), water was “so

scarce and bad in certain neighborhoods…that authorities have to loan water

115
Comisión especial para estudio de abastecimiento de aguas de la ciudad de
Mexico, “Informe sobre el proyecto del Ing. Marroquín y Rivera, Estudio sobre las
proposciones del Sr. Mackenzie” (Mexico City: Secretaria de Fomento, 1902), 48-
9.
116
Ibid., 71. In 1884, Medina proposed the privatization of the city’s water
supply. The city council initially supported the plan, but after the newspapers
criticized the deal harshly, it eventually defended the public character of water and
defeated the privatization plan. See Medina, Exposición que hace el ingeniero a
todos los habitantes de la ciudad de México (Mexico City: Dublán y cia, 1884);
and Rodríguez Kuri, “Gobierno local y empresas de servicio,” 172-4.

67
vessels to thousands of poor.” Such cases from across the Atlantic served as

additional and irrevocable proof that Mexico City’s water needed to remain in

public hands and permitted Porfirians to consider themselves on the cutting-edge

of a sanitary revolution.117 Determined not to repeat the errors of the past and to

maintain control of the service, the commission prudently discarded Mackenzie’s

scheme.

In 1902, the contract was awarded to Marroquín y Rivera’s Xochimico

project, presaged years earlier by Peñafiel, for its coherence, attention to detail,

and care for public hygiene—the very antithesis of Mackenzie’s proposal. The

special commission’s report on this project was sought to guarantee the plan’s

success in accordance with the basic precepts of modern hygiene. The reservoir

and aqueduct were to be covered to prevent dust and other sources of pollution,

private sanitary appliances would be updated, and toilets and bathrooms would be

installed in residences all over the city. The distribution network, the commission

insisted, should be built to benefit new developments lacking in potable water.

The principal pipes should run along the edge of the city, where poor residents

would be the first to enjoy the new water supply. That is, the network would work

its way into the mainly wealthy center of the city from the primarily poor

outside.118

The sanitarians on the commission were eager to banish forever the

unclean customs of the urban poor “who employ water only in the smallest

117
Comisión especial, “Informe sobre el proyecto,” 71.
118
Ibid., 36, 12-13, and 17-19

68
quantity.” “To uplift the hygiene, decorum, and dignity of the people,” it was

necessary to inculcate the value that water should be used in abundance, but only

with the fair payment for the vital public service.119 Certainly, Marroquín won the

contract in part because he shared in this conviction that public hygiene was the

precondition of any water system, and that clean water should be provided to each

resident.

Marroquín went to great lengths to ensure that the water remained free of

bacteria and waste minimized. Apart from the closed aqueduct and reservoir, he

designed the pumping stations so that the captured spring water would remain

separated from the lake water. Improvisation was necessary as on-the-ground

experience imposed new technologies to prevent fractures in the tubing. The

subsidence of the marshy soil over which the aqueduct sat produced fissures and

stressed its joints. Engineers working for the Board of Provision of Potable Water

for Mexico City, created to carry out the project, began to test new methods during

construction. Marroquín celebrated their proven technique of resting the aqueduct

over pilings (pilotes) as having conquered the problem.120

Crucial to the project was the provision of sufficient water to all residents

of the capital. Engineers constructed the aqueduct to carry 2,500 liters per second,

adequate water to supply a city of 800,000 people in accord with the highest

standards of hygiene. Starting at the first of four wells in Xochimilco, the covered

119
Ibid., 6. This perspective on water use by the poor contradicted the more
prevalent view that the poor wasted water.
120
Marroquín, Memoria, 254-263.

69
aqueduct ran 29 kilometers to the pumping station in the new Condesa

neighborhood. From there the water was pumped to the top of a hill in

Chapultepec Park where a reservoir stored the daily provision of water for the

city’s use. The system ran 24 hours a day and seven days per week thanks to the

power generated by the Necaxa hydroelectric dam in Puebla, finished in 1905. At

a cost of nearly 14 million pesos, more than double the expense on the sewage

system and nearly equal to the general desagüe, authorities heralded the newly

minted system as one of the cleanest water supplies in the world. 121

Water transfers were not new to the Valley, but Xochimilco involved more

than just a series of springs for urban use. Thousands of chinamperos, who

cultivated vegetables maize, peppers and flowers, called the area home. The

canals, nourished by the springs, not only supported their parcels but also served as

their means to transport produce to the urban market. Chinampería had existed for

centuries and shaped the identity of thousands of local campesinos. As the lake

diminished over the years, land-based hacienda agriculture moved in. The

Hacienda Coapa and its neighbor San Juan de Díos covered sections of the dried

lakebed, including former communal lands of Xochimilco. Another landowner,

Aureliano Urrutia, usurped San Gregorio Atlapulco of their swamp in 1909 when

Díaz decided to use federal powers over water to favor a friend. But, as long as

the lake and the series of canals remained, the chinampa agricultural form

prevailed, as did the particular social relations that accompanied it. Chinampas

121
See Lopez Rosado, Los servicios públicos, 246 and 221; and Jesús Galindo y
Villa, “Las obras públicas en el Valle de México,” Boletín Oficial, May 29, 1903

70
tended to be small and land concentration limited.122 This is not to say that

community land conflicts did not exist, but the predominance of small plots

signified that a wide array of rural people defended this peculiar, yet productive,

farming practice.123 Local economy thus meshed neatly with a deeply entrenched

perception of the dignity and efficiency of the lake-based economy.

Fig. 3—The Chinampas of Xochimilco, 1905. AGN: Hermanos Mayo, C.B

Waite, Xochimilco 1905, #4

122
Miguel Santamaría, Las chinampas del Distrito Federal: informe rendido al
director de Agricultura (Mexico City: Secretaría de Fomento, 1912), 36. The
author stated that some lands were leased out to those who lacked other means but
emphasized that this practice did not occupy more than 15% of the producers.
123
For an exposé of inter- and intra-community strife, see Sostenes Chapa, San
Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, D.F (Mexico City, 1959).

71
 Precisely because of the unique “Indian” agricultural practices, governing

elites, and the urban public in general, considered Xochimilco a site of national

patrimony. The advent of indigenismo at the turn of the century, the celebration of

past indigeneity in the building of the modern Mexican nation, bolstered the

positive meaning of Xochimilco. The lake environment, in a sense, was a

metonym of all things indigenous; for the uniqueness and efficiency of the

chinampa represented the positive elements of the Mexican past, if rarely a

practice to be emulated in the present.124 A trip to Xochimilco increasingly

became the sine qua non of foreign dignitaries’ visits to Mexico City. The

seemingly quaint indigenous customs of Xochimilco provided a stark contrast to

the teeming modern city. Government officials could thus represent both faces of

the Mexican nation without traveling more than twenty miles.

While the Porfirian state denied Xochimilco drainage proposals, the

chinamperos of Lake Chalco did not have the same luck in preserving their

lacustrine environment. The Spanish landowner, Iñigo Noriega, drained the lake

during the 1890s turning the fertile land into one of Central Mexico’s most

productive estates.125 The reason the government permitted the drainage of Chalco

but not Xochimilco remains somewhat mysterious. Drinking water may have been

124
Images of the chinampa abound in Diego Rivera’s National Palace murals that
depict the evolution of the Mexican nation.
125
See Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor, El agua y su historia: México y sus
desafíos hacia el siglo XXI (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2000); and “Los usos del
agua en el Valle de Chalco: del Antiguo Regimen a la gran hidráulica,” in Tierra,
agua, y bosques: la historia medioambiental en el México Central ed. Alejandro
Tortolero Villaseñor (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1996).

72
decisive: Chalco did possess numerous springs, but distance from the city and

questions of purity placed more value on Xochimilco’s. Alternatively, the reason

may lie in political influence. Noriega was a good friend of Díaz. Another reason

may have been the ascending nationalist imaginary: although Chalco supported

chinampería, turn-of-the-century Xochimilco became synonymous with it.

Xochimilco communities continued to enjoy the lacustrine environment, but its

springs had become the property of the capital.

The city’s new water system unleashed a series of social contradictions

both within and without the urban milieu. Within the city, the new drinking water

infrastructure, in tandem with revolutionary political change, heightened conflicts

over water consumption. These disputes will be a central theme in the following

chapter. In the countryside, Xochimilquenses viewed the supply system in terms of

the dispossession of their water and means of subsistence. Conflicts over

agricultural practices, visions of the nation form, and drinking water placed the

Xochimilco system at the center of environmental politics in the revolutionary

decades to come.

Part II: Regulating the Environment and its Uses

Under similar motivations as the massive infrastructural investments

discussed in the first section of the chapter, city and national governments issued a

series of codes and regulations that shaped urban and rural environments in the

73
name of urban prosperity. For the purposes of this work, I will examine sanitary

regulations and forestry policies, interventions that—while seemingly unrelated on

the surface—in fact, represented a nascent trend toward state regulations of

environments, an instantiation of turn-of-the-century urban dominance. The

regulation of sanitary conditions and resource use was necessary precisely because

of unfettered growth. While emergent from political-economic trends,

environmental administration did not fundamentally challenge them; in fact, they

generally reinforced exclusive urban development. In the hinterlands, forest

conservation, viewed as part and parcel of urban hygiene and prosperity, came at

the expense of forest communities, which shouldered the blame for putative

woodlands mismanagement. Urban sanitary codes similarly strengthened existing

spatial and social hierarchies, but the urban populace held one key advantage over

their rural counterparts: they could subsequently wield codes and regulations as

legal and ideological supports of their rights to the sanitary city—much as they did

with the existing sanitary infrastructure.

Codifying Urban (Un)Hygiene

As discussed earlier in the chapter, Mexico City underwent significant

growth beginning in the 1870s, led by a coterie of Mexicans and foreigners who

turned outlying farmland into new colonias. This new class of developers—

termed “portafolieros” in a twist on the carpetbaggers—held close ties to local

government and reaped huge profits due to the ease with which new development

74
could be carried out.126 The municipal government, however, also obeyed a

potentially contradictory logic that exalted the ordered and sanitary city, ideas with

roots in the Bourbon colonial reforms and which progressive elite counterparts in

Europe and North America increasingly held dear. The ideals of modern urbanism

resulted in an urbanization code that walked a tightrope in the name of ordered

growth. Yet the municipality dissociated itself from installing essential sanitary

services, a task that fell into the hands of the developer of each colonia.

Enforcement problems predictably dogged the code, which tipped markedly in

favor of real estate capital, to the detriment of sanitary conditions.

The first attempt at regulating the expansion came in 1875, but the code

had few teeth to mount an attack on the power of the growing and increasingly

powerful class of urban developers. The city council examined “the topographical

and hygienic conditions of the land…and according to public utility and the status

of the municipal treasury would decide whether to grant the formation of the new

colonia or not.”127 Another condition required that the developers submit plans for

markets, plazas, churches, and greenery—spaces typical of the colonial town—and

another obligated that the developer put in a drinking water service. It was a

hodgepodge of urban planning, and the language was vague and full of loopholes.

The city council, in effect, rubber-stamped the principal business goals of urban

real estate capital.

126
Jiménez Muñoz, 1.
127
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Colonias, 519/3.

75
 Mexico’s sanitary authority, the Superior Health Council under the

leadership of Eduardo Licéaga, issued the country’s first sanitary code in 1891,

which, according to historian Paul Ross “authorized an unprecedented degree of

state intervention in society in the name of public health.”128 A major priority of

the code was to govern public health in the city, and this necessarily included new

urban settlements. The code mandated sanitary inspectors to monitor conditions in

each cuartel, forbade settlement construction without proper service provision, and

obligated owners to supply buildings with sufficient water in proportion to the

number of inhabitants if the municipal supply serviced the street. 129 While much

stricter than the 1875 municipal code, the sanitary code was far from a

comprehensive urban reform. Inspectors reported on sanitary conditions, but apart

from minor vaccination and localized sanitation campaigns, little got done.

The prohibition of settlements lacking in services castigated both

developers, who in theory had to subscribe to stricter building codes, and the urban

poor, who could now be legally evicted from their homes. Yet, the urban populace

did not share the weight of responsibility equally. The code marked the ongoing

tension between ideals of private hygiene (personal cleanliness) and public

hygiene (public infrastructure that improves environmental conditions). Officials

were more inclined to punish the poor for their unhygienic lifestyles than take

punitive measures against landlords or developers, or invest in necessary services

128
Paul Ross, “Mexico’s Superior Health Council and the American Public Health
Association: The Transnational Archive of Porfirian Public Health, 1887-1910,”
Hispanic American Historical Review 89, 4 (2009), 582-3.
129
Alvarez Amezquita et al., Historia de salubridad, vol 4, 78-9.

76
that would promote public hygiene. Despite certain deficiencies, the code—and its

mutations over the years—did become a lightning rod for environmental politics in

the city. Developers and landlords challenged it, and the urban poor often invoked

it in their pursuit of livable environments.

Ecology combined with the capitalist dynamic of urban growth to shape

the spatialization of Mexico City. Poor neighborhoods were almost exclusively

located on the cheaper swampy, saline, and fetid lands nearest Lake Texcoco,

while companies established the wealthier neighborhoods in the expensive and

higher grounds to the west, closer to the water supply and further from the flood-

prone lake. In the former area, developers formed the colonias la Bolsa, la Nuevo

Rastro, Morelos, and Valle Gómez. Other poor neighborhoods were created in the

south and north, including Indianilla, Hidalgo, and Guerrero. Rural migrants or

ex-tenement dwellers from the center of the city made up the inhabitants of these

colonias. Developers sold plots to the unsuspecting poor, or constructed shacks

without any public services whatsoever. La Bolsa, as already mentioned, became

known as a particularly awful place “with dirty and microbic streets, repulsive

sights and evil smells,” and the Rastro, home of the new slaughterhouse, became a

foul cesspit of animal and human waste.130 El Imparcial, assailing the form

urbanization had taken, described a typical suburb of up to 1,000 residents “that

does not have a single sewer, a single drainage pipe, nor a single toilet.” Since the

neighborhood would be populated with the dirtiest of people, the newspaper

130
T Philip Terry, Terry’s Guide to Mexico (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911),
257; Lear, 45.

77
continued, their enormous quantity of waste remained in the “so-called

subdivision, poisoning the environment and before long converts the neighborhood

into a hospital.”131

Meanwhile in the western section of the city, wealthy colonias such as

Juárez, Paseo, La Condesa, La Roma, and Cuauhtémoc sprouted along the elegant

Paseo de la Reforma. These subdivisions boasted all public services, which

development companies installed, receiving compensation from the Ayuntamiento.

Roberto Gayol and Guillermo Beltrán y Puga, for example, designed the sewerage

and water system respectively for La Condesa and La Roma, while Miguel Ángel

de Quevedo, as director of Public Works for the municipal government, supervised

the design of its important parks.132

In 1903, the Ayuntamiento sought to better organize this unfettered urban

expansion by passing a new regulation on the creation of suburbs. Using the

contract that authorized the formation of Paseo as a model, the Ayuntamiento

recognized the public health dilemmas inherent in such urban growth, “as in the

new streets and subdivisions houses are often constructed without sewerage, water

service, and pavement.”133 Like the 1875 regulation, the new one obligated

developers to sign a contract with the council authorizing the subdivision. Any

unauthorized development, as in 1875, would be considered outside municipal

jurisdiction and thus would not receive municipal services. All contracts from

131
El Imparcial, “Las colonias de los alrededores,” April 9, 1902.
132
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Colonias, 519/27.
133
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Colonias, 519/27.

78
1903 on, however, required developers to install sewerage, potable water, and

pavement. The government would reimburse investments that companies made in

these services “as long as the compensation does not exceed the taxes the

government would receive from the establishment of the subdivision.”134 In other

words, the municipal government only reimbursed the developers of wealthy

colonias. Moreover, The council was responsible only for installing lighting and

removing garbage, both run by private enterprises at the time.

Some companies ignored the contractual regulations of 1875 and 1903

altogether and established subdivisions without authorization. The existence of

these neighborhoods created a division between the legal city and its unregulated,

unserviced outside, a division that has persisted to the present day and, as we shall

see, formed the basis for the urban power of the post-revolutionary corporatist

state. For example the Ayuntamiento continuously posted notices in the

unauthorized Colonia Obrera, disavowing the obligation to provide residents with

sewerage and drinking water.135 Both developers and city government abandoned

many authorized settlements as well, due to the loopholes in municipal regulations

and their loose enforcement.136

134
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Colonias, 519/27.
135
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Colonias, 519/22.
136
Unauthorized settlements before 1910 included La Bolsa, Díaz de Leon, Valle
y Gómez, La Viga, and Obrera. Authorized suburbs that were bereft of essential
services included Guerrero, Indianilla, Peralvillo, and Morelos, among others. See
Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, La experiencia olvidada: El ayuntamiento de México:
política y gobierno, 1876-1912 (Mexico City: Colmex, 1996); Berra; and AHDF:
Ayuntamiento, Colonias, 520/37.

79
 In spite of a 1903 decree that diminished the power of the city council to

the role of advisory board to the Government of the Federal District, the municipal

regulations on suburbs continued through the revolution and its immediate

aftermath. The government—the Public Works Department of the Federal District

from 1903 forward—approved many settlements even when there were

unequivocal signs of speculation. Commenting on a petition to authorize the

colonia Campestre del Valle, Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, who at that point served

on an advisory board for the Superior Health Council, poignantly exposed the

irrational logic of urban development:

It is unfortunate that some intend to devote such considerable tracts of land

when one observes that whether in rich colonias, like those of la Roma, la
Condesa, Cuauhtemoc and others.., or in more modest or poor colonia like
Hidalgo, Santa Julia, la Bolsa, Morelos, El Peñon, la Viga…etc., there is
extensive unpopulated space often with residences at great distances from
each other. Most of these areas lack sanitary works, and, in addition,
Mexico City has 2,500 unoccupied homes. In spite of all this, it is not
understood why it is the goal of businessmen and capitalists to speculate in
the creation of new colonias that population growth does not require
instead of employing capital in the urbanization or construction of already
existing colonias.137

Through unmitigated speculation, Mexico City’s surface area expanded at a rate

greater than its population in such a way that fostered over-crowdedness in the

center and irregular, dispersed settlement on the edges. The urbanization process,

initiated in the 1800s, greatly hampered twentieth-century efforts to bring sanitary

services to growing numbers of people. Quevedo, who had attended an urban

137
Boletín del Consejo de Salubridad, xiv, 5 “Estudio de la Comisión de
Ingeniería Sanitaria,” November 30, 1908.

80
planning conference in Paris, saw his efforts struck down by higher echelons of

urban government, which approved of the gigantic colonia in 1909.138

City government may have managed existing sanitary services, but the élan

for Puga’s “modern progress” handed over the future growth of the city and its

public hygiene to highly influential real estate companies, whose interests lay in

raw capital accumulation. The 1891 sanitary and 1903 urbanization code set the

legal basis for an ordered, sanitary city, but a pressured government approved

settlements when they were unnecessary. More importantly, as long as developers

understood that the government would not reimburse them for urban infrastructure

in low-class developments, there was no reason to obey the poorly enforced

code.139 The urban poor subsequently sought to hold urban government

responsible for the ordered, hygienic city that legal codes upheld.

The City and Its Forests

Just as municipal government structured—however incompletely—Mexico

City’s growth, a small cadre of scientists, led by Quevedo, attempted to rationally

manage, order, and conserve Mexico’s forests, especially the woodlands along the

southern rim of the Valley of Mexico. Forest regulations dated back to the

138
Ibid, xv, 4, October 31, 1909. The colonia del Valle continues to be one of the
largest neighborhoods in Mexico City, encompassing most of the area between
Felix Cuevas and Xola south to north, and between Insurgentes and Cuauhtémoc
west to east.
139
Moreover, city council members increasingly drew from the ranks of the Grupo
Científico, the inner circle of power during the Díaz regime, and they often had
more personal interests in the success of these companies. See Rodríguez Kuri, La
experiencia olvidada.

81
colonial period, but centralized national-state forestry regulations, a sluggish and

discontinuous process, were borne out of late nineteenth-century economic vitality

and its correlate, urban growth. Through the application of expert knowledge

privileging rational resource use, these policies furthered the alienation of

communities from forests.

Mexico City’s commercial and population growth had its counterpart in the

surrounding countryside. Infrastructure favored the establishment of extractive

industries close to Mexico City, and the advent of the railroad quickened transport

time, lowered costs, and opened up new markets. 140 A line that stretched to San

Angel connected the textile and paper-manufacturing zone along the Magdalena

River to the city. By 1890, another line connected Mexico City to Chalco, the

forested volcanoes of Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl (Popo), and the manufacturing

center of Puebla. The railroad not only increased production but also required for

itself wood products for fuel, ties, and station construction.141 Capitalizing off the

new opportunities of the railroad, paper mills and textile factories founded in the

mid-nineteenth century, and haciendas Eslava, Coapa, and Xico moved to control

key forest and water resources around the southern edges of the Valley. The textile

140
See John Coatsworth, Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of
Railroads in Porfirian Mexico (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press,
1981).
141
Although the Díaz government encouraged the use of coal-burning locomotives,
most locomotives burned wood and construction material given the prohibitive
costs of importation. The Díaz government did order that ties be of iron rather than
wood. See Lane Simonian, Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of
Conservation in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 63 and
Coatsworth, 134.

82
factories along the hydro-electricity rich Magdalena River dispossessed pueblos

such as Magdalena Contreras, Tizapán, and San Nicolas Totolapan of their

irrigation rights held under the colony.142 Without water to irrigate their fields of

fruit, corn, and flowers, villagers leaned more heavily on part-time work in the

factories, hacienda labor and the exploitation of forests, which were

simultaneously coming under pressure from paper mills.143 Railroads and other

urban and industrial demands encouraged the concentration of land ownership and

resource depletion in these water- and wood-rich environments.144

Campesino forest economies were small-scale but diverse enterprises

encompassing domestic needs and local (increasingly urban) demands. The rich

vegetation on and around the Ajusco provided the raw material for campesinos

from more than a dozen communities between Desierto de los Leones and the

Popo for charcoal, construction timber, zacatón root (a mountain grass sold as

cattle feed and used to make baskets and brooms), mushrooms, herbs for medicinal

purposes, and, in some cases, turpentine. To manufacture charcoal, campesinos

dug a hole in which they meticulously and slowly burned wood so that it became

fully carbonized. In Milpa Alta, while women sold forest products such as

142
Conflicting water claims on the river involving haciendas, textile factories, and
pueblos led the state to regulate usage and organize a Junta in 1907, composed of
one representative of each of the three groups. The Board’s purpose was to
oversee the regulation, but haciendas and factories were particularly adept at
evading the code, which had established water rights for each consumer. See
AHA, AS, 566, 8281; 570, 8302; and 570, 8306
143
See Mario Camarena, Jornaleros, tejedores y obreros : historia social de los
trabajadores textiles de San Angel, 1850-1930 (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés,
2001); and Lane Simonian, 60
144
See John Coatsworth, Growth Against Development.

83
mushrooms and firewood in the town plaza, men were responsible for the felling

of trees and the making of charcoal. Wealthier villagers were able to take their

horses or donkeys with them to carry forest products around the difficult terrain.145

The campesino forest economy collided with the roaring Porfirian

economic engine. The few communal woodlands that remained were often

exploited illicitly by the paper companies Loreto and Peña Pobre, when they

switched to cellulose products in 1902, and by textile factories such as La

Magdalena and Santa Teresa. Haciendas, moreover, charged steep fees for access

to their forested land.146 In the case of the largest paper manufacturer, San Rafael,

located near the Popo, the factory owners expropriated large tracts of community

lands to feed the growing demand for newspaper in Mexico City. While the

railroad expedited access to Mexico City for forest communities, campesinos dealt

with exploitative middlemen who held monopolies on transportation to market.

These middlemen, often in line with the railroad companies, extracted a profit

from campesinos who had no other practical means of transportation.147 In the

forested areas around Xochimilco and Milpa Alta, for example, zacatón root was

monopolized by a certain Casto de la Fuente y Parres until 1913.

145
See Fernando Horcasitas, De Porfirio Díaz a Zapata: Memoria náhuatl de
Milpa Alta (Mexico City: UNAM, 1968), 48-9.
146
Mario Trujillo Bolio, Operarios fabriles en el Valle de México (1864-1884):
Espacio, trabajo, protesta y cultura obrera (Mexico City: Colmex, 1997), 53; and
Gerardo Camacho de la Rosa, Raiz y razón de Totolapan, el drama de la Guerra
Zapatista (Mexico City: Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2007), 21.
147
The monopolization of forest products was one of the major gripes of
communities when the Forestry Department began to organize cooperative forest
production in the late 1920s.

84
 The Mexican experience, conservation historian Lane Simonian argues,

shaped early national conservation policy. The colonial state issued restrictions

against deforestation, a concern that the national state adopted. In contrast to the

United States, which was a late participant in the conservation movement, few

Mexicans shared with their neighbor to the north the idea of inexhaustibility since

many of Mexico’s forests vanished during the colonial period. Second, Mexico’s

mountainous terrain worsened the well-known effects of deforestation: erosion,

flooding, and diminished water supplies, all of which were especially noted around

Mexico City. Third, Mexican scientists drew on an extensive body of literature by

earlier naturalists such as von Humboldt who documented the deleterious effects

of deforestation.148

With the continuous preoccupation of flooding and water supply in Mexico

City, the spotlight shined on the besiegement of the forests along the mountainous

slopes of the Valley. Because of its forests, wet climate, and highly permeable

soil, the Ajusco absorbed rainwater that then seeped underground to nourish the

incredibly rich underground aquifer of the Basin. The aquifer, in turn, nourished

the many springs that dotted the southern Valley, including those around Lake

Xochimilco. Without the woods, scientists feared, the water would feed streams

and rivers with sediment and cascade down hillsides, inundating population

centers.

148
Simonian, 50.

85
 As early as 1854 the Society for Material Improvement enjoined the

government to institute conservation measures in the Valley to curtail the

consequences of deforestation.149 One of the principal concerns involved the

city’s water supply around the springs of Santa Fé and Desierto de los Leones.

The Ayuntamiento took ownership of the Desierto de los Leones (then de las

Carmelitas) in 1856 when the government realized it had erred in management of

the forests, having jeopardized “the well being of Mexico City residents whose

survival depended upon the springs originating along the Valley’s western

flank.”150 All economic activity in the Desierto then fell under the city’s

jurisdiction, and in 1858 the Ayuntamiento abolished ranching. The problem of

deforestation continued, however, and in protest the city water commissioner

wrote in 1877: “the springs in a forest can be diminished or exhausted with the

cutting of trees (tala de árboles), which maintain humidity and attract rains.”151

The water commission also advised that a strong forestry regulation be instituted

and enforced through strict surveillance.152

Porfirian governance—however slowly—turned long-held scientific truths

into political practice. The gradual consolidation of a national forest policy can be

149
Ibid., 53.
150
Ibid., 53.
151
AHDF: Aguas, Desierto de Los Leones, 51, 20, “Report from President of
Water Commission,” April 24, 1877. Six years earlier, rural consumers of the
same spring water wrote to the city council, calling for an end to deforestation
around the springs. In their petition, they appealed to the urban uses of water, that
is, the threat to the city’s water supply if no action was taken. See DL, 51, 18,
“Petition to president of city council,” February 24, 1871.
152
Ibid.

86
attributed to the convergence of scientific politics—the hegemonic paradigm of

late nineteenth-century Mexican governance—with an emerging international

conservation movement where ideas and policies reverberated across national

boundaries. Simonian interprets the rise of forest conservation in Porfirian Mexico

in opposition to the prevailing positivist currents. The opposition is a specious

one; for whether one supported conservation as a means to safeguard the scarce

resource for future extraction or in order to promote healthy environments, the

objective was always scientific management by experts who supposedly knew how

to benefit society in general. In other words, forests, according to positivist tenets,

should be administered by a technical elite based on absolute scientific principles.

Often celebrating the forestry regulations that countries such as Germany and

France had promulgated, the Mexican Geographical and Statistical Society and the

Natural History Society became outspoken supporters of forestry regulations in the

second half of the nineteenth century.153 At the turn of the century, Quevedo,

Mexico’s most famous conservationist, traveled to the US and Europe, borrowing

and adapting many of their ideas to the Mexican mountainous terrain and torrential

summer rains.154

In 1892 two years prior to Mexico’s first national forest code, the Díaz

government regulated forest use in the Federal District, which included most of the

153
Simonian, 56-8; and José Sarukha, “Mexico,” in Handbook of Contemporary
Developments in World Ecology ed. Edward J. Kormondy and J. Frank
McCormick (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981). These were the same kind
of societies that proliferated throughout Latin America seeking to promote
knowledge of the natural world to foster growth. See McCook, States of Nature.
154
Quevedo, Relato de mi vida.

87
precious forests in the Valley of Mexico.155 The regulation oversaw the

exploitation of forests on public lands, including communal lands, but did not

challenge uses on private property, as many European forest codes had.156 Forest

exploitation permissions favored the economic elite over communities. Indeed,

the permission granted to Henry and Harry Sampson in 1904 to exploit the forests

of the public lands around Milpa Alta represented the exclusive development

schemes of Porfirian government. Blending developmentalist priorities with

nascent state conservation, the Sampsons highlighted that the extraction would be

“methodical…cutting only those trees that because of their age and maturity

should be cut…in this way not only will an important profit [renta] be obtained but

the forests will be conserved and maintained.” Their employment of campesinos,

combined with the construction of a railway to connect the lands to Mexico City,

would eradicate the “isolation and poverty in which today they [the villagers]

live.” The permission granted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Development

mandated that the entrepreneurs only cut the trees authorized by local officials,

always following a scientific and rational method. While it also stipulated that

villagers could take dead wood from the forest for domestic use, they could not

commercialize forest products.157 While government officials generally spread the

blame for deforestation across a wide section of social groups, including

155
For the 1894 code, see Reglamento para la explotación de los bosques y
terrenos baldíos y nacionales (Mexico City: Secretaría de Fomento, 1894).
156
AGN: SAF, Bosques, 70, 20 “Al Departamento de Bosques,” November 15,
1910.
157
AGN: SAF, Bosques 3, 23.

88
haciendas, factories, and peasant communities, the brunt of new regulations hit the

pueblos.

The vision of Porfirian conservation is best explained by following the

early years of Mexico’s “apostle of the tree,” Miguel Ángel de Quevedo. Trained

as a civil engineer in Paris and fluent in a broad spectrum of techniques, Quevedo

returned to Mexico and served as a chief engineer on the general desagüe. His

studies of the hydrology of the Valley of Mexico led him to ascertain the

importance of woodlands in the abatement of flooding and erosion.158 While

inspecting the tunnel, he sustained a severe injury, which ended his term on the

public works project. In 1901, he founded the Junta Central de Bosques with the

help of a small group of supporters led by Guillermo Beltrán y Puga.159 The group

elected Quevedo president of the council, which published a magazine advocating

forest protection throughout Mexico.160 The effort paid dividends as only three

years later the Public Works Department incorporated the Junta as an official

governing agency.

While president of the Junta, Quevedo fought a Sisyphean battle in his

promotion of forest conservation. In a small pamphlet on forest preservation,

Quevedo, perhaps embellishing, spoke of deforestation as a cataclysm, stating

“there could not be another comparable evil.” Garbed in a geographical

determinism, the conservationist propounded a vision of civilization founded on

158
Simonian, 69
159
Ibid., 72
160
Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, “La Junta Central de Bosques,” Revista Forestal
Mexicana 1 (July, 1909): 4-5.

89
forest management. The great civilizations of the Middle East, Rome, and Greece,

according to Quevedo, foundered amid the desertification of their lands while the

North Atlantic states now flourished under a conservation ethic. He feared that

forest destruction would “convert our country that is salubrious, beautiful,

comfortable, and immensely rich in natural resources into an insalubrious, sad,

unpleasant, and bothersome country impoverished of its natural elements.”161 For

Quevedo, forests governed a much greater natural system, which laid the

foundation for civilization. He proposed a national conservation effort comparable

in scale to what he had witnessed in many North Atlantic states, including the US

under Theodore Roosevelt, as well as Switzerland, France, and Germany.

Quevedo’s vision was national in scope, but the scant resources at the

Junta’s disposal limited its focus to what was perhaps both most urgent and viable:

the protection of the natural environment surrounding Mexico City.162 The city’s

potable water resources, the Valley’s agriculture and air quality, and the

omnipresent threat of flooding had to be addressed through the scientific

management of forest resources. In a missive to Minister of Government and vice-

president Ramón Corral, Quevedo called for a massive reforestation campaign in

the Valley of Mexico, consisting of creating a curtain of woods that would extend

from the Guadalupe ridge to Peñon, from where the Gran Canal departed.

Quevedo was thus prepared to take action against the dust storms that had

161
Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, La cuestión forestal (Mexico City: Secretaría de
Fomento, 1908), 3, 8, and 21, quotes on 3 and 21.
162
Local chapters of the Junta were organized in Puebla, Veracruz, and Jalisco.
See Quevedo, Relato de mi vida, 39.

90
worsened as a result of the general drainage works. The cultivation of “national

forests” in Xochimilco, Milpa Alta, Cuajimalpa, La Magdalena, and Tlalpan

would have accompanied the green curtain. Quevedo also strongly advocated the

expropriation of private and community property for what he perceived to be the

general welfare of the Valley’s inhabitants. For Quevedo, reforestation was of

particular importance in the mountainous areas “that feed the springs that provide

water to a number of urban areas.”163

It is unknown whether Corral responded to Quevedo, but the plan was

ambitious for a Committee that had little power to determine forest policy and no

jurisdiction over any land. This is not to say that the Junta was totally ineffective.

It reforested areas along the Magdalena River and in Santa Fé, where eroded

hillsides had worsened flooding in the important towns of Mixcoac and Tacubaya,

and created an inventory of the woodlands of the Federal District. Moreover,

Quevedo won government support for his nascent tree nursery (vivero) in

Coyoacán—still in existence today—which nurtured thousands of trees for

distribution throughout the country. When the renowned US conservationist

Gifford Pinchot visited Mexico City in 1909, he was impressed with the state of

Mexican forestry, including the new forestry school in Santa Fé, organized with

163
AGN: SAF, Bosques, 65, 2, “Memorandum to Corral,” 1906. Quevedo’s
vision of protected forested zones around Mexico City preceeded by one year the
same recommendations of the Conference on Urban Hygiene in Berlin. See
Quevedo, Relato de mi vida; and Quevedo, “Labor activa del Departamento
Forestal,” Boletín de la Unión Panamericana, December, 1938

91
aid from the French government before the Yale school of forestry was fully

functioning.164

As Díaz’s hold on power waned, forest conservation in the Valley of

Mexico gained traction. On December 22, 1909, Díaz converted the Junta into

Mexico’s first Forestry Department under the Ministry of Development, with

jurisdiction over all of the Federal District’s valuable municipal woodlands, except

for those in Santa Fé and Desierto de los Leones. Quevedo, as head of the

department, was distraught at the fact that the Public Works Department would

maintain control over these two critical forests. He issued a long and caustic

response to Corral over the snub. For Quevedo, the separation of water and forest

regulations was harmful, and he bluntly stated the “scientific axiom” that “without

forests, there are no springs.”165 Furthermore, he noted that in the six months since

the decree creating the new Department, their efforts in reforesting the areas

around the Xochimilco springs had been commended by Marroquín’s Board of

Water Provision. Showing frustration and proud of his broad training, Quevedo

assailed the Public Works Department for not covering the aqueduct from the

Desierto and defended his newborn agency, claiming that conservation of the

164
See AGN: SAF, Bosques 70, 1; Simonian, 73 and 75; and Relato de mi vida.
165
AGN: SAF, Bosques 70, 7, “Quevedo to Ministry of Development,” June 20,
1910. Quevedo added that in some nations Water and Forestry Departments were
one and the same.

92
Desierto and Santa Fé springs would be “more effective” under the direction of

“specialists in the treatment of forests and water.”166

Although these two prized woodlands remained out of reach, Quevedo did

support three important government acts: the suspension of public land sales, the

prohibition of forest exploitation on lands deemed to serve the public interest, and

the power of expropriation for the reforestation of desolate lands. 167 Expropriation

was employed on at least one occasion when Díaz, following through on one of

Quevedo’s 1906 proposals, created a protected forested zone around Mexico City

to stave off flooding and protect the city’s precious springs.168

By the end of 1910, the Forestry Department had taken over concessions

for forest exploitation on public and private lands, and the Ministry of

Development had set guidelines for the Department to follow when appraising a

request. The Department was responsible for assessing the potential damage to

woodlands and was granted authority to reject requests based on principles of

conservation. In order to surveil extraction in the Valley, the Department hired a

number of guards for each forested district.

Over the span of several decades, Mexican conservation had gone from a

heterogeneous set of principles espoused by a small cadre of scientists and public

officials to an official policy, spearheaded by a government agency seemingly

166
AGN: SAF, Bosques 70, 7, “Quevedo to Ministry of Development,” June 20,
1910.
167
Simonian, 78.
168
Ibid. There is no evidence, however, on how use of the reserve was restricted
or enforced.

93
stronger by the day. As a particular inflection of a world conservation movement,

Mexican elites had assigned an incalculable value to the forests around Mexico

City, a value that was based on the general prosperity of the city rather than on

specific exchange values.

Yet, if conservationists kept the public interest in mind, strengthened forest

regulations, expectedly, did not affect the Valley’s population equally. Tainted

with racism, conservationism privileged the “rationality” of elite economic actors,

and derided peasant, or “Indian,” forest economies as wasteful and careless.

Quevedo, for example, saw haciendas and foreign capital as culprits of forest

destruction, but he saved most of his derision for peasants whose slash-and-burn

practices and extraction methods, he claimed, were wrecking havoc on the nation’s

woodlands.169 Since conservation emerged within a political program determined

to support the financial and industrial elite, it is no surprise that prospective forest

exploiters were given free passes as long as they showed an interest in “scientific”

exploitation. In addition, the guards in charge of implementing government policy

found it much easier to punish small campesino operations than their hacienda or

industrial counterparts. Thus, the Hampsons received permission to control the

forests of Milpa Alta, paper factories expanded their operations, and haciendas

were often exempted from fees on forest products. Community forest economies,

169
See Quevedo, La cuestión forestal, 32-8; and Miguel Angel de Quevedo,
Algunas consideraciones sobre nuestro problema agrario (Mexico City: Victoria,
1916), 15-6.

94
especially in the Valley of Mexico where vigilance was at its highest, were

ultimately held accountable for the destruction of woodlands.

From its inception, the Forestry Department embarked on a mission against

community economies. Campesinos suddenly had to seek permission to exploit

forest products. Guards fined, and in some cases imprisoned, campesinos who cut

down trees without official permission.170 The most striking example of restricting

peasant livelihoods was the ban placed on extracting zacatón root along the

southern slopes of the Valley. During the summer of 1910 the Department saw in

this grass a crucial stabilizing element of the Valley’s forests as “without this

vegetation [the lands] are degraded and washed out [deslavados] by waters,

remaining improper…for the regeneration of woodlands.”171 Other petitions were

denied as well, but that did not prevent many from disobeying the orders of the

Forestry Department. Fraudulent exploitation may be assumed given the scarcity

of guards and the extensiveness of woodlands, and as evidenced by the petition to

have the infamous Rurales (Díaz’s mounted police force) assist, the Department

was clearly struggling to enforce their policies.172

The tension between the guards of the Forestry Department and the

peasants of the southern slopes of the Valley of Mexico often boiled over into

170
See for example, AGN: SAF, Bosques 14, 4; and 70, 14.
171
AGN: SAF, Bosques, 70, 18 “Quevedo to residents of San Salvador Cuatenco,”
September 2, 1910.
172
AGN: SAF, Bosques, 70, 17, “Oficio from Quevedo to General Direction of
Agriculture,” October 5, 1910. Even without the help of the rurales, the guards did
crack down on fraudulent extraction. In one case, thirty-six peasants were charged
with extracting the root in the mountain slopes of Milpa Alta.

95
outright battle at the onset of revolution. Amidst the vacuum of power between

1911 and 1917, communities took control of crucial water and forest resources that

had been dispossessed or denied them during the previous decades. In fact, the

revolution provided an opportunity for both the urban and rural poor to stake

claims on productive and livable environments, as the ensuing chapters shall

demonstrate.

96
Part II: Sanitizing the City: The Politics of Environmental

Space in Mexico City

97
 Chapter 2: The Nature of the Urban Revolution I, 1910-1928

In November of 1910, Francisco Madero issued the Plan San Luis Potosí,

whose rallying cry “Effective Suffrage, No Reelection” marked the beginning of

the Mexican revolution. Six months later, Díaz, after signing a peace accord

stipulating his abdication and new elections, boarded the Portuguese ship the

Ypiranga to retire in Europe. Upon departure, he famously remarked: “Madero

has unleashed a tiger, let’s see if he can control it.” Indeed, Madero had led a

loose alliance of peasants, peons, and workers, who called for social reform, and

political reformers of various stripes who had sought a renewal of Mexico’s liberal

heritage. From the beginning, he showed little interest in social reform, alienating

the agrarianist followers of Emiliano Zapata (Zapatistas) based in Morelos and the

immense Chihuahua-based army of ranchers, peons, and small property-owners

under the helm of Pancho Villa. Meanwhile, he faced a formidable foe in the

persistent reactionary oligarchs that had enjoyed so many privileges during Díaz’s

long reign. In February 1913, Madero met his demise at the guns of Díaz’s former

military commanders in a coup known as the “Ten Tragic Days,” which turned

areas of Mexico City into a war zone. Huerta’s days were also numbered,

however. The revolutionaries regrouped to once again battle the old regime.

The ongoing revolution had a number of short-term and long-term

environmental ramifications in the city. The destruction of February 1913 began a

three-year period, climaxing in 1915, when Mexico City came to a near standstill.

98
Commodity lines of food and other goods from the surrounding hinterland

snapped, and investments for important infrastructure, including extensions of the

Xochimilco water supply, evaporated. However devastating food, water, and other

shortages must have been for inhabitants of the capital, the long-term effects of

revolutionary change had a more profound impact on the nature of urban growth.

On the one hand, the revolution facilitated popular organizing, and the new

constitution furthered the legal framework for public health. On the other hand,

violence and political instability dried up credit, and the agrarian reform, by

pushing unprofitable rural capital into the cities, strengthened the already tenacious

grip of urban developers and landlords over city politics. These contradictory

forces, involving the urban populace, municipal government, and developers, came

to a head in 1922, the year of the deadly water riot in Mexico City’s main plaza.

From 1912 to 1929, during an era of supposed progress regarding the

sanitary needs of great cities and in a national context of social reform, the sanitary

services of Mexico City deteriorated, with no solution in sight. The sanitarian

ideal, was—however genuine—riddled with its own inherent problems and

extraordinarily deficient when pitted against unfettered urban growth led by

developers and landowners.173 Municipal government, demoted to an advisory

role in 1903 and reconstituted in the revolutionary constitution of 1917, rested on

173
My use of the term “sanitation” adheres to its conventional definition as the
“formulation and application of measures designed to protect public health.”
(American Heritage Dictionary 4th edition) Recently, usage has narrowed to entail
only the waste and disposal of sewage, garbage, or, in some cases, industrial
waste.

99
precarious financial and political foundations and succumbed to the political

power of developers hungry for real estate profits.174

Inhabitants across the vast urban social spectrum invested water with

varying and often opposed meanings, rendering the liquid a politically volatile

issue. For engineers, pure and abundant water was a beacon of progress and

public health, but also a resource that not all urban citizens understood how to use

rationally. For government, it represented simultaneously substantial expenses,

tax revenue, and a source of political legitimacy. For tenement owners and

renters, it often signaled unwelcome government intervention, while for

homeowners and many tenants it became a symbol of social advancement,

hygiene, and proof of entrance into modern society. The politics of water,

therefore, was a contentious affair involving the city’s populace, urban developers,

and government. The fact that the system was not reliable and that structures of

political-economic power inhibited the universality of service were the catalysts of

ongoing conflicts with popular groups over water supply starting in the 1910s. The

existence of new sanitary infrastructure attended by the hegemonic sanitary ideal

and the onset of revolution encouraged the lower classes to mobilize for livable

environments by appropriating the modern discourse of public hygiene. Urban

developers, meanwhile, contested government intervention in their perceived

174
The Federal District Government shared power with the various municipal
governments located within the district. Each consisted of a city/town council
(Ayuntamiento) and a mayor. The Ayuntamiento of Mexico was the most
populous, but after 1900, urban growth began to connect the city to neighboring
municipalities such as Guadalupe Hidalgo, Tacubaya, Mixcoac, and
Atzcapotzalco.

100
rights to property and profit. The outcome of the tripartite battle shaped urban

governance and the ways in which postrevolutionary officials dealt with sanitary

demands. Popular protest and municipal governance, instead of bringing sanitary

equality to the city, comprised the justification used by the Federal government to

centralize political power of the growing metropolis in the hands of the Executive.

This chapter grounds sanitation, especially water supply, in the formation of

uneven urban spaces and political culture.

The Sanitarian Vision on the Ground

If urban inhabitants could agree on the need to supply the city with

adequate drinking water, how that water would be distributed in and around the

city was fraught with conflict. Manuel Marroquín y Rivera, director of the Board

of The Provision of Potable Water, frequently spoke the language of universal

service, but his abstract spatial vision was underwritten by elitist codes of water

consumption and the city’s hierarchical socio-spatial relations during an era of

limited funding.

While workers continued construction of the aqueduct, pumping stations,

and other infrastructure, government officials and the Board debated how the

network of pipes would be laid and how the hook-ups would be made. In 1908,

the Superior Health Council tried to confirm the 1902 water commission’s

suggestion regarding the extension of services to forlorn sections of the city. The

Council enjoined that before anything “there be established the pipes for potable

101
water in the parts of the city that lack them and afterward that the already existing

pipes in the central part of the city be improved.”175 The Board had since taken a

different route—perhaps due to funding constraints—and they rejected the order

on the grounds that such a measure would require much longer mains. 176 It was

evidently much cheaper and simpler from a technical standpoint, but the fact was

that the political will, apart from the aspiration expressed by the nation’s chief

public health authority, to revolutionize water service in Mexico City simply did

not exist.

Fig. 4—Mexico City’s water system. Manuel Marroquín y Rivera, 1914. Courtesy
of Bibiloteca Daniel Cosío Villegas, Colegio de México.

The map above both illuminates the extensiveness of the new water supply

system and alludes to the persistent class and spatial inequalities that this vital new

175
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Consejo Superior del Distrito Federal, 585, 17.
176
Ibid.

102
sanitary service reproduced. Marroquín boasted in 1914 that almost 12,000 of the

close to 14,000 residences of the city had obtained connections to Xochimilco

water. On the surface, the system was a spectacular feat for a Porfirian public

work consummated in the midst of revolution. No doubt, the leading engineers of

the project believed they were the vanguard of a hydraulic revolution in Mexico’s

capital, transforming the city into a beacon of public hygiene and prosperity.

According to Marroquín, the only areas lacking service were a few streets in the

Indianilla neighborhood and all of La Bolsa, for which the engineer encouraged a

connection as soon as the national financial crisis passed. 177

His insistence on expanding the service notwithstanding, Marroquín’s

claim of having accomplished near universal coverage was misleading. The

engineer used fallacious census data from the Municipal Tax Office in calculating

that only around 2,000 residences lacked service. The tax office would have

excluded large swaths of unauthorized urban settlements such as La Bolsa, Sceibe,

and Morelos since residents in these colonias were neither subject to taxation nor

eligible for municipal services. According to 1900 census data, the city numbered

369,000 and contained 14,577 shacks and homes.178 By 1914, the number of

residences must have increased in proportion to population growth to near 20,000

(in 1910 the city counted nearly 500,000), meaning that the Xochimilco system

only supplied about 60% of the city’s residences. It is possible that Marroquín was

177
Manuel Marroquín y Rivera, Memoria, 31-32.
178
Jesús Galindo y Villa, Reseña histórica-descriptiva de la ciudad de México, 8.

103
ordered only to provide connections to a certain area of the city, and primarily to

neighborhoods that were legally incorporated.

To make matters worse, the spatial inequalities of urbanization ensured that

fewer than 60% of the city’s residents enjoyed access to Xochimilco water. The

population density of the first three cuarteles, located primarily on the eastern part

of Mexico City (where the system’s coverage was limited), was almost double that

of the seventh and eighth cuarteles, two of the wealthier areas located on the

western side of the city. By the end of the Porfiriato, most tenements (vecindades)

had been pushed east of the zócalo, and new ones were sprouting up in poor

developments. In many vecindades as many as twenty people would squeeze into

one room and split the rent, which might have added up to fifteen pesos per month.

The connection process was beset with problems, as authorities confronted

the landlord’s private domain. Lenient government regulations guaranteed that

many poor tenants fortunate to have a connection would receive neither safe nor

ample drinking water. The Board was in charge of placing the primary private pipe

that connected the street to each building’s entryway. While the owners were

obligated to place the permanent taps and the pipes that ran to and from the water

tank (tinaco), the Junta did provide a provisional tap so as not to interrupt service

during the installation process. The few requirements issued by the Junta

essentially enabled landowners to provide only the bare necessities of water

provision to their tenants. The Board’s manual, “Instrucciones: los propietarios de

casas,” employed permissive language such as “when it is convenient,” “if

104
desired,” or “can be done” when referring to important works not mandated by

authorities.179 Most of these voluntary works involved updating or doing away

with the water tanks, which engineers and the Superior Health Council

vociferously condemned as being unsanitary. Despite their rejection of the water

tank, officials gave in so that “landlords would not have to allot important

expenses.”180 The tinaco, a vestige of the old low-pressure system, was granted a

new lease on life to accommodate the interests of the owners, to the detriment of

the health of the poor. Other voluntary installations included the provision of taps

for each apartment as well as the construction of bathroom facilities.181 Tenement

dwellers were the chief victims of these policies. In some cases, hundreds of

residents were compelled to share one tap,182 and the new hydraulic infrastructure

did not transform practices of waste disposal in crowded living spaces. Clearly,

the new water system fell dramatically short of its purpose to provide public

hygiene to every resident.

179
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, CSGDF, Aguas, 586, 33, La Junta de Provisión de
Agua Potable, “Instrucciones a los propietarios de casas” August 28, 1912.
180
Ibid., 9.
181
Engineers understood that water systems were necessary for proper sewerage,
and that without sewage systems, groundwater supplies could be contaminated.
Despite the unequivocal connection between these sanitary services, government
tackled the problems separately, and public health inevitably suffered.
182
The minimum tax rate in force at the time was fixed at 4 pesos per month in
exchange for 1,656 liters per day, a quantity that few would have enjoyed. There
was no option to request less water, and there was no precise regulation to ensure
tenants who shared a tap received even close to satisfactory provision. Although
article 90 of the sanitary Code of 1902 obligated owners to “introduce [water] in
sufficient quantity, in proportion to the number of inhabitants,” public health
authorities elided any discussion of what “adequate” might mean and serious
enforcement of this crucial clause. See “Instrucciones,” 34.

105
 Once landlords had implemented the obligatory installations, the Board

inspected these works, placed the water meter, and opened the flow of Xochimilco

water. The use of the water meter formed part of a larger international trend to

limit waste by superciliously teaching the people the “correct” and “modern”

forms of water use. As Marroquín observed, this was of even greater importance

in Mexico where:

The existence of the great majority of American and European cities has
palpably demonstrated the convenience—better yet the need—of limiting
in some way the quantity of water that consumers receive when the
distribution is made under significant pressure. There have been cases in
which it has been sufficient to place meters in order to avoid the execution
of costly works and the expansion of those works. The examples of many
cities show that the amount of water wasted equals in many cases more
than twice the amount consumed in the end, and if these facts have been
recorded in advanced cities where the population has reached a high level
of civilization, there would be even more to fear in our city where waste is
a common defect among our lower class.183

The Mexican poor invariably fell on the wrong end of civilization. The elite

mercilessly accused them of being dirty and ignorant of the hygienic benefits of

soap or water. Unaware of any contradiction, at other times elites cast the poor as

profligate water users, without even the slightest notion of responsibility. To

control the dangers of overuse, the Board ordered thousands of water meters from

France. Yet officials failed to install most of the devices and implement a tax

183
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Aguas 585, 19 “Marroquín to the Advisory Board of the
GDF” May 25, 1909. In this statement, Marroquín justified the meters as a means
by which to avoid costly new captation works. In the 1930s, however, the post-
revolutionary government, as we shall see, advertised the meter precisely because
higher tax revenue would permit necessary expansion projects.

106
policy contingent upon their use because of the combative response from

landowners.184

Although the tax proposal did not become law, it serves as a handy tool to

examine the contentiousness of water service in early twentieth century Mexico

City. The purpose of the proposed law was to render the measurement of water

use politically viable by instituting a gradated taxation scheme. Landlords and

homeowners rejected the meters, fearing the implementation of higher taxes. For

these reasons, according to the Board, it was essential that “a system of economic

tariffs be established” so that “the meters do not become an inconvenience” and

the poor have a sufficient supply for “a wide array of domestic uses, especially

those that hygiene demands.”185

Yet there were many groups to please and standards to uphold in the

formulation of the tax. The tax would have to pay off the project’s debts and the

costs of maintenance, it would have to be cheap enough to parry owner wariness,

and it would need to uphold the Board’s own principles of universalized service in

the name of public hygiene. The members of the Board walked a tightrope

between their inclusive vision of water provision and a political pragmatism

necessary to generate support among powerful urban homeowners and the city

government.

184
Marroquín, Memoria, 561. In 1915 the Ayuntamiento complained that many
landlords had removed the water meters from their proper location. See AHDF:
Ayuntamiento: Aguas en general, 42, 636
185
Marroquín, Memoria, 563.

107
 With the proposed gradated system, the rate was set relative to the total

rent of the residence.186 Each rate was assigned a certain minimum quantity of

water, and any usage above that minimum was charged seven cents per cubic

meter. The tax on the minimum allotted water generally ranged between 5 and 7

cents per cubic meter. To help the owners of large tenement buildings, the Board

proposed another similar gradated system, which would have dramatically

decreased the price of water as the total rent of the building increased. Neither

system would have been generous to poor tenants’ water needs, however, given

the close quarters in which most lived. The system would have allotted more

water to residences with higher total rents, but less water to the urban poor paying

low rents and sharing rooms. The tax would have validated existing sanitary

inequalities; for poor residents would only have been able to reach the minimum

allotment of 150 liters per day with regular access to showers and bathrooms, two

amenities lacking in most tenements.

Perhaps most landlords supported this basic gradated scale, but even this

generous proposal could not overcome the underlying dilemma of the meters. The

proposal contained a clause that further complicated the gradated scheme: it stated

that if each tenant received less than 150 liters per day, the owner would be subject

to extra fees. In effect, owners would have been charged extra even if they could

have limited tenant water uses. Moreover, the metered system would have

186
My analysis of the tax proposal is based on Marroquín, 563-6; and
“Instrucciones,” 26-9.

108
obligated owners to maintain pipes and faucets, or pay potentially astronomical

water bills due to leaks and waste.

After defeat of the bill, Marroquín submitted a revised proposal to the

Director of Public Works. It was a simpler version, but one that continued the

tenuous balancing act between clashing interests. Marroquín called for a similar

gradated tax scheme linked to the total rent of the residence. The basic tax would

have remained roughly equal while the amount of water for each resident would

have increased 65% on average over the earlier proposal. Assuming that only a

few people lived in each room of a tenement, there would have been sufficient

water according to reigning hygienic standards of the day. But if we assume more

crowded living spaces, again the amount of water would have proven deficient.

Sanitarians such as Marroquín, Pacheco, Peñafiel, and the members of the

Junta propagated a progressive vision of urban society, but despite—or perhaps

because of—their progressivism, they exhibited extreme paternalism, which joined

forces with a dogmatic ideology spurning state intervention in “private” affairs.

They talked of transforming the “uneducated” and “irrational” masses into

“civilized” people with modern bodies of cleanliness, but they treated the private

property of landlords and homeowners as sacrosanct. The contradiction is a stark

and obvious one: the urban upper class remained essentially immune to

contributing to the general public health of the city while the poor were chastised

for not being “modern” enough. In fact, such treatment of the urban poor often

served as a good excuse for not pursuing sanitary goals more adamantly and

109
effectively.187 Instead of embarking on a campaign to punish the sanitary

violations of landlords, the state sought to educate the poor.188 The scientific and

governing elite held contradictory visions of urban society: one held inclusive

public hygiene as essential to propagating modernity in the city while another

supported existing economic and cultural inequalities through class (and

sometimes racist) discrimination. During the postrevolutionary period, elites

tended toward efforts to attain public hygiene, but the tension between these two

threads of urban modernity endured the revolution, shaping urban political culture

into the 1930s.

Since sanitarians did not seriously challenge the private domain of

landowners and developers, their vision of a hygienic Mexico City crumbled. The

grandiose rhetoric of people like Pacheco, Gayol, and Marroquín increasingly rang

hollow as many residents were either bereft of a connection or received a scant

supply. At the height of revolution, Alberto J. Pani, the architect of the

Xochimilco pumping stations and revolutionary politician, lambasted pre-

revolutionary public health authorities for not doing enough to update Mexico City

to modern hygienic standards.189 Invoking the words of Victor Hugo, he saw a

direct correlation between the sanitary levels of a society and its rank among

187
For an example of this in the writings of the Superior Health Council, see Pablo
Piccato, City of Suspects, 39.
188
At the centennial, for example, Federal District Governor Landa y Escandón,
installed bathhouses throughout the city. See John Lear, Workers, Neighbors and
Citizens, 42; and Miguel Macedo, la criminalidad en México: medios de
combatirla (Mexico City: Secretaría de Fomento, 1897), 32.
189
Alberto J. Pani, Hygiene in Mexico: A Study of Sanitary and Educational
Problems (New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1917).

110
civilized nations. Díaz, the so-called modernizer, had flunked the test of “integral

progress.”190 Pani called the tenements “sinks of moral and physical infection” and

advocated “compulsory sanitation” in all Mexican cities where the yearly death

rate exceeded 20 per 10,000 residents.191 The enforcement of sanitary policy

would be matched with the economic improvement of the people and a “vigorous

and extensive propaganda of the elemental principles of hygiene.”(italics

original)192 Pani at once represented the inclusive version of the Mexican sanitary

ideal that the revolution could potentially realize and the persistent understandings

of the urban poor as morally and physically degenerate.

However incisive Pani’s condemnations may have been, his words were

squelched under the weight of the more-important military battles consuming the

country and persistent policies of urbanization that privileged both landowners and

developers. The ratcheting up of revolutionary conflict marked a financial crisis

for the Junta, but the chief obstacle to universal coverage remained the character of

urban development. Weak sanitary regulations combined with the broader forces

of urban development to compound the sanitary inequalities. The dispersed

geography of new subdivisions rendered universal coverage extremely costly, and

sections of the city that enjoyed the old connections held priority over newer,

190
Ibid., 178. Hugo had remarked that a civilization is judged upon the depth of
its sewer system.
191
Ibid., 91. Pani put Mexico City’s death rate at 43 per 1,000, ranking it as the
most unhealthy city in the world. One could dispute his method of including the
entire Federal District in his definition of “Mexico City,” but the conclusion is
nonetheless telling.
192
Ibid., 19.

111
forlorn ones. Any extension beyond these areas must have been viewed as a gift to

its inhabitants, as service would have been provided despite municipal law or the

contractual obligations of developers. The engineers of the Xochimilco system,

therefore, faced a Sisyphean climb to cover the entire city with water service.

Díaz de Leon, sections of Indianilla, Rastro, and Guerrero, formerly lacking in

water supply, enjoyed the pure spring water starting in 1914. All others were

excluded, however, and despite continuous complaints and petitions, these

forsaken communities continued to obtain their water from insalubrious sources

such as streams or wells.

How Water Galvanized a Town

Thousands of Mexico City residents were denied access to Xochimilco

water, but the dozens of towns within the Federal District—including Xochimilco

itself—also obtained their water from often-pernicious sources. Towns such as

San Angel, Coyoacán, Mixcoac, Tacubaya, and Villa Guadalupe, as retreats for the

city’s most illustrious inhabitants, were important satellites. Marroquín recognized

that if Xochimilco water could be brought to these communities as well, the

Federal District as a whole could prosper. Only the residents of Guadalupe

Hidalgo (or Villa Guadalupe), a religious center bordering the northern edge of the

capital, managed to obtain Mexico City’s water, however. Yet Marroquín was

only one of many involved in bringing the Villa water. The local elite and its

growing middle class provided the monetary support and political weight

112
necessary to steer the water to veer northward from the capital. The political

negotiation between the town and the city reveals the contested nature of drinking

water and exposes the spatial inequalities of water provision that stretched beyond

the immediate limits of the capital.

The sanitarian ideal of a prosperous Mexico City coincided with a healthy

display of civic organization and wealth in the Villa Guadalupe to ensure that the

important town would be connected to the new system. When Pedro Campos, a

former resident of the municipality of Tlalnepantla, wrote to the president of the

town council in 1912 congratulating him on his request to President Madero for

improved water service, the town was experiencing a grave public health crisis.193

The town council faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles to provide adequate

and salubrious water to its residents. Its supply originated in the pure springs that

formed the Tlalnepantla River, but from this point—much like the situation with

the Hondo River a decade before—nature and culture combined to deny la Villa a

healthy water supply. Torrential summer rains caused erosion—worsened by

lands denuded of vegetation, giving the river water a murky brown hue, while

upstream communities and haciendas regularly and illicitly diverted water or

polluted the open canal. Campos told of communities that used the river to bathe

themselves and wash clothing and recommended that the town abandon use of the

river water, abstaining “from saying things even more repugnant.”194 One of these

193
AHDF: Municipalidades Foráneas: Guadalupe Hidalgo, Aguas, 6, 15 “Campos
to the municipal president,” June 13, 1912.
194
Ibid.

113
repugnant uses may have been the animal and human waste that at some points

emptied out into the riverbed.195 The town received a scant provision, according to

statistics from the summer of 1912, with each inhabitant receiving a paltry thirty

liters per day. Three or four fatalities were reported daily, primarily the

unsuspecting victims of water-related illnesses.196

The town’s boosters were confident that in the propitious climate of

advancing public hygiene they could find a way to improve the town’s supply

system. Back in 1908, Flores, along with Guadalupe Hidalgo’s political prefect

Francisco Moreno, the town’s most active sanitary engineer Federico Aubry, and

its sanitary inspector Fernando Altamirano, had formed a special water

commission to study the problem at hand.197 Four years later, it seemed that the

only way to resolve the crisis was to somehow convince federal authorities that a

connection to the city’s new system was not only necessary but also practicable.

The felicitous method of persuasion, as was often the case, came in monetary

form.

Three members of the original commission, Francisco Moreno, Flores, and

Aubrey formed the Junta Patriótica de Mejoras Materiales in an effort to raise the

money to fund the important public works. They found convenient—if somewhat

strange—allies in the local landowners Remigio Noriega, Jose Maria Velazquez,

195
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Gobernacion, Obras Públicas, Guadalupe Hidalgo,
1178/175 “Memorandum of the city council of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” September 3,
1912.
196
Ibid.
197
AHDF: Municipalidades Foráneas: Guadalupe Hidalgo, aguas, 6,4 “Altamirano
to the Public Works Department,” July 15, 1908.

114
and Dolores Barros de Rincón Gallado. In May of 1913, The Junta reported that

they had raised 7,000 pesos from these three hacendados, and that they expected to

soon raise the other 23,000 pesos necessary before work could begin.198 It is

possible that Noriega, Maria Velazquez, and Rincón Gallado were genuinely

concerned with the hygiene of La Villa, but only Noriega had known real estate

interests there. They all, however, looked with predatory eyes to the Tlalnepantla

River as a crucial source of irrigation water for their haciendas. In fact, María

Velázquez and Rincón Gallado had already had their enterprises frustrated due to

the water rights held by the town.199

The Junta Patriótica obtained financial contributions from over 500 donors,

and by pressuring the Federal Government for more funds, the project got off the

ground in 1913. Using Mexico City’s old pipes, construction began on the public

works to quench la Villa’s thirst.200 La Junta continued to collect small donations

from local homeowners, but over time, the organization became a thorn in the side

of the state. Their proposal to convert the Junta Patriótica into a Junta de Aguas

198
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Gobernación, Obras Públicas, Guadalupe Hidalgo 1178,
205 “Junta to Director of Public Works,” May 8, 1913
199
See AHDF: Municipalidades Fóraneas, Guadalupe Hidalgo, aguas, 6,1 and 5,
28; and AHA: AS, 279/6726. Rincón Gallardo was the owner of the expansive
Escalera Hacienda, Noriega owned the Hacienda Aragón, and Maria Velazquez
owned two nearby estates.
200
See various documents in AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Gobernación, Obras Públicas,
Guadalupe Hidalgo 1178, 205. The Junta de provision and the director of Public
Works of the Federal District, Ignacio de la Barra, insisted that the old pipes could
be used as a way to keep costs down and advance the general goals of hygiene.
The consequence of this decision proved deleterious for la Villa, which already by
1930 was analyzing the possibility of re-using the Tlalnepantla River due to the
unsuitable Xochimilco supply system. See AHA: AS, 376/7518.

115
Potables, which would supervise the project and seek further funding, received

initial endorsements from Quevedo and the Superior Health Council. But, in the

end, the Public Works Department of the Federal District rejected the proposal,

calling the Junta overly “private” and “egotistical.”201 The Junta surely

represented an affront to the authority of the government, which sought to

monopolize credit for the important public works. The Junta committed political

suicide, however, when it sought to postpone the introduction of Xochimilco

waters in 1914 so that it could continue fundraising to pay off the outstanding debt

of 2,400 pesos it owed an indignant Noriega.202 Evidently, the Board took on a

life of its own, privileging financial solvency over its purported aim.

Despite the postponement efforts, on April 19, 1914 the jubilant Villa

celebrated the inauguration of their new water system, with public fountains

gushing fresh spring water. Afterwards, a group representing the cream of the

city’s political elite socialized as the guests of Noriega’s vast Aragón estate,

leaving the common folk to party at the pulquerias (pulque taverns), whose hours

were extended to accommodate the festivities.203

The party was deceptive since Marroquín and his Junta still had to fit most

of the homes with individual connections. The revolution finally stymied the

201
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Consejo del Gobierno del DF, aguas, 587/39 “Public
Works Department to Junta, July 22, 1914.
202
AHDF: Ayuntamiento: CSGDF, aguas, 587/39 “Public Works Department to
Junta,” July 22, 1914; and AHDF: Ayuntamiento: Gobernación, Obras Públicas,
Guadalupe Hidalgo 1178/205 “Noriega to Public Works Department,” May 15,
1915.
203
El Demócrata, “Ayer fue un día de gran jubilo en la cercana V. de Guadalupe,”
April 20, 1914.

116
determined engineers who directed the public works. Funding ran dry, much like

many of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s homes, and work from early 1915 onward moved at

a snail’s pace. Residents of Matamoros street complained that work to remove an

old water pipe had halted suddenly, leaving the street in shambles and turning it

into a “foco de infección.”204 The new water system may not have been what its

proponents bargained for, but it did bring prestige to local politicians and

engineers while improving a critical sanitary service in one of the Federal

District’s most important towns.

Emboldened by the works in Villa Guadalupe, in the summer of 1913

Marroquín set his sights on San Angel, Coyoacan, Mixcoac, and Tacubaya,

communities to the south and southwest of Mexico City. His 500,000-peso

scheme entailed a main aqueduct to run from La Condesa to each of the towns as

well as new local distribution networks. Marroquín favored contracting out the

work to a private company. Both the Superior Health Council and the Public

Works Department approved of the project, despite their concern that in the remote

future the city might need all of Xochimilco’s water. Rafael Ortega, head of the

Comisión de Asuntos Jurídicos, opined more bleakly of the proposal. Reflecting

common beliefs about the public nature of water service, Ortega assailed private

water contractors as “abusive” and attempted to bring Marroquín and others back

to political reality. Although the proposal contained the stipulation that the waters

belonged to Mexico City, as Ortega observed, “this condition will be impossible to

204
Ayuntamiento: Gobernación, Obras Públicas, Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1180/334
“Residents of Matamoros street to Superior Health Council,” September 6, 1916.

117
enforce because the interests created during the time those populations enjoy the

water are sure to openly oppose it” and the company would obviously “put

powerful interests in play so that its service is not taken away from it.”205 For

Ortega, Xochimilco’s water was Mexico City’s public water first and foremost, no

matter the towns’ close proximity to the springs. Whether due to Ortega’s pen or

the breakdown of state authority the following year, Marroquín’s ambitious

proposal never came to fruition. As the nation faced political and financial crisis,

the era of water-supply project came to an abrupt halt. The towns surrounding the

capital had to wait for another era of public works projects in the 1930s and 1940s

before their residents would enjoy more comprehensive supply systems.

Urbanization in the Post-revolutionary City

Besides the Ten Tragic Days in 1913, Mexico City, in contrast to the

surrounding countryside, had remained relatively unscathed from revolutionary

violence. But as the loose alliance spearheaded by Venustiano Carranza toppled

Huerta’s conservative regime in 1914, the capital’s residents were hit hard by

astronomical price inflation on basic goods, the destruction of the monetary

system, and the utter collapse of institutional order.206 For the following eighteen

months, the Convention, primarily the Zapatistas who had split from Carranza’s

205
See the documents in AHDF: Ayuntamiento: CSGDF, Aguas, 587, 37
206
See Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto, hambre, y respuesta política” in
Instituciones y ciudad: Ocho estudios históricos sobre la ciudad de México ed.
Carlos Illades and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri (Mexico City: Sábado Distrito Federal,
2000): 133-64.

118
earlier alliance, and the Carrancistas (the Constitutionalists) fought for possession

of the city. But military strategy eclipsed urban governance. Food riots broke out

in response to the incapacity of government to respond to the daunting crisis, and

the urban poor combed the streets, woods, and nearby farmland for anything that

might be edible.207

The “modern progress” of which Beltrán y Puga boasted merely seven years

earlier seemed a distant memory at that point, crushed under the rubble of the Ten

Tragic Days and the feet of food rioters. In late 1915, Carranza handed over the

responsibility of food distribution to the Ayuntamiento, and over the next several

years it worked to rejuvenate the city’s parks, gardens, and green spaces. The

municipal health inspector assured people that the city’s water supply was safe

after at least two interruptions in service—at least one of which Zapatista sabotage

accounted for.208 The Carrancista governor of the Federal District issued tax

exemptions for urban developers to build homes.209 In short, Carranza initiated the

process of restoring Mexico City its lost vitality. But after 1917 with the official

restoration of municipal government written into the Constitution, this task was in

the main bestowed upon the semi-autonomous Ayuntamiento of Mexico, shackled

207
Francisco Ramírez Plancarte, La ciudad de México durante la revolución
constitucionalista, 366. For an excellent analysis of popular riots in revolutionary
Mexico City, see Lear, 301-315.
208
See Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto,” 158; and Douglas W. Richmond, Venustiano
Caranza’s Nationalist Struggle, 1893-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1983), 170.
209
Rafael López Rangel, La planificación de la ciudad de México, 1900-1940
(Mexico City: UAM, 1993), 50.

119
again by its dependence on the Executive for funds and limited jurisdictionally by

competing government entities.

The Ayuntamientos of the Federal District did little to provide essential

sanitary services, in part because of corruption and factional stand-offs, but

primarily because of scant financial resources that permitted the private sector to

control the city’s expansion.210 The entire budget for public works of the

Ayuntamiento de Mexico during the 1920s rarely exceeded three million pesos per

year—a miserly amount in terms of the investment that urban growth and

infrastructure maintenance demanded—and little of that remained for the poorest

neighborhoods that contributed paltry sums to the municipal coffers. Urban

government did not attempt to reign in the power of urban developers through

centralized planning.

The revolution induced three significant changes in the urban real estate

market. First, foreigners such as the Branniff and Lewis brothers played a larger

role as the earlier developers closest to Díaz fell out of favor with the

revolutionary governments.211 Second, a number of illustrious revolutionaries

including presidents Calles and Ortíz Rubio, governor of Nuevo León and Mexico

210
Historian Erica Berra emphasized party conflict as a chief reason for the
inadequate public services in the 1920s. Newspapers tended to highlight
corruption, nepotism, and the general ineptitude of government. Indeed, city
government was corrupt, and the organizational form of municipal government did
not propitiate the efficient management of urban services. But I argue that these
deficiencies were secondary to the larger problem of the spatial inequalities
inherent in the process of capitalist urbanization. See Berra and Excelsior, “Una
obra de veras progresista y revolucionaria es la que proyecta el el gobierno,” Sep
22, 1927.
211
Jiménez Muñoz, 126.

120
City mayor Aaron Sáenz, prominent bureaucrat and 1940 presidential challenger

Juan Andreu Almazán, and labor boss Luis Morones turned a profit in real estate

and construction ventures.212 Third, after the destructive effects of violence in the

countryside and while the government expropriated large haciendas in the

countryside as part of the agrarian reform, urban real estate became a convenient

way for hacendados to guard their elite status. 213 To borrow the geographer David

Harvey’s concept, urban land markets served as a “spatial fix” for rural Mexican

capital.214 The persistent power of developers to decide which new neighborhoods

would obtain services further eroded sanitary visions of Mexico City and

reproduced the spatial inequalities of the ever-expanding city.

The rapid population growth of the capital continued apace after the

revolution. In 1921, the capital had 615,000 people; by 1930 it supported over a

million, though much of this growth can be attributed to the incorporation of other

municipalities. Nonetheless, the growth the city experienced between 1920 and

1940 placed it among the fastest growing metropolises in the world—just a few

212
Arnoldo Córdova, La ideología de la revolución mexicana, (Mexico City:
ERA), 73
213
See Edmundo Flores, 210; and Diane Davis, Urban Leviathan. Similarly, E.
Swyngedouw notes that after the crash of the cocoa market in early 1930s
Ecuador, capital increasingly flowed into urban real estate. See his “Power,
Nature, and the City: The Conquest of Water and the Polítical Ecology of
Urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador” Environment & Planning 2, 29 (1997), 318.
214
David Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory
of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1985).

121
places behind Sao Paulo and Los Angeles.215 Within the municipality of Mexico,

companies subdivided colonias for the rich, the middle classes, and to a lesser

degree, the poor. This process also carried over into neighboring municipalities

like General Anaya, Tacubaya, Mixcoac, and Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Influenced by the ideals underpinning Ebenezer Howard’s “garden city”

vision, The Mexican International Trust subdivided Chapultepec Heights (now

Chapultepec Morales and Bosque de Chapultepec) in 1922, located north of the

Chapultepec Forest. The colonia was just the right environment for the urban

elite; it was situated away from stenches and noise and with a beautiful panoramic

view of the city, yet was close enough to it for residents to access its high culture.

This “picturesque and salubrious” colonia became the model suburb for the

wealthy, much like Juárez and Cuauhtémoc had been twenty years earlier.216

As well maintained and designed as Chapultepec Heights was, most other

colonias were as neglected and wretched. Atlampa was subdivided in the late

1910s for the urban working class, but infrastructural works did not begin until

1926. Residents bemoaned the “inherent penalties of a lack of all sanitary

service,” and perhaps chagrined over their sorry state, also petitioned the

Ayuntamiento to have their street names changed to the names of local flowers.

The city council considered the matter, but concluded that it would be nothing

short of an insult to rename Zanja Cuadrada street, “a swamp full of miasmas,”

215
See Carol McMichael Reese. “The Urban Development of Mexico City” in
Planning Latin American Capital Cities, 1850-1950 ed. Arturo Almondoz Marte
(London: Routledge, 2002), 144.
216
El Demócrata, May 28, 1922; and April 30, 1922 quoted in Berra, 124.

122
Azucena street.217 This neighborhood, like many others settled in the immediate

post-revolutionary era, was unauthorized and lacked most, or all, services.

The developer of del Valle, a hacienda owner in the nearby state of

Mexico, advertised the new subdivision as a country retreat for the upper-middle

class and sold lots in the early twenties between 7,000-30,000 pesos each. It

appeared that this colonia would be another success story on the southwestern side

of the city, but the company later accused the government of not repaying debts for

urbanization of the subdivision and halted all planned works. The government

ignored these complaints, arguing that the company had completed few services.

The Superior Health Council issued a fine of 500 pesos for their absence.

President Plutarco Elias Calles did not stop there, however. In a decree that only a

well-to-do colonia would have provoked, Calles levied an additional fine of 500

pesos each day until the company began work. Neither fine did the trick, and the

wretched sanitary conditions of the colonia did not improve until the early 1930s

with the financial assistance of residents themselves.218

217
Berra, 116; and Boletín Municipal, August 31, 1923.
218
See O-C: 808-V-7 “Company President Antonio Martínez to Obregón,”
February 10, 1922; El Demócrata, “Sin servicios no hay asentamiento,” July 5,
1924; La Prensa “Incautacion del servicio de agua en la C del Valle, July 10,
1934; and Berra, 111-2.

123
 Fig. 5—Advertisement for colonia Portales, 1915. El Demócrata, May 15,
1915. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Lerdo de Tejada). The second paragraph reads:
“Come with your friends and family to spend a pleasant morning, taking advantage
of the opportunity to become a homeowner in one of the most beautiful places in
the Valley, at little expense.”

The colonia Portales was an especially egregious case of urban

development. Unlike del Valle, Jorge Basurto’s Compañía de Terrenos Mexicanos

marketed Portales as a working-class subdivision. It would be designed according

to the “most modern methods,” and would become “‘the sun city that the majority

124
of great world cities eagerly yearned to have.”219 The high expectations must have

disappointed hapless buyers when they discovered that the company had refused to

install basic sanitary services.

As a result of the disastrous sanitary conditions of del Valle and other

subdivisions in the Federal District, in 1924 Calles outlawed the creation and

settlement of subdivisions until urban services such as garbage removal, pavement,

water, and drainage could be installed. The government’s strategy to ensure the

sanitation of the city remained consistent through the revolution. The developers

of new subdivisions were responsible for providing urban services, with adverse

effects on the settlers and the order of the city’s sanitary infrastructure. While

Calles’s decree insisted that companies be fined for their negligence, unauthorized

settlements were again left outside of legal recourse, and often threatened with

removal due to public health violations.220 Authorized but unserviced settlements

were in a similarly disadvantaged situation, and the municipal governments,

instead of taking responsibility for providing services, shifted blame to the

negligent developers. In the mid 20s, over two-thirds of the city’s surface area

lacked sanitary services, probably affecting well over half of the city’s

population.221 Colonias such as del Valle, Valle Gomez, Productos Químicos,

Moderna, Atlampa, Peralvillo, La Bolsa, and Vallejo were abandoned for years,

219
El Demócrata, March 19, 1922; and Berra, 127-128.
220
See María Soledad Cruz Rodríguez, Crecimiento urbano y los procesos
sociales en el Distrito Federal (1920-1928) (Mexico City: UAM, 1994), 100; and
Berra, 368-70.
221
“Una obra de veras progresista,” El Universal, September 22, 1927.

125
sometimes decades. For many journalists and public health advocates, the

situation caused embarrassment, but for countless numbers of the city’s

population, it was a matter of life or death. Pitiful urban sanitation led Doctor

Enrique de Bosque to quip: “we are alive because of a true miracle.”222 Examining

the politics of the city’s sanitary services illustrates not only the terribly unequal

nature of urban growth but also the shaky political foundations on which

municipal government rested.

Death to the Ayuntamiento: The 1922 Riot

The Ayuntamiento attempted to govern between the rock of the Federal

Government and the hard place of the urban populace. The odds were against it.

First, the very existence of municipal government within the Federal District

remained contentious, and Carranza himself had proposed that it be dissolved.

The measure to restore municipal powers was likely passed because Diaz’s 1903

decree was largely seen as authoritarian, and the various municipal councils could

serve as siphons of factional interests and popular discontent while the Federal

Government attempted to consolidate its power nationwide.223 In effect, municipal

government became the whipping post of the urban populace, deflecting anger

from the post-revolutionary state. Second, the financially strapped executive

dispersed scant resources to the Ayuntamiento of Mexico in a period in which

222
“Las pésismas condiciones higiénicas de la ciudad de Mexico,” El Universal,
May 2, 1922.
223
Cruz Rodríguez, 107.

126
major investments were needed to maintain and expand infrastructure. 224 Third,

the same public works that transformed sanitary expectations had dire

consequences on city government, which now operated those degraded and

inadequate services. Similarly, the revolution produced an atmosphere where

ideas supporting public health and public accountability had solidified, where

protest movements abounded, and where contesting political parties bitterly fought

one another.225 The water crisis of 1922 embodied all of the obstacles that the

Ayuntamiento faced and highlights the role of environmental citizenship in the

evolution of city politics.

One of the first tasks the new Liberal mayor Miguel Alonzo Romero

undertook when he assumed office in 1922 was to fix the deteriorating pipes and

valves in the Condesa pumping station. Alonzo Romero presciently warned that

“at any moment the city could be left without water…causing grave disturbances

to the metropolis.”226 The mayor’s premonition of what would occur only ten

months later also underscored the tenuous position in which the Ayuntamiento

224
The limited role of the city council in urban affairs provoked some heated
conflicts. One of the more publicized conflicts occurred in 1922 when mayor
Miguel Alonzo Romero sought to expand the Ayuntamiento’s role in public
hygiene. His attempts received an acrimonious response from The Superior
Health Council and were soundly rejected by Obregón. See Miguel Alonzo
Romero, Un año de sitio en la presidencia municipal: Crónica y comentarios de
una labor accidentada (Mexico City: Editorial Hispano-Mexicana, 1923), 49-55;
“Conflicto entre municipio y el Consejo S. De Salubridad,” El Demócrata, January
19, 1922.; and Cruz Rodríguez, 101-104.
225
The tram operator strike, taxi driver strike, and the 1922 rent strike were some
of the most notable examples of public protest in 1920s Mexico City.
226
“La ciudad amenazada de quedarse sin agua de un momento a otro,” El
Demócrata, January 8, 1922.

127
found itself. Alonzo complained that its budget remained stagnant while the city’s

needs only increased. Essential urban services remained in neglect years after

political peace had been restored to the capital, and the city government held large

debts to its employees.227 The fact that the Ayuntamiento managed the water

system placed responsibility on the institution, and that city council could disperse

few funds for its upkeep spelled disaster in the event that it broke down.

November 19, 1922 produced just that fateful event. According to official

reports, when the pumps’ motors malfunctioned due to a surge in the electrical

current, an employee of the plant failed to properly open the floodgate of the

drainage canal (canal de desfogue).228 As the water level threatened the pumping

station, the plant manager was careless and slow in discovering the origin of the

flood and stopping it. The manager’s vacillation and apparent obtuseness,

combined with the mistake of the employee, turned a minor interruption into a

veritable catastrophe. By the time employees evacuated the floodwaters from the

pumping station, the pumps had been damaged and service stalled.

Some historians have repeated the accusations of the Cooperativist

councilman Jorge Prieto Laurens that the shortage was a conspiracy carried out by

The Laborist Party to depose the mayor and advance the party’s political goals. 229

227
See Alonzo Romero, Un año de sitio, 41-2.
228
My description of what happened the morning of November 19 is based on
Mariano Barragán in Alonzo Romero; and Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto de agua y
violencia política,” 171-3.
229
See John W.F Dulles, Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution,
1909-1936 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), 134; and Sergio Miranda

128
It seems highly unlikely that a conspiracy took place on November 19. Prieto

Laurens was the only prominent politician to make this claim (not even the ever-

suspicious Alonzo Romero blamed the Laborists) and he did so only after first

blaming the mayor and past Liberal Party authorities for illegally trading the

machinery and parts of the pumping station. Though most probably a result of

negligence, opposing parties most certainly manipulated the shortage to generate a

momentous political crisis.

If the handling of the initial electrical surge was met with carelessness, the

response to the sudden scarcity—however quick and thorough—was

circumscribed by economic conditions and the nature of the water supply

system.230 The defunct pumps evinced the cruel effects of Mexico’s dependence

on foreign manufacturers for technology. The pumps had been ordered from the

United States, and re-ordering them would have wasted valuable time. The Light

and Power Company in charge of maintaining the machinery, therefore, opted to

dry the motors, and if necessary, replace some of their parts.231 Moreover, while

the Xochimilco springs provided clean tap water to hundreds of thousands of

inhabitants, the water supply system had the unintended consequence of

universalizing scarcity whenever it malfunctioned or required repairs.

Pacheco, Historia de la Desaparición del municipio en el Distrito Federal

(Mexico City; Unidad Obrera y Socialista, 1998), 153-4.
230
That the response was rapid and thorough contradicts claims from the yellow
press that, as Alonzo Romero indicated, spread all sorts of rumors about the
ineffectiveness and insouciance of the Ayuntamiento with respect to the crisis.
See OC_242-M1-A1, December 2, 1922.
231
See Barragán, in Alonzo Romero, 406 .

129
 Yet emergency measures taken to ensure some degree of water service

were forceful. The Public Works Department rationed the water that remained in

the reservoir, providing service a few hours each day. On the 26th of November,

the department resorted to a wide array of measures to provide residents with

water and mollify public discontent. These included reconnecting the springs of

Chapultepec and Desierto de los Leones to the distribution network as well as

utilizing the artesian wells of Nuevo Rastro, Nexaca, and Roma. Another well was

hooked up to supply La Bolsa—provisioned with service in 1919. Likewise, the

city employed tanker trucks to supply water.232 In fact, throughout the crisis,

which lasted three to four weeks, not a single day passed without service for at

least a few hours.

The hydraulic engineer Mariano Barragán, head of the Public Works

Department, boasted of this fact in his self-laudatory report on the shortage, but he

glossed over the inequalities that became apparent. There may have been service

each day, but low pressure dogged the system, especially in the poorer eastern

neighborhoods furthest from La Condesa. Residents of the first delegation (one of

the poorest) pleaded to President Obregón for the tanker trucks to visit their “more

popular neighborhoods,” a sign that not every urban inhabitant was considered

equal insofar as water provision was concerned. 233 Tenement dwellers would have

232
See Barragán, in Alonzo Romero, 408-09; and “Hoy funciona una bomba de la
Condesa” Excélsior, December 2, 1922.
233
See AGN: O/C 242-M1-A2 “Petition from the Communal Neighborhood
Association of the First Delegation,” November 28, 1922; and Rodríguez Kuri,
“Desabasto de agua y violencia política,” 176.

130
been especially hard hit by the crisis, and many of the poor desperately solicited

water from upper-class homes that used private wells. Indeed, the well business

boomed, as large sections of the middle class sought to escape the crisis (and

future ones) by privatizing their water supply.234 If the wealthy had more options

to obtain water, the poor and middle classes—at least those “lucky” enough to

suffer the shortage—suddenly had to take water from insalubrious places. It was

this urban group—not those who lacked water provision altogether—for whom the

political consequences of water supply were, curiously, most explosive.

Rising sanitary expectations, partisan conflict, and media coverage

combined to create the pefect recipe for popular revolt in late 1922. The

Xochimilco system carried along with the vital liquid a whole new set of

expectations over water use rights in Mexico’s largest and most important city. If

during the Porfiriato the wealthiest became accustomed to private connections,

even they came to anticipate occasional shortages and contamination. 235 Most of

the lower and middle class, however, had obtained their water from public taps or

fountains. After the completion of the Xochimilco system, these residents went

from petitioning for taps and fountains in their neighborhoods to pleading for

private connections, as a sign of prosperity and public hygiene. That is, many

234
See “Cualidades de Agua Potable,” Excélsior, December 11, 1922; and “El
pueblo, deseperado por la falta de agua, esta perforando unos pozos,” November
26, 1922. The developers of the new colonia Altavista used their plan for their
own well water service as an advertising gimmick to sell lots. See El Excelsior,
tercera sección, December 3, 1922.
235
Although the shortage that resulted from the curtailment of Hondo river water
generated citizen concern, the reaction was neither as serious nor universal as that
witnessed in 1922.

131
began to perceive clean water that ran in private pipes 24 hours a day as a right by

virtue of living in a “modern” city under a constitution that guaranteed access to

public health.236 As previously mentioned, the water supply system had the

unintended consequence of universalizing scarcity whenever it malfunctioned. By

1922 virtually all of the municipal water derived from the springs, and these

waters passed through the Condesa pumping station.237 Since Mexico City had

shifted to a more technologically dependent water supply system that required

constant supervision and maintenance, the stakes for assuring adequate service

escalated. When the accident shut down service, the shortage affected every

resident with a connection and implicated the municipal government.

The revolutionary constitutionalists were by no means a unified group once

the Constitution of 1917 cemented their power over the country. The late teens

and twenties were a time of uncertainty, popular organization, party factionalism,

and journalistic autonomy all over Mexico, Mexico City included. President

Álvaro Obregón sponsored the candidacy of Alonzo Romero, a doctor and

236
Ariel Rodríguez Kuri maintains that tap water became a “perceived need” or
right once the new system was completed. My research indicates that based on
petitions dating back to the 1870s, many residents adhered to the notion of a right
to public water access in the form of fountains, taps, or via aguadores. A
perceived need to water thus dates back to at least the second half of the nineteenth
century when public health emerged as a critical concern of urban residents. The
difference at this moment in history was that the right to water carried a much
wider meaning to include private access, constant service, and a safe supply.
Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto de agua y violencia política.”
237
When the Hondo River water was removed from the supply during the first
decade of the century, because of the multiple system arrangement, only the
northern part of the city suffered.

132
member of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party.238 The Mexican Laborist Party and

the National Cooperativist Party, the other major political players in the Mexico

City council, had opposed PLC dominance since 1920. Partisanship ran high in

these years, as each party tried to get a leg up on the others. Accusations of

sabotage and corruption prevailed in the days after the accident, as did political

maneuvering to disempower Alonzo Romero. The Laborists were in just the right

position to parlay the unfortunate events of November to their advantage. The

commanding labor leader Luis N. Morones was a member, and his national union,

the Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos (CROM), was instrumental in

mobilizing thousands of citizens against the Ayuntamiento.

Following a long tradition of deploring the sanitary conditions of the

capital, the city’s newspapers savaged the Ayuntamiento’s management of the

water supply system and its handling of the crisis. Excelsior accused both past and

current city councils of “truly incredible abuses, like taking out the valves and

other pieces of machinery installed in the pumping station, [and] selling them as

used iron.”239 They depicted the institution’s response to the crisis as inept and

inefficient, and fueled the flames of discontent by provoking readers to both

distrust the Ayuntamiento and call for its abolition.240 Nudged along by an

238
Rodríguez Kuri, “desabasto de agua y violencia política,” 179-80.
239
“Subsiste la Falta de Agua, lo que origina efectuar una manifestación”
Excélsior, November 26, 1922.
240
See, for example, El Universal, “La ciudad desesperada por la falta de agua. El
público pide que el ayuntamiento sea disuelto en vista de su ineptitud,” November
22, 1922; and “El Ayuntamiento está engañando a la ciudad?” November 23,
1922.

133
inflammatory press and inter-party politics, the urban populace, angered not only

over the loss of their sanitary rights but also the general ineptitude of municipal

governance, resorted to violent action the night of November 30, 1922.

The riot had been a forceful—if somewhat uncommon—form of political

protest in Mexico’s capital for centuries. The riots of 1624, 1692, 1828, and 1915

followed moments of political crisis, and each one involved in their singular way

the politics of food provision. Popular groups, in each case, saw more traditional

political channels exhausted, so “bargaining by riot” became the last resort.241

Whereas the riots of 1692 and 1915 were first and foremost spontaneous popular

reactions to breeches in moral economies without outside agitation, those of 1624

and 1828 were in fact catalyzed by elite factions. That is not to say that popular

groups were merely manipulated; these riots too possessed a salient heterogenous

popular base, which demanded an end to elite malfeasance. 242

The riot of 1922 followed this underlying grammar of the urban riot in

Mexico, with a few changes that can be attributed to the particular social and

241
See Murdo MacLeod, “Some Thoughts on the Pax Colonial, Colonial Violence,
and Perceptions of Both,” in Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain
ed. Susan Schroeder (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 134-5.
242
For the riot of 1624, see Chester L. Guthrie, “Riots in Seventeenth-Century
Mexico City: A Study of Social and Economic Conditions,” in Greater America:
Essays in Honor of Herbert Eugene Bolton ed. Adele Ogdon and Engel Sluiter
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945). For 1692, see Douglas R. Cope,
The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-
1720 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); and Rosa Feijoo, “El
tumulto de 1692,” Historia Mexicana 14 (1964-65): 656-91. For 1828 see Silvia
Arrom, “Popular Politics in Mexico City, the Parian Riot,” in Arrom and Servando
Ortol, Riots in the Cities: Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America,
1765-1910 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1996),

134
political relations of postrevolutionary Mexico. The moral economy of water

provision had been breeched, as Ariel Rodriguez Kuri has noted, and only a quick

resolution would diffuse a highly charged protest climate. Yet, the ruckus over

water brought to a head discontent over municipal governance in general, most

notably the deficiency of all urban services. As the municipality was in no

position to resolve the water crisis or these deficiencies, the press began to demand

its dissolution.

The League of Editors (Liga de Redactores) called a rally for November

30, ten days after the accident at the pumping station. This one galvanized

thousands of men, including members of the taxi union (which had just been

involved in a bitter strike against the Ayuntamiento), weavers, shoemakers,

brewers, municipal employees, and military factory workers, among others.243

Although the rally started at the CROM headquarters, worker participation was

more than a mere reflex to union agitation or the Laborists’ political machinations.

Workers “deliberated the matter and only after the apathy and abuses of the

Ayuntamiento continued, did they decide to protest.”244 Many protesters must

243
Rodríguez Kuri, “Desabasto de agua y violencia política,” 189. The worker
composition of the rally and therefore the riot that followed contrasts with early
national and colonial riots that had a more heterogeneous make-up. The fact that
the participants were primarily—perhaps exclusively—men suggests that both
organizers and protesters had expected some kind of violent confrontation with the
government. After all, women, as heads of the domestic sphere, were responsible
for domestic water supply, and had been the protagonists of the food riots of 1915.
See Rodríguez Kuri, 196; and Lear.
244
“La opinión pública se inclina a la suspensión a las elecciones municipales”
Excelsior, December 2, 1922.

135
have justified their action as a last resort to years of government negligence and

days of water scarcity.

That evening, the protesters, now numbering about 5,000, reached the

municipal palace, carrying red and black flags and crying out “Death to the

Ayuntamiento,” “Death to Mr. Romero,” and “We want water.”245 At this point,

members of the armed municipal guard closed the outer door of the palace, leaving

some fifteen members of the Federal District’s mounted gendarmarie outside with

the protesters. Saul Pérez Granja, the captain of the gendarmarie, attempted to

calm them by offering to lead a group to the municipal presdent for a “favorable

resolution,” but demonstrating great irreverence, one of the protesters punched him

in the face (arrojándole un puño de cal). Others shouted that “what they wanted

was to kill the municipal president.”246

The aggressive language of the protesters quickly turned into aggressive

action when they batter-rammed the palace door. The municipal guard opened

fire, and armed workers responded in kind. Rioters wrecked havoc on the building,

and a fire was started in the Department of Municipal Registery. Only with the aid

of Federal troops could the government evacuate the plaza and extinguish the

flames. In the end, up to a dozen people died, and over sixty suffered injury.247

245
El Universal, December 1, 1922; AGN: O/C 242-M1-A1 “Summary of the
General Prosecutor;” and Rodríguez Kuri, 189.
246
AGN: O/C 242-M1-A1, “Jefe de la policia judicial al procurador de justicia del
D.F,” December 8, 1922; and “Informe del jefe de la gendarmeria montada,”
December 2, 1922.
247
Rodríguez Kuri, 191-4; and AGN: O/C 242-M1-A1 “Informe del jefe de la
gendarmeria montada” December 2, 1922.

136
 The Public Works Department restored full service in mid-December, but

the repercussions of the near-month long political crisis had already been felt.

Popular discontent both against government repression and the Ayuntamiento

increased dramatically. The larger public repeated and elaborated on the

newspapers’ demand to dissolve the municipal government. On November 29, a

committee of journalists asked President Obregón to order the resignation of the

entire city council due to its “incompetence,” and other residents of the capital

followed suit with similar petitions the next day.248

Ludovicus Grackus waxed lyrical against the municipal government: “The

people that compose the population of the capital of the republic, without class

distinction and in the most unanimous form, have condemned the indifferent,

inept, and criminal conduct of the Ayuntamiento, and the blood spilled by the

hitmen of this clumsy and criminal [body] was testament to this discontent."249 He

called for the abolition of the municipal government and the Superior Health

Council to be replaced with a “Comisario General de Salud Pública.” This

organization would consist of three to five apt and “honorable” men who would

“look after the health of the people.” That same day various feminist groups called

for a single administrator to run the city.250 Similarly, Juan Sanchez Azcona, who

claimed to have served as an arbiter of a contested municipal election (perhaps the

248
See Various petitions in AGN: O/C, 242-M1-A2
249
AGN: O/C, 242-M1-A3 “Grackus to Obregón,” December 1, 1922.
250
Ibid., “Feminist groups to Obregón,” December 1, 1922. They suggested
Carlos Zetina, the former governor of Yucatan and friend of women’s
organizations Salvador Alvarado, and the engineer Modesto Rolland as potential
nominees to run the city.

137
one in 1919), advised that an “Administrative Advisory Board” (Consejo de

Administración) composed of a few experts be instituted in place of the

Ayuntamiento. The Laborist Party demanded a Consejo Municipal in which all of

society’s interests would be represented. They complained that “in the center of

national activity, there is more political intrigue than peaceful work of

adminisration and progress.”251 Other civil groups and individuals sent similar

petitions to annul the representative municipal government, and unions from all

over the country demanded punitive measures against the authorities responsible

for the loss of their “class comrades.”

President Obregón nearly always clarified that he lacked the authority to

interfere in matters of municipal governance. In his response to the petition from

the The Central League of Commercial and Industrial Employees (Liga Central de

Empleados de Comercio e Industria), however, he alluded to his own

dissatisfaction, acknowleging that the Ayuntamiento “has demonstrated over many

years a great ineptitude to govern efficiently the interests of this capital.”252 If

Obregón refused to annul municipal government in late 1922, the volatile three-

week period severely diminished its political capital, rendering its substitution for

a centralized authority politically advantageous.

The demands of the populace did not entail a more democratic form of

urban governance but rather a centralized and technical-administrative form. The

251
Ibid., “Juan Sanchez Azcona to Obregón,” December 2, 1922; and “Mexican
Laborist Party to Obregón,” December 1, 1922.
252
Obregón, quoted in Soledad Cruz Rodríguez, 107.

138
populace did not want to run the city themselves; they sought to convince the

president to assign competent and often scientific experts to govern and manage

essential urban services—reminiscent of the Porfirian Juntas prior to the

revolution. They called for an end to partisan politics and, harking back to

Porfirian dictums, a new era of “administration and progress.” This somewhat

peculiar post-revolutionary environmental citizenship may seem downright

paradoxical if it were not for the fact that many citizens considerd the

Ayuntamiento a reactionary vestige of the colonial era. But, above all, this

seemingly odd popular demand can be explained through the promises of

revolutionary change. Residents were confident that a small group of individuals

was required to govern the city in a just fashion since a central government that

more adequately represented a diverse set of popular groups was in place. Citizens,

in effect, defended their rights to water, a product of Porfirian urbanization, within

the framework of that same dominant urban paradigm. They attacked the city

council and advocated a new, improved revolutionary order, one that would

“conjure up the spirits of the past.”253 The hegemonic process of revolutionary

populism at once clashed and melded with the Porfirian vision of urban modernity

in Mexico City.

253
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in The Marx-Engels
Reader ed Robert C. Tucker second edition (Norton, 1978), 595.

139
The Last Years of Municipal Governance

The Cooperativists won the mayorship at the end of 1922, and Barragán

resigned his post as Public Works Director at the beginning of 1923. As a

response to the water crisis, the new mayor, Jorge Carregha, convoked a

Consultative Public Works Board that would ensure that “under any circumstance

water service, roads, sewerage, and hyigiene is found always at the level that in

each era the progress and growth of this city demands.”254 Water supply, not

surprisingly, topped the list of urgent urban needs. Plans included the

diversification of sources (to avoid the universalization of scarcity), the prevention

of other nearby municipalities from using the city’s water, the formation of

protective zones around springs to carry out reforestation projects and curtail

contamination, and improvements to the pumpting station. Carregha also

recognized the council’s political potential. “It is necessary,” he exclaimed, “that

the people realize what we are going to do and at the same time that the residents

of each place realize that the Ayuntamiento is concerned with improving their

situation.”255 Nonethless, the board had a short life, managing only to realize a few

of its stated aims, most notably the renewal of service from Desierto.256

Partisan conflict in municipal government ebbed after 1923 when both the

Cooperativist Party, which joined the doomed de la Huertista rebellion against

President-elect Calles, and the Liberal Constitutionalist Party fell out of favor with

254
Boletín Municipal, January 19, 1923.
255
Boletín Municipal, January, 19, 1923.
256
Boletín Municipal, October 5, 1923.

140
the national elite. Beginning in 1924, the Laborist Party, with the full backing of

President Calles dominated Mexico City politics. In order to establish a popular

base while simultaneously executing public works, the party pursued a novel form

of political organization, a harbinger of the corporatist state to come.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, residents had organized

neighborhood associations (Sindicatos de Colonias) and neighborhood

improvement committees (Juntas de Vecinos para Mejoras Materiales) to

advocate for the material improvement of their respective neighborhoods. The

1910s witnessed a notable surge of neighborhood-wide political organization, and

Peralvillo, la Magdalena, La Bolsa, Obrera-Bolivar, Romero Rubio and several

other neighborhoods supported their own. As the water crisis revealed, Porfirian-

era public works, the spread of sanitary ideals, and revolution accounted for a

surge in popular mobilization. A culture of expectation around services of

sewerage and water had been forged, and urban neighborhood associations saw

access to them as a right, a sign of hygienic advancement and social importance

for their own neighborhoods. Although popular groups rarely couched their

demands in the language of the revolution—preferring instead discourses of

sanitary modernization—many of the neighborhood organizations emerged with

the backing of the Laborist party and its union counterpart the CROM, both

products of the Constitutionalist victory.

In January, 1924, the Laborist councilman López Olivares proposed that

the council tap into grassroots environmental citizenship by founding Juntas in

141
“abandoned colonias” that would be dependent on the Labor Party.257 Several

months later, the Ayuntamiento held a public gathering to celebrate the

inauguration of the Junta de Mejores Materiales of Balbuena, a working-class

community on the city’s north side. While the Junta gathered donations, the

Ayuntamiento connected the neighborhood to the sewer system. The assistance of

the inhabitants was, according to the Municipal Gazette, “a good example of

public spiritedness [civismo] exhibited by the ignorant and humble classes,”

helping the city advance toward “modernity.”258 The success of the Balbuena

Junta encouraged the Laborists to found others in Atlampa, Santa María Ribera

and Magdalena Mixhuca.259 The Laborist Party thus gained a foothold in some

communities without making large monetary investments.

Unfortunately, the historical record is stingy on documentation regarding

the community associations, and it remains unclear exactly how many were

organized or subsumed by the Laborist Party. This paucity notwithstanding, it is

clear that the Laborists initiated a top-down, corporate form of urban political

organization rooted in the history of neighborhood organizing, anticipating central

government initiatives in the 1930s.260 The concomitant rise of the community

257
Boletín Municipal, January 21, 1924.
258
Boletín Municipal, “Sincera manifestación de agradecimiento,” May, 1924.
259
Boletín Municipal, August 31, 1926.
260
Christina Jiménez traces a similar tradition of vendor organizing in Porfirian
Morelos, Michoacán, which strengthened through the revolution and formed the
foundation of corporatist politics there. See “From the Letterd City to the Sellers’
City: Vendor Politics and Public Space in Urban Mexico, 1880-1926” in The
Spaces of the Modern City ed. Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2008): 214-246.

142
association and corporatist politics, as we shall see in the following chapter,

further developed a particular brand of environmental citizenship that was

embryonic during the Porfiriato. As sanitary service connection reached private

dwellings, the perceived right to these services became increasingly socialized,

rather than a privilege for an elite few.261 The postrevolutionary government

began to use access to these social rights as political leverage and, consequently,

negotiated urban environmental conditions with large sections of the populace.

In the 1920s however, albeit with a few exceptions, the demands of these

associations were ineffective, as the city generally initiated sanitation works only

in areas where property values and political influence favored them. As in

Balbuena, The Junta asked residents to contribute funds for services. The

inequalities of urbanization thus transferred the costs of sanitary services directly

on to the residents, who in most cases could least afford them. The residents of the

middle-class Roma subdivision, for example, contributed 40,000 pesos of the

necessary 100,000 to improve their drainage system. In addition, the working-

class founders of the subdivision Postal raised money to make material

improvements (mejoras materiales). 262 Yet, until the early 1930s, when financial

donations were institutionalized in the Contribution Law (Ley de Cooperación),

261
The water riot is an obvious example of the socialization of sanitary rights.
262
Berra, 285 and 130-1.

143
few residents were willing to help fund public works in their neighborhoods,

preferring instead to seek investment from government officials.263

Relative stability brought the payment of outstanding debts, and an

increase in public works projects, but the spatial inequalities of sanitation

remained largely unchallenged by successive Laborist administrations.264

Furthermore, despite sanitary works in a few neighborhoods such as El Cuartelito

and Balbuena, the Ayuntamiento’s newfound interest in infrastructure

development found its most potent expression in projects that benefitted the central

business district and the more illustrious neighborhoods to the southwest of the

historic center.265

While the Laborist Party dominated municipal politics and extended its

ambitions into poor urban communities, the underlying conflicts with the press and

factions of the federal government continued to haunt. The Ayuntamiento

perpetually defended itself against attacks by the unrelenting press and, once

again, public health officials—part of the new Health Department. In fact, the two

joined forces, accusing the city of neglecting the water supply. Dailies published

Health Department stories indicating water impurities due to cracks in the

aqueduct. Director of Public Works Nicolas Durán called the accusations

“unfounded,” reporting that even the bacteriological analysis of the same Health

263
Contrast this position by neighborhood residents to the financial aid that
residents of Morelia gave to municipal government for improved services
throughout the Porfiriato. Jiménez, “Popular Organizing for Public Services”
264
Soledad Cruz Rodríguez, 94
265
See Berra for Cuartelito and other examples; and Soledad Cruz Rodríguez, 132.

144
Department concluded that the water was pure. Durán did not stop there, however.

“It is widely and notoriously known,” the official countered, “that Tacubaya’s

water…run by different municipal authorities is a veritable soup of pathogenic

germs and not one word has been said of this, neither from the press nor from the

Health Department.266 The press also blamed the Ayuntamiento for worsened

flooding, a constant thorn in the side of the municipal government.267 Municipal

officials deflected this criticism with a grab bag of explanations, including the

insufficient flow of the Gran Canal, the burden of draining other municipalities, as

well as the sedimentation of lake and stream bottoms.268 Regardless of the

veracity of the accusations (the truth likely lay somewhere in the middle), it was

evident that the municipal government’s legitimacy continued to rest on precarious

foundations, in good part because of real or perceived sanitary deficiencies.

In the spring of 1928, Obregón, preparing for a second presidential term

with Calles’s backing, issued a proposal to Congress that the municipal

governments of the Federal District be disbanded. As the postrevolutionary state

gained increasing hegemony after the suppression of the de la Huertistas and the

Cristeros (the pro-Catholic rebellion that rocked a number of central states), the

municipality was simply no longer as fundamental to channeling factional

disputes. In fact, the Ayuntamiento was potentially an impediment to the

266
Boletín Municipal, “El debatido asunto del agua potable,” June 17, 1925
267
Boletín Municipal, February to December, 1925; and “Los colibacílos
calumniados,” May 31, 1925.
268
See Boletín Municipal, Eduardo Molina, “Causas de las inundaciones que
amenazan a la ciudad de México,” July 19, 1926; and August 31, 1926.

145
emerging state: Laborist control of the institution signalled a threat to Obregón,

whose bid for a second term had embittered the powerful Morones.269 Moreover,

the municipal system signalled a threat to integral urban development. Each

municipality possessed its own services even as municipal boundaries were

increasingly blurry. In a few cases, the Ayuntamiento’s responses to vitriolic

attacks only furthered the notion that urban services would remain fragmented,

absent a general plan. As previously noted, the Consultative Board sought to

dispossess other municipalities of the city’s water, but it also planned on

separating the city’s sewer system from other municipalities such as Guadalupe

Hidalgo and Tacubaya. Mariano Barragán, upon resigning his post, blamed recent

floods on the connection of Tacubaya’s sewer system to the city’s, which, he

claimed, overwhelmed the collectors in low-lying sections both in the city center

and near the Gran Canal.270

The proposal, which comfortably passed the Mexican Congress, employed

a language that mirrored the flurry of petitions from the crisis of 1922. Federal

officials used the municipalities’ financial quandries, a product of a parsimonious

federal government, as a justification for their dissolution. One of the key

justifications struck a sympathetic chord wih the city’s inhabitants. Municipal

government was inept at maintaining and extending critical urban services, and

269
See Manuel Perló Cohen, “De como perdió el ayuntamiento su autonomía sin
obtener a cambio una democracia de manzana” Suplemento Cultural de la Revista
Siempre (July, 1980).
270
Boletín Municipal, January 12, 1923

146
only the new Federal District Government (GDF) could adequately manage and

improve them.

Except for members of the Laborist Party—including the labor star on the

rise Vicente Lombardo Toledano—few if any people spoke out for municipal

government. The protesters of 1922 finally got what they had requested: the

substitution of what was, in theory, the most democratic institution in city politics

for an administration that was totally dependent on the President.

Conclusion

By 1910 Porfirian-era Mexico City boasted its first comprehensive drainage

system, and a new water system neared completion. These two waterworks

promised to leave the capital’s daunting sanitary woes in the past. Yet, the

construction of these great public works projects was just one step—not the

endpoint—in the immense task to provide sewerage and drinking water to the

rapidly expanding city. To produce the sanitary city, these works needed to be

maintained and extended, and the services they provided enforced on the streets

and in the tenements.

In spite of the harsh rhetoric that Alberto Pani directed at the old Porfirian

regime, revolutionary governments of the teens and twenties implemented no

major reform to remediate the deplorable sanitary conditions of Mexico City. In

fact, the 1920s could be viewed as an era of sanitary regression in one of the

largest cities of the Americas. Inexorable growth and political reform at the

147
highest reaches of government did not hasten urban infrastructural improvements

or mitigate persistent inequalities of urban livability. Instead, growth was entirely

unaccountable, and political reform, urged on by popular demands, bolstered

centralized forms of governance at the expense of local government, for which

hydraulic infrastructure was a chief source of legitimacy.

Why was Pani’s sanitarian vision completely ignored by the same

government that included access to health and hygiene in its new constitution? My

argument revolves around the priorities of postrevolutionary reconstruction. The

government expropriated large tracts of hacienda lands in central Mexico during

the 1910s and 1920s as part of its agrarian reform program to subdue rural unrest.

The affected hacendados often found in urban land rents and development a

healthy and safe means to further capital accumulation. Instead of attacking this

new form of exploitation, governing elites, unthreatened by urban rebellion—if not

protest—embraced it as the necessary means by which Mexico City could return to

dominance, as in the heydey of the Díaz regime. The revolution of 1910,

therefore, linked the capital city and its hinterlands together in new ways, and to a

certain degree cemented the Porfiian vision of urban modernity. If urban-driven

hydraulic projects and forest conservation policies circumscribed rural means of

subsistence, then revolutionary reform in the countryside paralyzed urban sanitary

goals.

The urban political restructuring of 1917 and the climate of social reform

brought about by revolution surely propitiated violence in 1922, but residents who

148
mobilized for improved sanitary services in the 1920s rarely invoked the

revolution in their pleas to justice. Rather, their arguments revolved around their

perceived rights to existing services as citizens of an urban modernity imposed

during the reign of Díaz and continued by revolutionary public health law.

Technological changes in hydraulic infrastructure converged with prevailing

notions of the right to a sanitary city to mold environmental politics in 1920s

Mexico City.

The Department of the Federal District (DDF) in 1929 was a product of a

centralizing post-revolutionary state, but it became politically convenient due to

the ongoing conflicts between municipal authorities and the urban populace. I

now turn to the second part of this history of sanitary services, a story not only of

enduring municipal legacies and protest but also of a more activist state and

discursive links between revolutionary change and sanitary inequalities. If the

revolution did not halt the Porfirian urban ideal, it did unleash a rival order where

growth and the production of the sanitary city might be more egalitarian and

inclusive of larger sections of the population.

149
 Chapter 3: The Nature of the Urban Revolution II, 1929-1940s

On the eve of world economic depression after nearly a decade of relative

peace, Mexico City had again emerged as the economic center of the nation. The

municipal government had renewed urban public works in the mid 1920s, and new

settlements sprang up, like during the Porfiriato, increasing the time it took to get

from one end of the city to the other. Cars were becoming so prevalent on city

streets that traffic lights were installed in many intersections; taxis and the cheaper

and more mobile bus had emerged alongside the old tram lines; and architects such

as Juan O’Gorman began to design functionalist buildings in the name of the

revolution.271

A sense of urban improvement penetrated the political arena as well. The

Ayuntamientos had disappeared, and inhabitants had high expectations for the new

government, the Government of the Federal District (GDF). Through the new

centralized municipal government, which was completely dependent on the

Executive, many residents found a direct link to the revolutionary state.272 Popular

groups hoped that with a progressive, centralized government, sanitary regulations

would be strengthened, and that important—yet long postponed—public works

would be completed. The loss of the municipal ballot box, they believed, would be

compensated for in their neighborhoods and streets, where urban services would

271
On the rise of functionalism in Mexico City, see Patrice Olsen, 22-9.
272
The president hired the mayor and had the final say in major urban public
works projects.

150
finally reach them. The press also hoped that the new government would remedy

the embarrassing sanitary conditions of the capital, and engineers believed that

more orderly governance would enable science to defeat politics and the obstacles

nature posed to the city’s prosperity. It was widely held that administration and

planning could conquer political infighting, chaotic governance, and powerful

interests. Silvano Palafox, chief of the Architecture Office in the new Public

Works Department, summed up the spirit of reform: “There is a lack of culture in

those who believe that all regulations violate their property rights. It is an axiom

that above those rights lay the rights of the collectivity.”273 Unregulated

urbanization, it seemed, was in the past, and a new era of urban reform lay ahead.

The new centralized municipal government, in effect, was drowning in political

capital.

Water provides an ideal lens through which to view the understudied

relation between the activist state in Mexico City and the populace it governed.

The reorganization of municipal government was the first among many steps that

postrevolutionary governments took in controlling urbanized nature and thus the

environmental conditions of over a million city dwellers. The city’s engineers, to a

large degree, carried out the government’s sanitarian vision, and their work left

imprints on both urban and rural environments, benefiting some and harming

others. Through the work of engineers, the government intervened more actively

in sanitary infrastructure and unregulated urbanization, but interventions often

273
See Silvano Palafox, “El reglamento de construcciones de la Ciudad de
México,” Obras Públicas (February, 1930), 43.

151
generated as much conflict as consent. The divide between expectation and reality

sparked widespread discontent among both middle-class and popular groups,

which then exploded into radical social mobilizations during the Cárdenas

administration. The interventions of the state fell far too short for those who

sought robust regulations and radical sanitary improvements. Meanwhile, for

many property-owners and some journalists, sanitary regulations were too

stringent. The evolution of, discussions about, and popular politics of hydraulic

infrastructure shed new light on the expectations of a metropolitan government,

notions of revolutionary justice, and postrevolutionary state formation.

The postrevolutionary government continued where the Porfirian state left

off, but this time under a distinctly revolutionary impulse in which state and

citizen would bond together through the extension of urban modernity to

previously neglected populations. If during the 1920s, the revolution encouraged

urban popular organization of all kinds, in the 1930s, the Federal District

Government employed the discursive power of the monumental event to galvanize

for their schemes to improve the urban environment. They publicly recognized

citizens’ rights to hygiene and considered their interventions in the city’s sanitary

infrastructure as representations of inclusive development. New hydraulic works

as well as water meters, housing, and tougher sanitary regulations were central to

the government’s image as representing the urban collectivity and supporting their

environmental rights.

152
 Yet, as was so common in Mexican politics, rhetoric often exceeded action.

The global economic downturn dried up financial options, and in order to parlay

the downturn into political gain, the government promulgated the Contribution

Law (Ley de Cooperación), which charged a local tax on communities in exchange

for service installment. In the end, the government’s sanitary policies only

trimmed the rough edges around the trunk and roots of Porfirian urban

development, characterized by unfettered real estate capital. Indeed, as the

government’s revolutionary industrial and agrarian program intensified, urban

developers and landlords solidified their power over the urban environment.

The rise of Lázaro Cárdenas to power in 1934 emboldened both reformist

groups and propertied interests who questioned increasing government activism.

The Cárdenas administration is generally considered to be a turning point in post-

revolutionary Mexican history. In the countryside, he provided the death knell to

the rural Porfirian elite, redistributing vast tracts of land to communities. He

created national parks, built schools, and constructed irrigation infrastructure. In

the cities, the president encouraged working class organization, as long as it

remained under government tutelage, and tolerated strikes, which increased in

number during his term. Historians generally consider Cárdenas the founder of

Mexico’s corporatist state where workers, peasants, bureaucrats, and the military

merged into the Party of the Mexican Revolution (later the PRI).

There is little agreement, however, regarding the relation between the

Cardenista state—both federal and municipal government—and the urban

153
populace it governed. Some portray Cardenismo as an era of massive urban

investment, which finally brought the revolution to the city.274 Others such as

Diane Davis and Manuel Perló Cohen assert that because the populism of the

regime was aimed at the peasantry and the workplace demands of the working

class, a “rural bias” inhered in Cardenismo.275 Therefore, neither Cárdenas nor the

municipal government, wherein the National Peasant Confederation (CNC) held

significant power, developed an agenda that could correct the housing and sanitary

inequalities that pervaded the urban environment.

It is true that urban cardenismo, with respect to environmental politics, did

not mark a significant break with either the limitations of urban reform or the

budding corporatism that Callistas had already initiated.276 Yet, this interpretation

of urban Cardenismo is incomplete in that it elides the important role that popular

environmental citizenship played in shaping urban government and redefining

notions of development, hygiene, and revolution. Up until Cárdenas, essentially all

demands for the installation of sanitary services were neighborhood-specific.

Demands were essentially parochial: while affirming water and drainage as rights,

274
See Gerardo G. Sanchez Ruíz, Planificación y urbanismo de la revolución
mexicana: los sustentos de una nueva modernidad en a ciudad de México, 1917-
1940 (México, DF: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2002); and José
Antonio Rojas Loa O., “La transformación de la zona central, ciudad de México,
1930-1970” in Ciudad de México: Ensayo.
275
See Diane Davis; and Perló Cohen, Estado, vivienda y estructura urbana en el
cardenismo (Mexico City: UNAM, 1981). Patrice Olsen has recently seconded
that argument based on a reading of the “cityscape” in revolutionary politics.
276
An argument could be made that the corporatist state was founded by Calles
with his National Revolutionary Party (PNR), and the previous chapter, by
discussing the early corporatism of the Laborist Party, and the focus of this chapter
lends credence to this interpretation.

154
these rights were restricted spatially, often marking a status of distinction for a

house, street, or neighborhood against what other communities lacked.277 Under

Cárdenas, urban social movements were borne out of the gulf between

expectations of inclusive revolutionary development and the endurance of

atrocious sanitary conditions in many neighborhoods and recently formed

subdivisions. These popular organizations—with ties to larger working-class

organization—attempted to represent the entirety of the urban poor, thus making

radical demands on urban government. An examination of these organizations

provides a glimpse into the ways in which urban inhabitants engaged

environmental citizenship. Through a particular understanding of revolutionary

justice and expectations of the sanitary city, they upheld water and drainage as

universal social rights.

The urban movement threatened the persistent power of landlords and

developers who the postrevolutionary leadership viewed as not only the cynosure

of urban modernity but also an important bloc of support in their building of a

hegemonic state. The government thus responded with an eclectic strategy of

division, coercion, co-optation, and partial concessions. The outcome was a well-

oiled urban corporatist machine in the early 1940s, which quelled radical calls for

sanitary equality.

277
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction has deeply influenced my
understandings of the polítical culture of water in Mexico City. See his
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Translated by Richard
Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

155
From “Dictator” to “Junta”: Sanitary Services and the New Political System

During the first several years of the Federal District Department, engineers

and the press continued to deride the old municipal government as corrupt,

negligent, and careless in its maintenance of essential infrastructure.278 For

example, the Universal Gráfico sarcastically remarked that past governments

believed all public works were eternal, without need of further attention.279 Hoping

that the government would correct the errors of the old municipality, the Universal

Gráfico published dozens of images of the city’s poorest slums bereft of all

sanitary services. These “embarrassments of Mexico” included the colonias

Peralvillo, Maza, Doctores, and Buenos Aires.280 By July, the editors were

ashamed of the sorry sanitary conditions of places like Atlampa where “through

the disappearance of the Ayuntamiento, there was a right to hope—at least that is

what the authors of the reform had promised—that a better municipal

administration would step in and remedy the omissions of previous ones.”281

President Emilio Portes Gil and Mayor José Manuel Puig Causuranc opted

not to prioritize the universalization of sanitary services in Mexico City, a costly

278
See “Servicios públicos imprescindibles,” El Universal, 25 April, 1932;
“Sequía o inundación, El Universal, 14 June 1929; Roberto Gayol, “Informe sobe
varios asuntos relativos a las obras de saneamiento y desagüe de la Ciudad de
México, Revista Mexicana de Ingeñería y Arquitectura (RVMIA) 9 (March,
1933): 76-7; Nicolás Durán, “Política y Obras Públicas” RVMIA, 11 (May 1933):
154; and see various articles in Obras Públicas.
279
“El agua y los impuestos,” Universal Gráfico, June 21, 1929.
280
See “Las colonias pobres reclaman inmediata atención” Universal Gráfico,
June 10, 1929; and “La colonia de los doctores es una de las populosas barriadas
de la metrópoli que reclama mayor atención,” Universal Gráfico, June 24, 1929
281
“El grito de angustia de las colonias pobres se pierde como en el desierto,”
Universal Gráfico, July 15, 29.

156
endeavor that would have exceeded fifty million pesos, but rather to make the

much-needed repairs to the existing system.282 Leaks in the aqueduct and the

mains had halved the pressure in the system, and service extensions had put further

strain on supplies. A service that once operated twenty-four hours had been

reduced to twelve.283 Moreover, the city had experienced numerous disruptions of

service over the years (the longest in 1922), all of which originated in the

neglected Condesa pumping station. With a tight budget, Octavio Dubois began

his new job as director of the Water Department with a campaign to replace the

station’s old valves.

Dubois also prioritized purifying the water to the level it enjoyed in the

1910s. As mentioned in chapter two, the Public Health Department accused the

Ayuntamiento of prevaricating to the press about water quality and reported on the

poor condition of the city’s supply.284 Dubois sent employees out to the

surrounding hinterland to find the sources of pollution. Despite restrictions on land

use along the frequently fractured aqueduct, “peons” had constructed a number of

houses along its course. Engineers found “focos de infección,” garbage dumps,

and sewage that might enter through the fractures in the underground aqueduct,

posing an immediate threat to the city’s water. The government, in an effort to

282
See “Colonias o fraccionamientos sin servicios o con servicios muy
deficientes” Obras Públicas (April, 1930), 232. The author estimates that in order
to “urbanize,” that is, put in lighting, pavement, water, and drainage, the entire
city, the government would need to invest at least 100 million pesos.
283
Ignacio de la Barra, Las aguas potables.
284
AGN: O/C 241-D2-A-14, “Public Health Department to Calles,” 1927.

157
regulate the use of the land, evicted residents and destroyed their homes.285 In the

unsanitary urban developments that had sprouted along the northern section of the

aqueduct, sewage was a potentially devastating source of pollution. Engineers

constructed a siphon to carry the “aguas negras” of Colonia Amores and del Valle

away from the aqueduct’s surroundings and also removed garbage from La

Condesa. In addition, in September of 1929, they added chlorine to the Condesa

pumping station to avoid further contamination.

While employees worked on fixing the deficiencies of the Condesa

pumping station in June 1929, a number of accidents again cut service to the city.

For several days, the city suffered from thirst, with fresh memories of the long

November of 1922. El Universal reported protests and demonstrations throughout

the city and noted that residents with private wells sold water at exorbitant

prices.286 On the 19th the government pronounced Octavio Dubois “Dictador de

Aguas” in order to “regularize” the existing service. The announcement of the new

post was a public relations coup for the government, which parlayed the botched

repairs into a political victory. Just the kind of response that citizens proposed

back in 1922, the post gave political autonomy to the “dictator” Dubois to reverse

the damage done by the government of the 1920s. Dubois would transcend the

failures of the Ayuntamiento by rising above political machinations to put an end

285
AHDF: OP Box 232, folder 2, Alfredo Alvarado, “Fuentes de contaminación
del acueducto,” August 17, 1929.
286
See “La Ciudad sin agua otra vez,” El Universal, June 14, 1929; and
“Nuevamente volvió a faltar el agua y la causa no desaparece,” Excélsior, June 20,
1929,

158
to “the anarchy of water service” and “produce a situation of full confidence”

among the population.287 Concerns over water compelled the government to

employ the word “dictator”—a word normally reserved for Diaz—in a positive

light, and large swaths of the populace, distraught over years of failed governance,

supported their new water czar.

The creation of the post of Water Dictator was likely a political

performance, however, and the position was transformed into another Water Board

(Junta Directiva de Aguas Potables), the fourth such board in under thirty years, in

June 1930.288 Dubois was demoted to “technical director of works that the Junta

dictated.” The semi-independent committee handled technical studies and the

execution of works, the tapping of water sources, the repair of mains, and

organization of the meter system.289 This form of technical organization

reproduced the organizational form of major Porfirian hydraulic works: the

desagüe, the sewer system, the Xochimilco water system, as well as the brief stint

of the Ayuntamiento’s Public Works Board. Through the Junta, the government

gave untold power to a select group of engineers to produce the sanitary city.

With the economic downturn reaching Mexico, the Junta’s budget was

tight. In its first year, Dubois obtained about a million pesos to improve the most

287
See “Dictador de Aguas Potables que evitará que en la capital sigue faltando el
liquido,” Excélsior, June 20, 1929; and “Dictador en Materia de aguas,” El
Universal, June 20, 1929
288
For the second time in eight years city government responded to a water crisis
with the creation of an organization run by technocrats.
289
AHSSA: Salubridad Pública, Sección Juridica, caja 15, exp. 2, “Puig Causaranc
to Secretary of the Department,” July 7, 1930.

159
deficient parts of the system and prepare for its future expansion. He ordered the

repair of many of the most wasteful leaks in many of the newer subdivisions where

developers had used shoddy joints, or even old piping.290 Dubois also devoted

resources to plugging the holes in the aqueduct, some of which were large enough

to put one’s hand through. Engineers found one such rupture at the crossing of the

Piedad River, notorious for its polluted waters, and they diverted the river away

from the aqueduct.291 During an inspection for future sources of water in

Xochimilco, engineers observed that tourists as well as a bottled-water plant were

contaminating the spring “San Juan.” The company “Agua Virgen,” which opened

the previous year amid rising fears of polluted water, now stood in the way of the

municipal supply.292 Engineers advised the prohibition of all “human gatherings

and animal farms within a radius of at least 500 meters” and the diversion of

canals from the vicinity—just as had been done earlier with the other springs.293

In their efforts to urbanize clean water, the government not only transformed

nature but also measured it, regulated it and restricted its access—sometimes using

brute force.

The particular environments that the government transformed, as well as

the regulations of water usage within the city were, in part, products of debates

290
See AHDF OP Caja 138, legajo 1 “Dubois to Puig,” July 17, 1930; Eugenio
Bedollo, “La junta flexible impermeable y su función en el aprovechamiento de
agua potable de la ciudad de México,” RVMIA (January, 1933): 13.
291
AHDF OP Box 138, bundle 1, “expenses August, 1930;” and “Dubois to Puig,”
April 12, 1930; and Bedollo, 12
292
AHA: Box 33, 418, various documents.
293
AHDF OP, Box 138, bundle 2, “Alvarado to Dubois,” March 6, 1930.

160
among the diverse engineering perspectives of the Junta and the Mexican Society

of Engineers and Architects. Their ideas were infused with politics and restricted

by financial possibilities. Society member José Argüelles warned against well-

perforation plans that were ardently promoted by some as a quick fix to deficient

supply. He proposed, instead, that the government embark on the project to bring

water from the Lerma River in the Valley of Toluca, which was “a need and a

rather easy and relatively economical [project], albeit prolonged.” Before

constructing wells, which by causing soil subsidence would damage the

foundations of buildings and other infrastructure, Argüelles proposed—pushing

Gayol’s 1902 suggestion—that the city utilize rainwater through the construction

of dams and purification plants.294

At the beginning of 1930, Dubois, as technical chief of the Junta, put forth

his plan for the extension and repair of the water works. It called for further

investments in locating new sources, the timely installation of meters, and repairs

of the principal mains and pipes. Dubois had plenty of critics, however. Carlos

Petricioli, also of the Engineers Society, adamantly rejected the idea that new

sources needed to be tapped. He proposed that the addition of several wells to the

city’s supply, combined with leak repair, could serve the city for decades to

come.295 In response, Dubois asserted that new sources were necessary since the

repairs to the network would take years. Like Argüelles, Dubois worried about the

“desiccation of the land, which brings with it the subsidence of buildings, drainage

294
AHDF OP, Box 7, package 3, “Argüelles to Dubois, September 20, 1929.
295
Ibid., “Petricioli to Dubois,” April 7, 1930

161
pipes,” and water mains and added that, as experience had demonstrated, the water

mostly came up in unhygienic conditions.296

The prominent engineer and former Public Works director Nicólas Dúran

initiated a discussion on service consumption. He agreed—like most engineers—

on the need to install water meters but doubted that under the current taxation

scheme, the objective of conservation would be reached. According to Durán, a

private enterprise in cooperation with the Government of the Federal District

should collect usage fees “on an entirely commercial basis” from tenants, who are

the ones responsible for the “waste.” He also called for the quick removal of all

the tinacos, common in tenements and other apartments, as they were notorious for

contaminating the city’s drinking water. Viewing water waste like a bad habit or

addiction, Durán thought it necessary to educate the people that “water has a

price” in order to “cure” them of their wastefulness.297 The engineer admitted that

his project would come under fire from landlords, the Public Health Department

(for limiting water usage among the urban poor), and, above all, tenants.

At the close of 1930, another round of debate followed the passage of the

Junta’s budget for 1931. Fernando Beltrán y Puga, an active member of the Junta,

followed the engineering path of his father Guillermo, but also became one of the

most vocal activists for radical changes to the government’s exclusive water

policy. The budget of 769,000 pesos, according to Beltrán y Puga, was extremely

deficient against the grave problems facing the sanitary service. He sought “to give

296
Ibid., “Dubois to Petricioli, April 24, 1930.
297
Ibid., “Durán to Dubois,” April, 1930.

162
preference to the most imperious needs, and at least supply those neighborhoods

overflowing with the humble population that lack water service.” Given the

immense expenses that such a task would entail, the engineer proposed that the

Junta install a series of hydrants so that these neighborhoods could at least avoid

pernicious sources such as clandestine wells and polluted river water. His long-

term proposal involved the immediate installation of meters—already a goal of the

Junta—and a tariff increase to boost income for future service-extension

projects.298 For Beltrán y Puga, water meters signified a means through which to

universalize service and remove the ‘embarrassments of Mexico.’299 Although he

failed to significantly raise the budget, the Junta agreed to earmark some funds for

the installation of public hydrants in needy neighborhoods.300

Though certainly not the only debates over water policy in the

postrevolutionary era, those of the short-lived Junta demonstrated the competing

imaginaries of water provision and the difficulty that engineers faced in pushing

through sanitary goals. Shrinking government coffers and the prioritization to fix

the existing system kept Beltrán y Puga’s radical recommendations on hold. The

downturn also postponed the prize expansion project to satiate city residents with

water from the springs of the Lerma River, though the government did supply

parts of the city with enhanced supplies from Desierto de Los Leones, Santa Fé,

298
Ignacio de la Barra proposed a similar plan several years later where a surge in
revenue would be used to expand services to needy neighborhoods. See his Las
aguas potables de la ciudad de México.
299
AHDF: OP, Box 138, Legajo 1, “Beltrán y Puga to Dubois,” December 11,
1930.
300
Ibid., Dubois to Beltrán y Puga,” December 16, 1930.

163
and the San Juan spring. The government largely kept its hands off the tinaco

question, a decision that has had far-reaching consequences. The Board did pursue

the meter system, which produced a wave of reaction from landlords,

homeowners, and other residents. Ultimately, the financially strapped municipal

government followed a more conservative course that tweaked the existing system

without radically transforming the way most residents obtained their water.

Just as the crisis in the drinking-water system generated a response from

authorities, the rising fear of floods begot a similar response from the most

renowned engineers working for the city. With the reorganization of municipal

government, Roberto Gayol accepted the position of Honorary Advisor to the

Public Works Department. The architect of Mexico City’s sewer system made a

host of recommendations involving the expansion of the system and its

maintenance. Just a few months later, Gayol resigned his post, frustrated that his

advice was being subjected to what one colleague called “acerbic criticisms.”301

Without vacillation, the august engineer took his cause to the public, and

newspapers bombarded readers with the allegedly numerous threats to the

Porfirian drainage system.

In 1925, Gayol pointed out, the Ayuntamiento blocked the highly

acclaimed pipe-cleaning service, replacing it with an inferior one from the

301
Durán, 157; Gayol, “Informe sobre Varios Asuntos,” RVMIA (March, 1933): 77
and anexo 2.

164
depleted springs of Chapultepec.302 The predicament led one writer to

sardonically predict: “We are going to be flooded for lack of water,” since

sedimentation in pipes prevented circulation.303 The sedimentation originated

primarily in the deforested hillsides and slopes of the Valley, and Gayol

understood that conservation and reforestation were critical to the proper

functioning of the city’s infrastructure. On the defensive regarding his beloved

sewerage system, Gayol criticized the government for having made unnecessary

changes to the pumps he had installed to push sewage from the mains into the

Gran Canal.304 Unfettered urban growth worsened the already over-stretched

system. The drainage water of wealthy neighborhoods located at a higher

elevation such as Chapultepec Heights or San Pedro de los Pinos descended into

the eastern section of the city, overflowing their sewers—the very same concern of

the Ayuntamiento several years before. The wastewaters of the middle class and

wealthy turned the flood-prone and poor neighborhoods located near the Gran

Canal into temporary sites of the ultimate sink.305

302
Gayol, 76-77; Pablo de Góngora, “Agua que viene y agua que se va” El
Universal, June 15, 1929; and “Si Hay peligro de Inundación,” El Universal, June
16, 1929. Durán who oversaw the 1925 work replied to Gayol saying that the
switch was to be temporary and that the water of the National Canal arrived
muddy and was not sufficient to properly perform the task. Regardless, the service
remained deficient into the 1930s. Durán, 159.
303
Pablo de Góngora, “Agua que viene y agua que se va.”
304
Gayol, 76; and “Para evitar inundaciones en la ciudad,” El Universal, August 6,
1931.
305
“Para evitar inundaciones”

165
 On October 14, 1932, the entire city became the sink, flooded with its own

waste.306 Gayol’s projections, much like Alonzo Romero’s a decade earlier, had

come true. Gayol conceived drainage as an interwoven socio-natural imbroglio in

which the city’s expansion, its infrastructure, and the surrounding hinterlands were

vitally interconnected. The higher echelons of government did not necessarily

share his viewpoint, or at least, their continued parsimoniousness demonstrated a

partial response to a complex problem, wherein every little work was celebrated as

the final resolution of the inundation threat.307 City engineers were key figures in

carrying out the new government’s vision to control two important sanitary

services in name of the ordered city. However, the same financial penury that

mired previous governments circumscribed their interventions.

Mexico City as “Reflection of Our Biological and Civilized Needs”

Despite the deficiencies in the government’s response to water and

drainage crises, from 1929 to 1934, the government assumed new responsibilities

to ensure that more people had access to better public hygiene. A new drinking-

water system in Tacubaya, public housing, as well as new sanitary regulations and

water meters, while limited by the financial downturn and the political power of

the propertied classes, reflected a concern for satisfying the “biological and

306
“La ciudad inundada por el Chaparrón,” El Universal, October 15, 1932.
307
“Para evitar inundaciones.”

166
civilized needs” of a wide array of urban inhabitants.308 In Mexico City, urban

populism did not begin with Cárdenas; rather, the GDF, under the Maximato (the

period from 1929-1934 in which Calles ruled from behind the scenes), began to tie

the knot between citizen and the post-revolutionary state. Disputes escalated in

response to government activism, however, dividing the city over how the urban

environment should be shaped and governed. Recognizing the limits of their

inclusive development schemes, the government promoted citizen contributions

(cooperación), which killed two birds with one stone. It had the twin effect of

privatizing development and building a tighter bond between the urban state and

the populace.

1929 was a decisive year for the residents of both Tacubaya and Mixcoac.

These populous towns, which by the 1920s had formed a conurbation with Mexico

City, became part of the jurisdiction of the Federal District’s Central Department.

The implications of this legal shift were immense for the thousands of inhabitants

who, excluded from Porfirian-era drainage and water services, had suffered from

dismal urban environments and years of municipal neglect. Amidst an outbreak of

typhoid in Mixcoac, the government worked to improve water service. The

government believed the high-profile project would serve as an example of the

more inclusive urbanism that many had expected. While on the surface the

Tacubaya/Mixcoac works resembled those in Villa Guadalupe two decades earlier

in their mutual promotion of local commerce, settlement, and hygiene, the context

308
Aaron Sáenz, Informe que rinde el jefe del departamento del distrito federal a
la ciudad (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría, 1934).

167
of revolutionary centralization set apart the Tacubaya project. Completely funded

by the new centralized urban government—rather than the finances of the local

landed elite—the state sought political legitimacy from scores of the urban

populace—regardless of social position—by accomplishing what cash-strapped

municipal governments could never have done.

When the Health Department declared the towns’ water not potable in the

summer of 1932, many wealthier residents fled the town “fearful of becoming

victims of the dangerous [typhoid] bacteria.”309 Over two years, the government

invested more than 1,500,000 pesos in attacking the multi-pronged water crisis.

The aqueduct, holding tanks, and distribution network were all pollution hotspots,

and a nearby mill frequently diverted the precious resource from the aqueduct to

their fields, buildings, and gardens. Rural uses and abuses of the urban water had

put an entire population at risk, and the new municipal government, by controlling

the hinterlands, brought these towns’ supply up to speed with the rest of the city.

The government cleaned up pollution sites, tapped additional spring water in El

Desierto by buying water from the community of San Pedro Atlapulco, and

extended the distribution network of the Xochimilco system to northern section of

Tacubaya and the new colonia San Miguel Chapultepec.310 The improved service

came with a catch, however. Starting in 1933, all residents would pay the standard

309
“El problema de agua potable en Mixcoac,” El Universal, September 19, 1932.
310
In exchange for the water supply, the community negotiated the construction of
a school and the installation of potable water service. See Antonio Cornejo,
“Mejoramiento de las dotaciones de agua de Tacubaya y Mixcoac,” Obras
Públicas (1930): 27

168
city tax of at least 12 pesos bimonthly, a price hike that homeowners contested.311

Inclusive urbanism came at a price as beneficiaries had to assist the state in

compensating their investments.

The water meter also cost homeowners. By installing water meters, the

government could reduce waste and raise more tax revenue in order to execute

further improvements to the municipal water system—or, at least so went the

official discourse.312 The meters—an ostensibly minor adjustment to water

service—were quickly enmeshed in larger questions about the responsibilities of

government and notions of hygiene. The municipal government and a group of

journalists, engineers, and property-owners of diverse class positions negotiated

the parameters of government intervention in this vital public service and disputed

how the tantalizing endpoint of a hygienic city should be realized.

The overwhelming popular support of the 1929 centralization decree was

giving way to widespread notions that city government presented more of the same

problems as before: corruption, incomplete projects, and neglect of public hygiene.

One editorial lashed out against the government’s incapacity to deal with typhus,

typhoid, and other gastrointestinal diseases. Calling out government malfeasance,

El Universal declared: “it is the ignorance of certain moral norms, of the legal

obligations that the exercise of official duties impose…which explain why

populations with sufficient means to defend themselves are subjected to the attacks

311
“Gran mejoramiento del servicio de aguas potables en Mixcoac y en
Tacubaya,” Nacional, February 18, 1932.
312
The meters made it possible to enforce the tax code, which stipulated a charge
on excess use.

169
of pathogenic germs.”313 Newspapers questioned the modernity of the city when

popular tourist or middle-class sections (not solely the abandoned eastern

neighborhoods) went without essential services such as lighting, pavement, water,

and drainage.314 They frequently excoriated faulty drainage service and water

service, which by 1933 was suspended at 4pm, and alleged that corruption

forestalled improvements.315 The stage was set for a charged atmosphere once the

government decided to install meters.

Roberto Iriguyen and the indefatigable engineer Rafael de la Cerda were

two of the more vociferous engineers to oppose the meters and the higher tax that

resulted. De la Cerda, criticizing the installation plan, accused the government of

“placing blame on the ignorant poor (pelados)” instead of tackling the more

serious sources of waste within the public infrastructure. Governing elites had

long cast the urban poor as wasteful, and such condescension buttressed the

defense of the meters.316 Iriguyen took a different tact in disputing the water

meters. He considered the increased tax revenue as an ethical threat, given that the

government “cannot charge more than what is absolutely indispensable to maintain

the water service network in good condition.” Iriguyen believed water should be

employed in “abundance,” without restrictions or measurements, especially since

the Health Department was demanding the installation of bathrooms. He lamented

313
“La incapacidad administrativa y la salubridad,” El Universal, June 3, 1932.
314
See for example, “Contrastes en la Metropoli,” El Universal, January 7, 1933.
315
See “El grave problema del agua,” El Universal, January 12, 1933; and AGN:
ALR, 616.2/2 “Roberto F. Pérez to Abelardo Rodriguez,” August 26, 1933.
316
Rafael de la Cerda, “Arenitas y ‘Pitometros,’” El Universal, April 9, 1932.

170
that in the era of the meter, water was being measured “for the people who need to

wash up the most.”317 The engineer Hector Lagarde employed a similar argument,

scorning the “malditos medidores” for limiting water usage in a city that required

more water to clean its dusty streets and contaminated public spaces. “All that is

saved in water,” Lagarde remarked, “is lost in hygiene.”318 Meter dissenters

wielded the language of public hygiene as a right, moral standard, and modern

expectation in their battle against government policy. They challenged the

government’s intervention in the private realm of cleanliness by adopting a

principle of public responsibility and hygiene. Yet, they did not account for the

fact that the increased revenue from meters might be used to extend service to

needy areas or that most poor people—as non-homeowners—did not pay for

water.

Through the Mexico City Property-owners Union and the Defense League

of Homeowners, landlords and homeowners issued an adamant rejection of the

water meter. These associations also appropriated the discourse of public health

but primarily sought to prove that the city government under mayor Aarón Sáenz

was using water service as a profit-making scheme.319 Property owners frequently

317
Roberto Iriguyen, “Una Reconsideracion del impuesto sobre aguas,” El
Universal, January 29, 1935. See also his “Los Medidores de Agua y las
Contribuciones” El Universal, December 8, 1934.
318
Hector Lagarde, “La Higiene Pública y la Carestia del Agua,” El Universal,
June 6, 1934. See also, José L. Cossio, Algunas notas sobre el servicio de agua
potable en el Distrito Federal (Mexico City: E. Rivera, 1933).
319
See “Los Medidores y el Precio del Agua,” El Universal, May 10, 1934.

171
complained that astronomical monthly charges of up to thirty-six pesos were

absurd given the impossibility of consuming so much water.320

The homeowners may have won the battle of public opinion, but they lost

the war against the meters. By the spring of 1934, 29 thousand homes, about 64%

of all the houses with a municipal water connection, had meters.321 As a result, the

government claimed that it was able to increase the number of connections by

25%.322 In essence, the government placed the responsibilities of conservation and

the onus of improved and expanded service on the backs of high-use consumers.

While the municipal government was responsible for the public works in

Tacubaya and the meters, the Federal Government made its activism felt through

more stringent sanitary regulations and the city’s first major public housing

project. The building code of 1930 was the strictest of a series of sanitary codes

dating back to the 1890s. It established new regulations obligating the

construction of toilets and water connections in each room of current and future

housing (including the crowded tenements), a mandate that the Board of The

Provision of Potable Water did not enact in 1912. Property owners immediately

sparred with government officials over these clauses, claiming that the

promulgation of the code would amount to nothing less than economic disaster.

The Association predicted that 172 million pesos would be needed to bring all the

buildings of the city up to standard, an indication of just how unsanitary much of

320
“Las Cuotas por el uso de Agua en Las casas,” El Universal, August 16, 1936.
321
“Los medidores y el precio.”
322
Departamento del Distrito Federal, Memorias del Departamento del Distrito
Federal (1933-1934), xv.

172
the city was in 1930. They also articulated a public health defense by

categorically declaring every toilet “a site of infection,” claiming interestingly that

it is thus “not necessary to increase them.”323 The President promulgated the new

code over the remonstrations of property-owners on February 25, 1930.324

The government demonstrated for the first time a willingness to hold its

ground against property-owners in its attempts to clean up the city and extend

sanitary services to the urban poor. But Public Health authorities could not

consistently enforce the new code, a reality betrayed by the persistence of

tenements in appalling hygienic conditions. Although on the surface the code

could be viewed as a victory for urban order and sanitary equality, it produced the

unintended consequence of contributing to the housing shortage. Since the

Porfiriato, developers had favored the creation of middle-class and upper-class

colonias on the western edge of Mexico City to the disadvantage of the eastern

poor. With measures such as the sanitary code, which obligated owners—at least

on paper—to install costly sanitary appliances, fewer incentives existed to house

those who would least likely compensate their expenses. 325

323
“La Liga de defensa de Propietarios de Casas y la Unión de Propietarios de
Casas de la Ciudad de México Informan a sus asociados de los principios articulos
del reglamento de ing. Sanitaria relativo a edeficios que de manera tan grave
lesiona sus itereses,” El Universal, January 31, 1930; and Gerardo G. Sanchez
Ruíz, 202.
324
Diario Oficial, February 25, 1930.
325
Developers faced other disincentives for constructing housing for the city’s
lower classes, including low returns on investment and the potential of rent strikes
similar to those that tormented Mexico’s urban landed elites in the early 1920s.

173
 Similarly, where landlords of existing apartments abided by the code, rents

rose, forcing low-income residents to seek shelter in cheaper housing without

services, or as we shall see, to invade federal or private lands on the city’s

outskirts. In the 1930s, to rent an apartment with a bathroom, a shower, a water

connection, and a toilet cost between 20 and 30 pesos per month, significantly

more than the average monthly salary. Meanwhile for 5 to 7 pesos a tenant could

obtain a room with little ventilation and, at best, water and a bathroom held in

common. Needless to say, more than half of the city’s residents could not afford

to spend twenty or more pesos on rent, although some families split the rent of a

single, more hygienic apartment. The less fortunate made their home in one of the

“one-hundred thousand hovels, in which tuberculosis, rickets, [and] typhus…are

mandatory company.”326 As long as sanitation remained segregated, access to

water and sewerage obtained a status of social distinction, a phenomenon that I

will discuss in the following section. Values in the housing market, therefore,

adhered to cultures of status and the hierarchies of urban modernity, or, in other

words, to “biological and civilized needs.”

If the sanitary code was an attempt to regulate the housing market, public

housing had the advantage of sidestepping it altogether. Petitions for adequate

housing combined with the labor code, which mandated that employers provide

hygienic housing to their workers, to convince the government to carry out

326
Moíses González Navarro, Población y sociedad, 1900-1970 vol 1 (Mexico
City: UNAM, 1974), 151-152, quote on 152.

174
Mexico’s first major public housing project.327 With the financial backing of the

federal government, Sáenz constructed over 300 houses of functionalist design for

the working-class. The homes in the subdivision San Jacinto and Balbuena

included parks for leisure activity and clean air, as well as drainage, pavement,

water, and other municipal services. The expenses of San Jacinto alone exceeded

a million pesos.328 The project, which was carried out in midst of the Great

Depression, did succeed in providing hygienic homes to those who could

otherwise not afford them and thus lent a degree of legitimacy to the state’s claims

of standing for social justice. But amid a sea of poor tenants, several hundred

homes hardly dented the structure of sanitary segregation. And as historian Patrice

Olsen has observed, the homes were built for an elite segment of the working

class; the payments of the cheapest available homes eclipsed most working-class

families’ income.329

The San Jacinto and Balbuena housing project was an isolated blip on the

moving screen of state-funded housing developments in Mexico City.330 Yet

Sáenz did not stop with housing. Receiving a boost of twenty-five million pesos

from Alberto Pani’s greatest accomplishment in urban sanitation, the Banco

327
Patrice Olsen, 90.
328
Departamento del Distrito Federal, El Departmento del Distrto Federal y la
habitación para empleados y obreros (Mexico City, DDF: 1934), 16.
329
Olsen, 96.
330
In July of 1936, the government constructed 372 homes and put them on sale,
yet at similarly exclusive prices for most of the city’s working class, and larger
projects did not begin until the mid-1940s. Armando Cisneros Sosa, La ciudad
que construimos: Registro de la expansion de la ciudad de México, 1920-1976
(Mexico City: UAM, 1993), 72.

175
Nacional Hipotecario Urbano de Obras Públicas, founded in 1933, Sáenz was

able to give a semblance of planning to urban infrastructure.331 He increased

investments in water service extension to colonias that lacked it, began drilling

wells to increase the flow of water, used his position of power to acquire contracts

for his paving company, and put in a number of sewer lines in order to strengthen

the city’s drainage system.332 These works, when seen in conjunction with the

sanitary code of 1930 and major works in Tacubaya and Mixcoac, signaled a shift

to a more inclusive model of urban development, despite the mayor’s interest in

urban construction and commerce.333

Nonetheless, the gulf between government claims of representation, justice,

and legitimacy on the one hand and concrete actions on the other remained wide.

Urban infrastructural works increased with the change of power at the municipal

level, but government coffers were hit by the economic crisis. More importantly,

the universalization of sanitary services remained outside the government’s

purview, due in part to the threat such initiatives would have posed to developers

and landlords. As previously mentioned, rural reforms and a decline in

productivity induced rural landowners and members of the revolutionary

331
Luis Aboites Aguilar, “La illusion del poder nacional: Provisión de agua y
alcantrillado en México, 1930-1990” in Ciudades Mexicanas del siglo XX: Siete
estudios históricos ed. Carlos Lira Vasquez and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri (Mexico
City: Colmex, 2009), 187 and AGN: ALR 616.2/2 “Pérez to Rodríguez,” August
26, 1933; and “El empréstito fue aprobado,” La Prensa September 12, 1933.
332
See Sáenz, Informe, 77-94.
333
Roderick Ai Camp notes that Sáenz had started a construction ftim with Calles
and was president of the Bank of Industry and Commerce starting in 1932. See his
Mexican Polítical Biographies, 1884-1935 (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1991), 196.

176
leadership to invest in lucrative urban land. Under Cárdenas, land redistribution

quickened in pace and real or feared nationalization policies bred a perception of

instability among the elite who found, once again, urban real estate markets and

development a safe and quick means to make money.334 For example, landowners

close to the expanding city jumped at the opportunity to urbanize their lands,

especially when the creation of new colonias served as a means to sidestep

community claims.335 Construction during the mid-1930s flourished, increasing

40.3% between 1936 and 1940, while the value of the new buildings doubled over

that same span.336 To explain the spike in urban construction during the Cárdenas

administration, one editorialist wrote: “whenever they [capitalists] could salvage

what they had invested in works of the countryside, they found refuge inside the

city.”337 The government, already with its hands full against the rural elite, judged

it prudent not to attack their homologues in the cities.

Aware of government neglect, homeowners—and in some cases

neighborhood organizations—continued the 1920s strategy of pleading the

334
See Davis, 94. To give on example, between 1935 and 1940, the average price
of a square meter in the colonia Juárez, increased from 400 to 1,000 pesos,
increases comparable or greater to hikes at the end of the Porfiriato. See Perló
Cohen, Estructura urbana, 16.
335
Urbanized land was exempt from ejido claims. The colonias Aragón and
Moderna are examples of this. In another case, the agrarian representative of Santa
María Nativitas accused the owner of the Hacienda Narvarte of reaching an accord
with the government for the urbanization of lands that the community had claimed
“even though they are being farmed and there is no sign of urbanization.” See
Jiménez Muñoz, 212-3; and LCR, 418.2/1, “Cirilo Najera to Cárdenas,” June 10,
1935.
336
Perló Cohen, Estructura urbana, 45.
337
“El miedo es el mejor albañil de la ciudad” Excelsior, July 18, 1939

177
government for the execution of works and contributing with funds and labor.

Middle-class property owners generally authored such petitions offering to

contribute funds, but homeowners in working-class colonias occasionally followed

suit. In Obrera, for instance, a dozen residents of the principal street offered to

provide all the materials necessary to introduce drinking water into their houses as

long as the government supplied the labor. The work, according to the residents,

“would bring new prosperity to the colonia.”338

The government appropriated citizen cooperación, a long-standing practice

in Mexican cities.339 In order to handle the incoming petitions, the government

created the Contribution Office to receive the funds and carry out the requests. 340

Between 1931 and 1932 hundreds of contributions from anywhere between a few

pesos to hundreds flooded the Office. Its success convinced the government that

cooperación could be transformed from an ad-hoc practice relying on the

voluntarism of residents into a mandatory government policy.341

President Abelardo Rodríguez, with the support of Mayor Sáenz,

promulgated the Ley de Cooperación de Particulares para las Obras Públicas del

Distrito Federal (The Contribution Law for Public Works of the Federal District)

338
See AHDF OP: Caja 3 “Residents to Puig Casauranc,” February 9, 1929. For a
similar example from Portales see Box 1, folder 6 “Andrés Chacón to Puig
Casauranc,” April 19, 1929; and for drainage contributions in Peralvillo, see Box
232, bundle 1, “Contribution Office to Public Works Department,” December 30,
1931.
339
For examples of citizen contributions to public works in Porfirian Morelia, See
Jiménez, “Residents Organize.”
340
See AHDF: OP box 232, bundle 1, various documents.
341
See Ibid., various documents.

178
in 1932. The law, in effect, placed a localized tax on the property-owners of a

district, who by a 51% majority approved of a specific public works project.342

The government pitched the law to property-owners as a vehicle through which

their properties would increase in value.343 It was painted as a win-win situation

whereby the state avoided the use of general tax revenue to install essential

services while propertied residents reaped the rewards of works that brought

increased rents and social status to their streets and neighborhoods.

The law became a hot-button issue for urban associations across Mexico

City. The Junta de Mejores Materiales of Ixtapalapa extolled the law as “just and

equitable that the owners have to contribute,” and the Junta of Balbuena, the one

with laborist beginnings, encouraged its promulgation so that works could

begin.344 The Defense League of Residents of the Colonia Obrera, on the other

hand, protested the law because “it relieves the development companies of their

duty to contribute to urban services, with damage to workers.” Various residents

of Portales insisted that the law would destroy any hope that they could become

owners of their homes—either because of the cost of works or rising land rents as

a result of them—and The Confederation of Unions of Small Property considered

the law “disastrous.” Since the law favored wealthier owners who could more

342
Property-owners would be charged upon completion of the works. See AGN:
ALR 6, 011/9 “Ley de Cooperación.”
343
“El mejoramiento de la Ciudad de México,” El Universal, January 28, 1933.
344
AGN ALR 011/9 “Junta de Ixtapalapa to ALR,” March 10, 1933; and “Junta de
Balbuena to ALR,” December 6, 1932.

179
easily afford to donate, the Confederation asked that all types of property owners

be taken into account.345

The right to public hygiene now required a willingness and ability to pay.

Despite official discourse to the contrary, sanitary services became in practical

terms less a social right guaranteed by the state and more a privilege accessed by

economic power. With the law, developers were immunized of social

responsibilities in the communities they constructed.

A mainstay of urban political policy, the program resulted in the

completion of many public works projects throughout the city. The residents who

could afford to contribute benefited through more hygienic and safer urban

environments, as well as higher property values, while the state funneled new

forms of civic participation through the Contribution Office and ultimately took

credit of the work done.346 Interestingly, as a result of their unwillingness to

embark on massive public works projects, government celebrated cooperación as a

substantial political project of civic incorporation through citizen participation.

Cooperación and development initiatives linked the state and the citizens of

Mexico City together through urban services and sanitation, unlike anything

previously achieved by the municipal government. By 1934, the city government

controlled sanitary services like never before, and both elite and popular groups

345
AGN ALR 011/9 “Liga de Defensa de Colonos de la Colonia Obrera to ALR,”
Marh 6, 1933; Residents of Nativitas to ALR,” March 5, 1933; and Confederation
of Unions to ALR, March 10, 1933.
346
The law stipulated that once the state formulated an “initiative,” it would be
published in two of the city’s chief dailies.

180
disputed how such services would be managed and thus how urban environments

should look.

Distinction, Universal Rights, and the Rise of Urban Corporatism

The Cárdenas administration further opened the door for a wide array of

the urban poor and middle classes to demonstrate their indignation over unhealthy

environments. If, for example, earlier administrations could pass stricter sanitary

regulations, construct housing, and put in sewerage and water to some fortunate

neighborhoods, why would Cárdenas, the perceived metonym of revolution, not do

the same and more for their communities? The urban mobilization encouraged by

Cárdenas opened valves of social discontent that pushed up against the political

limits of the administration and unfurled diverse and often conflicting cultures of

environmental rights.

Cosme Hinojosa, Cárdenas’s first selection to the mayorship, explained

that the municipal government was embarking on a new agenda to supply drainage

and water to the poor colonias of the Federal District. The plan “is justified,”

Hinojosa claimed, “not only by the tendency of the Revolution to suppress

privileges and inequalities, despised wherever they are found, but also in the

practical sense where we find that such inequalities or preferential treatment in

certain areas over others have transcendental consequences for the collectivity.”347

The consequences to which Hinojosa referred were hygienic, wherein mortality

347
Memorias del Departamento del DF (1934-35), 12-3.

181
coefficients were invariably higher in sections of the city where services were

absent. The revolution, according to the mayor, represented the abolition of urban

privileges, while a concern for public health would benefit the urban collectivity.

To a certain degree, Hinojosa’s remarks merely continued Sáenz’s stance

on representing the city’s collective interests, and Sáenz had also noted the

“responsibility that the Revolution brought.”348 The government continued to

expand water and sewerage networks on a case-by-case basis, without the

universalization of service in mind, and increase the water supply. It extended the

water network to numerous neighborhoods, including Peralvillo, sections of

Gustavo Madero and Paulino Navarro, Maza, and Valle Gómez.349 The first deep

wells were constructed around the city, a much cheaper option than tapping distant

sources, sharply increasing the water taken from the aquifer to supply the growing

city. At the beginning of his term, the most derelict section of the Xochimilco

aqueduct was replaced, and a new pumping station was inaugurated in 1940 to

handle the increased flow. Cardenista governors José Siroub and Raul Castellanos

continued the drainage works that Sáenz initiated, with the construction of

numerous mains and pipes in drainage-deficient areas.

The population of Mexico City doubled between 1920 and 1940,

however, and as long as private developers were in charge of installing service to

new colonias, the government was condemned to playing catch-up. In the words

348
Memorias del Departamento del DF (1933-1934).
349
See Cisneros; AGN: LCR 609/168; and Memorias del Departamento del DF
(1934-1935), 115.

182
of Raul Castellanos, mayor from 1938-1940, “if the resources for attending to the

most serious public service needs are insufficient, this is due to uncontrolled and

unplanned growth.”350 Castellanos made a good point, for the total expenses

necessary to sanitize the city far outstripped the capabilities of the entire yearly

municipal budget. But he omitted another key point. Expenses on sanitary

services under Cárdenas, on average, declined slightly in comparison to expenses

under Sáenz, and represented a significantly lower percentage of an otherwise

expanding municipal budget, evidence of the widening gulf between popular

expectation and urban reality.351 According to the six-year plan, due to supposed

need of rural communities over urban ones, sanitation in the countryside was

privileged over new works in the city.352 One inhabitant of Mexico City lamented

that while the president supported the campesinos “so that they live well,”

thousands of tenants “vegetate in truly lamentable conditions.”353 As the tension

between insufficient public works and unregulated development continued—and

even worsened—under Cárdenas, the popular political organizations that his

350
Memorias del Departamento del DF (1939-40), 1.
351
In 1934, under the command of Sáenz, the sanitary services of water, drainage,
and pavement (which also included road-building) reached 12.73 million pesos. In
1935, that figure had dipped to 10.96, and in 1936, to 7.52. While the numbers
rose substantially again in 1937, expenses did not exceed 1934 levels until 1940,
the last year of the Cárdenas administration. And, to a certain degree, the higher
figures at the end of the administration can be attributed to the traffic decongestion
projects that were central to Carlos Contreras’s urban planning commission. The
figures I use here have been calculated based on chart XI in Perló Cohen,
Estructura urbana, 79.
352
See Gilberto Bosques, The National Revolutionary Party and the Six Year Plan
(Mexico City: Bureau of Foreign Information of the PNR, 1937), 180; and Luis
Aboites, “La ilusión del poder nacional.”
353
AGN: LCR: 545.3/94, “Julia Acosta to Cárdenas,” February 19, 1940

183
government encouraged quickly staked claims on urban environmental rights. For

much of the urban populace, the revolution had penetrated the countryside but

remained locked outside the city’s figurative gates.

How the populace mobilized and the kinds of demands they raised are of

the utmost importance for our examination of environmental citizenship in Mexico

City. The political economy of urbanization, in tandem with dominant ideas of

cultural status and distinction, weighed heavily on the discursive and

organizational form that popular environmental protest assumed in Cárdenista

Mexico City. The real estate market and the Contribution Law, as previously

mentioned, reflected cultures of status whereby access to enough money could

secure one’s place in the sanitary hierarchy. Money bought cleanliness and purity,

and consequently, the distinction of living the urban sanitarian ideal. The city’s

marginalized population, those who lived in the hovels and tenements without

access to clean water and without adequate drainage, was the antithesis of urban

modernity. They had to be “modernized,” and water composed a key element.

This highly paternalistic notion of the relation between water and cultural

hierarchies percolated down to the city’s growing middle and working classes who

sought their own admission into modern and urban Mexico. Ironically, since

water and drainage had not been universalized, the idea of achieving cultural

distinction through their attainment had. Many thus saw water as their right, but a

right that could at the same time reinforce hierarchy, privilege, and cultural

distinction.

184
 The fact that since the Porfiriato urbanization proceeded by “colonias”—

some “middle-class,” some “upper-class,” and still others “working class”—

divided urban politics. Urban needs became colonia needs as inhabitants brought

grievances against developers or government in favor of the general prosperity of

the colonia. In response, the government mollified specific colonia demands,

instead of all of them at once. Even within a colonia certain streets would often

obtain services, leaving others to protest on their own. Ad-hoc service extension

fixed the spatial distribution of water as a bearer of cultural distinction and

hierarchy rather than a universal right. Cultures of status and colonia-first

mentalities dictated that many demands remained unequivocally parochial in

nature, bounded by the neighborhoods or streets that residents hoped would

prosper with government aid.

Deploying water and drainage as signs of status, Roberto Guerrero Grosso

of the colonia La Nápoles expressed the expectation that the supposedly middle-

class subdivision should have these sanitary services given its proximity to well-

serviced neighborhoods such as del Valle and Hipódromo. He complained that the

“hundreds” of tourists who visit the neighborhood daily take photos of “ten to

twenty people that at all hours are found in the middle of the street carrying out

their needs [haciendo sus necesidades], something that cannot be avoided due to

the lack of water and drainage.” Guerrero Grosso’s argument centered on the

needs of La Nápoles, as an honorable colonia in the respectable part of town. To

185
deny his request would be a breech of modernity and would put Mexico City’s

image to the test by the photographic evidence of throngs of tourists.354

More so than individuals, neighborhood associations, as during the 1920s,

were the primary conduits of urban discontent. The hapless homeowners of the

Resident Union of los Portales wrote a long petition to Cárdenas, scorning the

contractor’s malfeasance and invoking the sanitary code for leverage. These

residents, mired in an abysmal urban environment for twenty years, saw in

Cárdenas their potential advocate.355 The neighborhood reigned supreme in these

types of petitions.

Sanitary inequalities at times bred competition among residents and,

especially, between neighborhoods. Peralvillo had waited since the beginning of

the century for water hook-ups, and in the words of El Universal, had looked “with

untrustworthy and envious eyes upon their neighbors who had attained modernity

and comfort.”356 The residents of the colonia Industrial in the north, with 10,000

people by 1940, enjoined the government to provide them with water from

Xochimilco now that a distribution reservoir had been constructed nearby to

354
AGN LCR 609/168, “Roberto Guerrero Grosso to Cárdenas,” March 21, 1939.
His claim that hundreds of tourists took photos was an obvious embellishment of
reality, for there was no particular reason for tourists to visit the new subdivision
on the outskirts of town.
355
See AGN: LCR, 418.2/1 “El Sindicato de Colonos y Vecinos de Portales to
Cárdenas,” February 24, 1938. They called for the expropriation of their colonia
from the hands of the company, a common plea among urban organizations since
the 1936 Expropriation Law set the legal basis for imminent domain for public
health and general well being of the population. See “Ley de Expropriación,” in
Mexico, Legislacion sobre Fraccionamientos y construcciones urbanas (Mexico
City, 1942): 96-99.
356
See “Agua potable en la colonia Peralvillo,” El Universal, July 13, 1936.

186
service other subdivisions. The inhabitants considered that they had “as much

right as the inhabitants of La Villa de Guadalupe to receive Xochimilco water and

more rights than the colonias Atepozco and Insurgentes-Tepeyac, especially the

latter where the Xochimilco water would only serve to irrigate the gardens and

supply the uninhabited homes that the company constructed as propaganda for

their sale.” The colonos found it “absurd” and “unjust” that their long-standing

community would be deprived of a vital service while the developers of Tepeyac-

Insurgentes, led by former president Ortíz Rubio, would be privileged. 357 Other

neighborhood associations and individuals flooded the President and the GDF with

petitions to alleviate the awful conditions of their living spaces, occasionally

invoking what other neighborhoods or subdivisions had.358

A consequence of Cardenismo was the emergence of an inclusive kind of

urban environmental movement, one that co-existed with the parochial

neighborhood-specific brand that had dominated the past. Starting in 1934, a

number of working-class homeowner and tenant organizations formed and rode

the populist wave led by trade unions to demand sanitary equality and hygienic

homes for all citizens. These organizations aimed to break down sanitary

privileges and bring development to the entirety of the urban “working-class,” an

357
See “Queja de los habitantes de la colonia Industrial, contra la Dirrección de
Aguas del Departamento Central,” El Universal, January 12, 1939. On the
advertisements for Insurgentes-Tepeyac, see Olsen, 202-03.
358
See AGN: LCR, 418.2/93, “Residents of Tolteca to Cárdenas,” March 10,
1937; 418.2/1 “Eufemia Estrada to Cárdenas,” February 8, 1940; AGN: EPG,
1/32; and Jiménez Muñoz, 242.

187
all-encompassing term often employed to represent the diverse employment and

living conditions of the urban poor.

With the slogan “for a society without classes,” the General Union of

Residents of the Federal District, a member of the Mexican Workers

Confederation, continuously demanded from June 1934 on that the government

pass a new urbanization law. Members upheld the Civil Code, which served as the

basis of the San Jacinto/Balbuena works, as well as the Constitution’s promise to

promote public health, to plead for “cheap and hygienic homes destined for

workers.”359 Based on the 1936 expropriation law that set the legal basis for

imminent domain in the name of public health and collective interest, the

organization petitioned the state to expropriate colonias that had been developed

by usurious companies and substitute them for new ones funded by the state “when

they lack urban services or when the sale price is an obstacle for the development

of the colonias.”360 They aimed to fundamentally alter the social and

environmental conditions of the urban poor by replacing private developers with

the state as the principal agent of urban development in Mexico City. The General

Union, moreover, along with the many other organizations that formed at this time,

roundly rejected the Contribution Law precisely because of the immunity it gave

the companies and the onerous financial strains it put on communities.

359
AGN: LCR, 545.2/4, “Manuel Duarte to Abelardo Rodriguez,” May 1, 1934.
360
AGN: LCR, 545.2/4, “Union General de Colonos del DF to Cárdenas,” March
2, 1938. For the “Ley de Expropiación,” see Legislación sobre fraccionamientos y
contribuciones urbanas, 96-9.

188
 Cooperación remained on the books as a central pillar of urban public

works projects, and a new Regulation on Urban Developments, passed in March

1936, bore little resemblance to what resident organizations had demanded. For

the most part, it was a regurgitation of earlier laws, which had failed to arrest

unequal urban growth and sanitary segregation.

Later in 1936, the Frente Único de Colonos de la República, also an

affiliate of the Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM), joined the mounting

voices for a new and more just urbanization law (ley de colonización). Claiming

to represent groups from over a dozen poor working-class colonias in Mexico City

such as Peralvillo, Pantítlan, Moctezuma, Lázaro Cárdenas, and Industrial, the

Front devised their own legislative proposal. The proposal called for the

revocation of numerous contracts between the Mexican Land company—managed

by the real estate magnate Arthur Branniff—and residents who suffered from

prohibitive lot prices as well as poor urban services. The state would then

intervene to set fair prices for the homes, based primarily on whether urban

services had been installed in the colonia. Article VII of the proposal mandated

that “as reparation of the damage caused to the purchasers of lots and to the public

health,” the government would demand the complete “urbanization” of the

colonias, paid for by the companies.361

Although substantial reforms in urbanization policy met defeat, protest

heightened, and calls for sanitary reform often led the way. What is more, many

361
LCR: 545.2/4, “Proyecto de Ley,” September 16, 1936.

189
protestors appealed directly to the president, basing their petitions on an ostensible

separation between the policy of the Department and that of the Cárdenas

administration. They continued to hold the president in high regard and saw him

as the answer to urban spatial inequalities even when the municipal government

was faltering. The Revolutionary Block of Colonias of the Federal District invited

Cárdenas to a meeting to discuss the fate of poor neighborhoods, and the General

Union called for a hearing with the president “since the municipal government

does not give due attention to their petitions.”362 Such petitions were driven not

only by the climate of revolutionary change but also by the years of public health

ideology that permeated urban culture. In other words, working-class

organizations fused public health and revolution to put forth an inclusive and just

vision of their city. In many ways, a petition by the Revolutionary Block

embodied the urban social movement for environmental change:

During the term of General Cárdenas, the ideals of the improvement of the
proletarian element have been crystallizing. However, the problem persists
and improvement works have been directed toward the adornment of the
city, neglecting the works that would directly benefit the dispossessed
classes who are not provided with the public services that could make their
lives more humane. These works would secure the hygiene of the capital,
which is indispensable for a city of the importance of the capital of the
Republic.363

The urban poor needed to organize as a group to overcome sanitary inequalities, as

state-sponsored cooperación was rarely a desirable option. These organizations

362
LCR 545.2/4, “Revolutionary Block to Cárdenas,” August 13, 1936
363
LCR 545.2/4 “Bloque to Cárdenas,” October 24, 1940.

190
sought livable urban environments for all homeowners and potential homeowners

lacking official titles.

Yet, most of the urban poor were not homeowners; they were tenants in

overcrowded tenements or in newer—but no less atrocious—homes. This much

larger group of the urban poor also supported government-sponsored development

to provide homes for tenants, but despite a shared goal of livable urban

environments, they had their own organizations and their own nemesis in the urban

landlord.364 They too fought for legislation, a tenant law in this case, to combat

sanitary inequalities.

The tenant movement experienced a rebirth during Cardenismo after years

of dormancy following the 1922 rent strikes that bedeviled landlords in cities

across Mexico. The Tenant Defense League, founded in 1934, led the re-energized

movement, calling for a Tenant Code and a state-run bank that would protect

tenants from abusive landlords, “the enemies of the revolution,” and promote new

housing developments. It demanded that government promulgate a new law to

364
One could imagine a situation in which tenant and homeowner organizations
would be pitted against each other since some poor homeowners would have
rented out to even poorer tenants. There is no documentary evidence of such
conflict, however. Principally, the tenant-landlord and homeowner-developer
conflicts were two sides of the same coin. Many poor tenants sought hygienic and
cheap homes in the new subdivisions (colonias proletarias), which served as
“escape valves” from the “congested,” expensive, and unsanitary central
neighborhoods. At that point developers subjected them to similar exploitative
practices such as double payments, increased mortgages, and unhygienic
environments. See Ibid., “Federación de Organizaciones de Colonos del DF to
Rodríguez,” May 1, 1934.

191
control the “derisory landlords” and set up a “sanitary dictatorship.”365 In defense

of new legislation, the League related the dangers that children and adults

experienced “due to the general lack of sanitation in the residences…[as well as to]

landlord avarice and sanitary authorities who do no have the necessary rigor to

enforce the sanitary code.”366 The bank that the organization proposed would have

been in charge of funding public housing projects and repairing apartments “that

the majority of tenants demand in support of hygiene, comfort, and sanitation.”367

On occasion, trade unions busted out of their workplace shell to make

demands for better living environments for their workers. By invoking the

revolutionary agrarian reform implemented in cotton-rich La Laguna and the

henequen zone of Yucatán, the Mexican Tailor Union appealed to the president to

resolve another major obstacle to revolutionary change: the “housing problem”

caused by “the enemies of the revolution.” They called for public housing for their

workers whose tenements were “veritable sites of infection.”368

As was the case with debates over new colonias, tenant-landlord relations

reached the docket of Congress in 1938. 369 La Prensa defended the initiative as

365
AGN: LCR, 545.3/94, “Liga to Cárdenas,” April 25, 1935.
366
Ibid., “Liga to Cárdenas,” July 5, 1935.
367
Ibid., “Ante proyecto para la creación del Banco Nacional Refaccionario del
Hogar,” no date
368
LCR 545.3/94 “Tailors Union to Cárdenas,” December 7, 1937.
369
The climate of urban reform seemed to climax that year. As landlords,
developers, and tenants engaged in a pitched battle over the bill, the socialist
planner Hannes Mayer, upon Cárdenas’s invitation, arrived from Europe to give a
talk on the “ciudad obrera” at the First Mexican Engineering Conference. Mayer
and a cadre of radical planners proposed that the state play a central role in
correcting the inequalities of urban service provision. That year the municipal

192
representing the health of the population while others affirmed its economic

viability. Property-owners, on the other hand, explained that “the mere

announcement of the initiative has suspended the construction of many

buildings…and construction materials have quintupled in price.”370 The alarmism

of property-owners won the day, and Congress rejected the law. The

postrevolutionary government again failed to back environmental rights over an

exclusionary vision of urban modernity.

Much like the homeowner movement, the tenant movement called for a

series of reforms that would have profoundly transformed the nature of urban

growth in Mexico City. Sanitary dictatorship, a robust example of the kind of

urban environmental citizenship displayed since 1922, would have increased the

role of the revolutionary state in providing adequate environments for the urban

poor, whether through the enforcement of codes, investments in old buildings, or

the construction of new ones. For Cárdenas, however, the priorities of the

revolution lay not in challenging the powerful urban real estate sector but rather in

uplifting the peasantry and forging a pact between worker and business over

conditions on the shop floor.

Instead of waiting for tenant reform or public housing, many tenants in the

overcrowded, hygiene-poor central districts, decided to resettle in an attempt to

gain environmental rights and home ownership. If, as Womack writing about

government also increased funding of public works to 1934 levels, and parts of the
proposal that Mexico’s premier planner Carlos Contreras issued in 1933 were
implemented. For Mayer and the group of radical planners, see López Rángel, 8.
370
See LCR 545.3/94 various documents.

193
zapatismo famously put it, the Morelos peasants “did not want to move and

therefore got into a revolution,” the urban poor packed their belongings in hopes of

a brighter revolutionary future. By 1940, over a dozen colonias proletarias,

communities settled by invasions of private or federal land—especially the unused

land around the Gran Canal—created a crescent of urban refugees around the

eastern rim of the capital. Although statistics on these colonias are scarce, they

may have housed around 80,000 people, with names such as 20 de Noviembre,

Lázaro Cárdenas, Flores Magón, and Progresista—all signifiers of the

revolution.371 As illegal, self-organized settlements, what settlers gained in open

space and new self-constructed homes, they lost in urban services, which they

often had enjoyed in a rudimentary way in the central district. But they did take

advantage of the political opening to gain official support for their fledgling

communities. Many became a force in the urban homeowner movement discussed

earlier, as colonias proletarias united amongst themselves to push for universal

sanitary rights.

The administration quickly learned that toleration and modest support of

the colonias proletarias was advantageous, an affordable way to establish

hegemony over urban popular classes. The colonias proletarias, a product of

capitalist urbanization and a form of settlement that marked post-War

urbanization, obviated public housing works. They also allowed the state to

respond in much the same way they responded to others: through piecemeal

371
Perló Cohen, Estructura urbana, 50-1.

194
reform that while garbed in the language of revolutionary rights did not challenge

the pattern of urban development. In some cases, municipal government began

arranging settlements for the urban poor on vacant federal lands and negotiating

home-ownership and service installment.372 In other cases, when settlers invaded

private lands, the municipal government often used the brute force of evictions

over negotiations.373

Faced with an intransigent state—and one that celebrated its revolutionary

credentials—urban social movements were strikingly conservative in their

strategy. With the exception of a rent strike in the summer of 1939 following the

defeat of the tenant legislation, the petition remained the chief expression of

protest during these years. In early twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro, social

movements around issues of “collective consumption” often engaged in rioting

and other forms of direct action.374 Why did protests for more equitable urban

growth and livable environments not turn more radical in late 1930s Mexico City?

The answer lies in political structure. In Rio, protest movements were imbued

with radical anarchist and communist ideologies that recent immigrants often

espoused. While these ideologies existed in Mexico’s capital, they were often

subsumed by the postrevolutionary state that bestowed upon urban demands an

372
“Terrenos que han sido ocupados sin razón” El Universal, May 25, 1939; Las
necesidades de las colonias,” El Nacional, “March 2, 1939; and Perló Cohen,
Estructura urbana, 58-72.
373
El Excélsior, “La expulsión de unos colonos,” May 30, 1939.
374
See Teresa Meade, “Living Worse and Costing More: Resistance and Riot in
Rio de Janeiro, 1890-1917,” Journal of Latin American Studies 21 (1989): 241-
266; and “Civilizing Rio”: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889-1930
(University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997).

195
institutional solution. In postrevolutionary Mexico City, the state set up

institutional channels for dissent that most of the protest organizations, as

members of large state-sponsored institutions, followed. Although this does not

deny the autonomy of the movements or the radicalism of their demands, it does

go a long way in explaining the absence of direct action.

By the beginning of Cárdenas’s term, a tradition of petition writing to

government officials, dating back to the Porfiriato, had prevailed over rioting, or

other forms of direct action, as the principal means of conducting environmental

citizenship. The populist Cárdenas, experienced as former governor of Michoacán

in establishing state-run umbrella organizations that ordered and disciplined

popular protest, tapped into Mexico City’s epistolary tradition by creating

bureaucratic procedures for handling the sudden flood of claims to environmental

rights. The state-sponsored Consejo de Colonos del Partido de la Revolución

Mexicana (Resident Advisory Board of the Party of the Mexican Revolution) and

the Contribution Office of the Federal District handled petitions from new

working-class subdivisions, especially the colonias proletarias, “initiating a tight

relation between governing party and resident.”375 The urban populace played by

the hegemonic postrevolutionary game: demands, either by parochial community-

improvement associations or citywide organizations, were channeled through the

state apparatus and resolved on a case-by-case basis. For a majority of the urban

375
Cisneros Sosa, 79.

196
poor, revolutionary change occurred at a snail’s pace and often came at their own

expense as part of the government’s contribution program.

President Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-46) continued the corporatist

agenda that Cárdenas initiated. In March of 1941, he issued a decree that brought

community improvement associations more firmly into the state fold and

simultaneously discouraged trans-city alliances over urban environmental

concerns—much like the creation of the tripartite PRM in 1938 prevented the

gelling of a worker-peasant alliance. Under the guise of defending residents from

the “abuse” and “speculation” committed by some association leaders, the new

regulation disciplined the urban poor, authorizing that all associations be registered

with the Contribution Office. The government only tolerated one organization in

each colonia and strictly prohibited interventions “in concerns related to other

colonias.”376 The parochialism of community improvement associations became

law, inscribed into the inner-workings of the post-revolutionary state.

Conclusion

From 1929 through the early 1940s, the postrevolutionary state—at both

the municipal and federal levels—attempted to crack down on inadequate service

provision and urban sanitary inequalities through a variety of regulations and

initiatives. State and populace alike appealed to the revolution and the grandeur of

376
“Reglamento de Associaciones Pro-Mejoramiento de las Colonias del Distrito
Federal,” in Legislación sobre fraccionamientos y construcciones urbanas, 183-
85; “Para mejorar las colonias,” El Nacional, March 28, 1941; and “Forma de
mejorar los servicios públicos,” El Universal, March 19, 1941.

197
Mexico City as the nation’s bastion of modernity to push through their plans and

proposals, but the government consistently backed off radical reforms that could

have transformed the urban environment. Instead, piecemeal reform followed

demands from local populations that were mired in unhygienic, congested, and

expensive living spaces.

As I have demonstrated in this chapter, popular protest was the product of

a dynamic interplay between the revolutionary process and conceptions of the

sanitary ideal in Mexico’s capital that were tightly interwoven with class

inequalities and notions of cultural distinction. Where the middle-class more

likely took advantage of the contribution program, the poor working classes found

in unions, other revolutionary organizations, and land invasions the proper conduit

to better their living spaces. Livable environments were, for these organizations, a

universal right guaranteed by the revolution and mere residence in the city,

whereas, for much of the middle class (and some working-class neighborhood

associations), sanitary environments were conceived as more a mark of distinction,

as a means to get ahead economically and culturally.

State corporatism and the conservative turn of 1940 eventually snuffed out

the most radical demands for sanitary equality in Mexico City. As the city

experienced a demographic and industrial boom in the post-War era, state

investment in urban infrastructure skyrocketed to keep pace with growth. While

the particularities of popular demands and the specific institutional response varied

during this period, contingent on the political moment, the general structure of

198
urbanization, both legal and illegal settlements, as well as the structure of demand

making remained remarkably similar. Neighborhood associations would file a

demand against a company or for state intervention on their behalf. The petition

would then enter a bureaucratic channel and be positioned according to political

and economic interests. Just like during the 1930s, every community that

managed to avoid being razed eventually received services, but the extension of

services did not always include the entire neighborhood and were often deficient.

The ad-hoc response also, of course, had a political objective: the support of urban

residents—often-recent migrants from the countryside—for the nation’s governing

party.

199
Part III: Forests, Springs, and Lakes: The Dual Revolution

in the Hinterland

200
Chapter 4: Divided Forests, Contentious Waters: The Ajusco and Xochimilco

in Revolutionary Mexico

In late July of 1911, two months after Madero’s triumph, a group of

revolutionaries from the community of San Pablo Oxtotepec, descended upon

Milpa Alta, declaring that all the forests of the area belonged to the “pueblo.” The

leader of the revolutionary band, Joaquin Miranda, informed an assembly of

townsfolk in the plaza that they could “enjoy at their discretion [arbitro] all the

products [of the forests] such as construction wood, firewood, and zacatón root,

without giving prior notice. He declared that forest agents “no longer had any

effect,” and recommended that villagers impede them by any means necessary.377

This represented wholesale rebellion to the Forestry Department, which chastised

the “ignorant” people of Milpa Alta for believing his decrees as if they were legal.

The “people,” according to one official, had ungraciously interpreted the words

“liberty and democracy.” Miranda evidently recognized the importance of the

forests to the local economy and understood past injustices, from the overbearing

conduct of forest guards to the unequal forestry policies that stripped communities

of use rights only to give permits to outsiders like the Hampson brothers (see

chapter 1). His pronouncement embodied a new environmental citizenship in

Mexico City’s hinterlands, a thirty-year period in which campesinos negotiated

environmental rights. The outcome, initially, improved subsistence practices, but

377
AGN: Fomento, Bosques, 72, 40, “Jefe Sección Forestal del sureste a la
Guardería de Milpa Alta” August 4, 1911.

201
later, urban and industrial dominance again alienated campesinos from productive

environments in the woodlands- and water-rich southern Valley of Mexico.

The vacuum of power between 1910 and 1917 marked the first watershed

moment for environmental citizenship in the southern Valley of Mexico. Even

though the restoration of state power during the latter half of the decade

diminished the radical re-imagining of environmental rights and the brutal civil

war destroyed many communities, the second moment came with reconstruction,

when popular groups claimed soil, water, and woodlands. Carranza

institutionalized land reform in January 1915, a measure that was reinforced in

article 27 of the Constitution of 1917. “Centers of population which either have no

lands or water or which do not possess them in sufficient quantities for the needs

of their inhabitants,” the article mandated, “shall be entitled to grants thereof,

which shall be taken from adjacent properties, the rights of small landed holdings

in operation being respected at all times.”378 Scholars have exhaustively studied

the consequences of the agrarian reform on land tenure, but the political dynamics

of forests and water across Mexican spaces are largely unknown.379 Rural

communities required access to these resources to secure productive environments.

No better example can be found than the Valley of Mexico where decades of

378
http://www.ilstu.edu/class/hist263/docs/1917const.html (accessed December,
2009).
379
Some attention has been paid to irrigation. See Luis Aboites Aguilar, La
irrigación revolucionaria: Historia del sistema nacional de riego del Rio
Conchos, Chihuahua, 1927-1938 (México: CIESAS, 1988); Francisco Gómez
Javier Carpinteiro, Gente de azúcar y agua: modernidad y posrevolución en el
sureste de Puebla (Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán, 2003); Sterling Evans; Mikael
Wolfe; and Casey Walsh.

202
development schemes, primarily benefiting urban interests, had circumscribed uses

of nature. In contrast to their urban counterparts, the rural poor, prior to the

revolution, lacked leverage to improve local environments. Although the

revolutionary reform of the postrevolutionary era by no measure destroyed the old

bases of rural power, it did empower the rural poor of the Ajusco and Xochimilco,

who suddenly controlled thousands of acres of resource-rich lands.

The hegemonic order of revolutionary development, inscribed in the

Constitution and other federal decrees confronted—like in the city proper—the

exclusive urban modernity established during the Porfiriato. Campesinos in both

the forested Ajusco and lacustrine Xochimilco maneuvered delicately between

these contradictory state forces as they attempted to secure their means of

subsistence by challenging forestry restrictions and hydraulic policies. Rural

people negotiated and disputed environmental rights in a multi-layered and

spatially hierarchical field of power that conditioned environmental change and

resource use.

This chapter is divided into three sections, all of which follow a particular

realm of environmental politics in the southern Valley. The first reveals some of

the environmental visions that the rural poor put forth in a time of social upheaval

and tracks elite attempts to bust and control these imaginaries. The second section

explores evolving forestry policies in the Ajusco as agrarian and forestry officials

negotiated appropriate uses with communities. The third section follows the

203
communities around Lake Xochimilco as they sought to sustain their agricultural

subsistence in the face of rapid environmental degradation.

Part I: Reclaiming Lost Rights

The fragmentation of the Mexican polity induced “local sovereignty” in

which subalterns seized land, water, and woodlands.380 Students of the Mexican

revolution have described the newfound sense of rights popular groups felt, but we

know little about how this sense affected power over environments. The

environmental imaginaries that the rural poor expressed reflected ideas of

customary rights, but were catalyzed by the conjunctural dynamics of local

revolutionary conflict.

Empowered by the revolutionary atmosphere, communities joined Milpa

Alta in ratcheting up use of the Valley’s forests. In Topilejo, several miles west on

the slopes of the Ajusco, for example, forest officials reported that local authorities

had rented twenty-five mules to villagers for the illegal transportation of charcoal

and firewood (leña rajada) to market in nearby Tlalpan. Due to its rocky terrain,

officials complained of the difficulty of reforestation there, but could take little

action to combat these types of uses.381 Throughout the Valley’s forests,

campesinos sensed that the vigilance capacities of state authority had declined

380
See James Scott, “Foreward” in Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms, ix
381
AGN: Fomento, Bosques, 72, 40, “Quevedo to Dirrección General de
Agricultura,” August 5, 1911.

204
precipitously and thus began to use the woods as they had prior to Forestry

Department interventions.

Yet armed forest guards continued to roam the Ajusco, and beginning in

1911, they battled “bandits and hordes” that had appeared in the area. Quevedo,

who frequently called for more arms for his seven small brigades of nearly a dozen

people each in Milpa Alta, Xochimilco, Cuajimalpa, Coyoacán, and Topilejo,

proudly proclaimed that the guards not only guided federal troops but were also

“fearless” fighters, with “a good shot.” 382 It is possible that the threat banditry

posed to public order served Quevedo well in his attempt to gain more financial

and military support for his department and its program, yet the vacuum of power

in the Valley’s forests was palpable. The Zapatistas, who made their presence felt

in the Valley in the spring of 1912, or perhaps other bands branded Zapatistas by

forestry officials, often attacked monteros (forest guards) as government agents,

and almost certainly, as upholders of anti-campesino regulations. Rather than

effectively enforcing their Department’s code, they were busy chasing, fighting, or

fleeing Zapatistas

Changing conservation policy during the early years of revolution reflected

the travails of the Department’s surveillance. By the summer of 1913, when

Huerta faced stiff resistance from a loose alliance of revolutionary groups—

382
AGN: Fomento, Bosques, 13, 18, “Quevedo to Secretary of State,” n/d.
Throughout his career Quevedo believed that guards should be armed to protect
the forests by violent means if necessary. The revolution allowed him to demand
more rifles to reach his goal. See Christopher Boyer, “Revolución y paternalismo
ecológico.” Miguel Ángel de Quevedo y la política forestal en México, 1926-
1940” Historia Mexicana 225 (2007), 102-03; and AGN: LCR 432/806.

205
including the Zapatistas pounding on the doors of the capital—forestry officials

backed off hard-line regulations that banned zacatón root extraction and

handicapped other local practices. In exchange for local participation in

conservation and reforestation works, they permitted those campesinos to extract

zacatón root and a host of other forest products under the watchful eye of the

department.383 The department followed a two-pronged attack against

revolutionaries: on the one hand, armed guards familiar with the mountainous and

forested terrain aided federal troops, and, on the other, it devised new forestry

policies that sought to both alleviate some of the discontent among local villagers

and bond them to the department’s conservation ethic. The 1910 ban on zacatón

root morphed into, by 1913, a fight against the monopolization of the illegal trade

by Casto de la Fuente Parras. Officials extended permits to individuals who could

certify “their good conduct, place of birth, and longevity in that place” (read: not

from the Zapatista army of Morelos) for a small monthly fee.384 Forestry official

Luis Corral viewed Fuente Parras’ old monopoly with contempt, as “in addition to

damaging he interests of the indigenous people, it precluded (evitaba) reasonable

and important contributions to the Treasury.”385 Corral certainly exaggerated the

importance of the 30 centavos fee to the government, and his interest in indigenous

383
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, Gobierno del Distrito, “Dictamen” in Diario Oficial,
July 17, 1913.
384
AGN: Fomento Bosques 77, 1, “Corral to Manuel Palafox” January 29, 1913.
Palafox, not to be confused with the Zapatista advisor, had sought permission to
control the trade in zacatón root under the guise that he would deter support for
zapatismo by raising local living standards and preventing money obtained in the
trade from reaching Zapatista forces.
385
AGN: Fomento Bosques, 77, 1, “Corral to Quevedo,” June 7, 1913.

206
production lay not in protecting their interests per se, but rather in controlling the

people by controlling the forests that surrounded them. The Forestry Department,

in effect, sought its own monopolization, based on a conservationist ethic, which

several officials claimed the indigenes were steadily adopting. One went so far as

to say that villagers were not changing their ways by pressure “but by convincing

and acceptance.”386 Whether or not this official believed what he wrote, it was

much more probable that villagers saw some benefits in abiding by the more

tolerant forestry policies and spoke the language of conservation to advance their

own aims. Some campesinos may have requested permits while simultaneously

utilizing forest resources covertly. Needless to say, the local poor, at one time

dispossessed of forests or punished for their use of it, discovered a rejuvenated

economy in making charcoal, selling wood, and cutting zacatón.387

The revolutionary moment provided an opportunity for villagers in the

southern slopes of the Valley to upset the preexisting economic order as well.

Peasant revolutionaries occupied haciendas la Escalera and la Cañada, as well as a

number of other ranchos (mid-sized rural properties). Occupation signified access

to previously private forests and water. Xochimilcans, for example, re-established

control of the Ciénega Grande and Chica (Big and Small Swamp), Chalquenses

occupied the vast Noriega hacienda, and the peasants of Tláhuac appropriated the

San Andres pond. Whereas the nineteenth century was marked by dispossession of

386
AGN: Fomento Bosques, 77, 1, “Chief of the Second Section to Quevedo,”
June 13, 1913.
387
AGN: Fomento, Bosques 77, 1, “Datos para el mensaje presidencial” August 5,
1914

207
key water resources, during the revolution communities in and around Xochimilco

expanded their subsistence economies by building new chinampa plots, planting

fields, as well as by stealing livestock and abandoned machinery.

Zapatistas’ occupation and sabotaging of the Xochimilco water works

represented the environmental citizenship that had emerged, where rights were

formed out of a mix of traditional ownership, usufruct rights and revolutionary

conjuncture. Besides serving Zapata’s new military strategy to show the

weaknesses of Carranza’s forces over the capital’s hinterlands, sabotage had a

special significance: it attacked the exclusive character of the urban sanitary

ideal.388 The act of sabotage occurred during the bloodiest period of the war.

Forces under the command of Pablo González, put in charge of destroying

zapatismo, swept through Xochimilco and the Ajusco, leveling entire villages.

Locals either fled to Mexico City or joined up with the Zapatistas as they

themselves retreated southward.389 Upon their return during the following years of

relative peace, many found their fields and homes destroyed.390

The civil war crushed the rural poor of the southern Federal District,

regardless of their political affiliation. The environmental imaginaries that

accompanied local sovereignty also suffered, but remained latent under the ashes

388
For symbolic acts of violence in rural resistance, see Ranajit Guha, Elementary
Acts of Peasant Resistance in Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983).
389
Juan Manuel Pérez Zevallos, Xochimilco Ayer. Vol. 2 (Mexico City: Instituto
Mora, 2002): 93-4; and Fernando Horcasitas.
390
Pérez Zevallos, 95.

208
of battle to be revitalized through the official channels of the postrevolutionary

state.

Part II: The Revolutionary Ajusco

While the lava of the Ajusco volcano had turned to rock long ago, its

slopes and the surrounding mountains became hotbeds of conflict over woodlands.

A host of communities attempted to recover lost communal property, both for

farming and forestry, through the government’s land reform. Communities

fortunate to receive parcels through the cumbersome agrarian bureaucracy found

most of the land unfit for farming. Hard-won woodlands thus remained a critical

dimension of local economies, which clashed with revived conservation policies

beginning in the 1920s. Post-revolutionary conservation differed markedly from

its former instantiation, however, and the ejido forest cooperative, an organization

designed to teach rational forest utilization to the local poor, embodied the new

tendency. From the outset, the cooperatives were beset with organizational

limitations, threatening elite conservation objectives and reproducing social

hierarchies that alienated the local poor from forest uses. Moreover, post-

revolutionary conservation involved more than just the cooperatives; the creation

of a slew of national parks under Cárdenas further impeded woodlands economies.

Despite often-grandiose rhetoric, Cárdenas did not represent a fundamental break

from the restrictive forestry policies that the Calles administration had pursued.

The steady decline of the cooperatives paralleled both the transition to gas and oil

209
as energy sources and a pact with the Loreto and Peña Pobre paper mill to foster

large-scale, “rational” forest extraction.

Agrarian Reform in the Ajusco

Governing elites established land reform as a central piece of their project

to reconstruct the state through the conciliation of agrarian antagonisms. The

ejido, the colonial term designating the pasture lands granted by the Crown,

became the symbol of the reform, and what villages strove to obtain. Although the

right to land, forests, and water was etched in the Constitution of 1917, villagers

often faced an uphill climb, maneuvering between recalcitrant landowners, a

cumbersome bureaucracy, and a new government leery of radical redistribution.391

In the late 1910s, many communities around the Ajusco requested lands

from the Constitutionalist government, but in contrast to most of the country, their

requests for land tended to be granted. In fact, all the villages of the Valley of

Mexico found themselves in favorable circumstances for obtaining ejido grants.

The new government more liberally granted land in order to break up the

haciendas of reactionary landowners, who were in a position to threaten the

fledgling government, and to establish a social basis of support in the strategically

important and tumultuous hinterlands.392 As the chart indicates, a number of

391
For a great portrait of the confusion that beset the early agrarian reform, see
Timothy Henderson, The Worm in the Wheat: Rosalie Evans and Agrarian
Struggle in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of Mexico, 1906-1927 (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1998).
392
See Soledad Cruz Rodríguez, 160-181.

210
communities that depended on forest utilization as a principal economic activity

received land parcels between 1918 and 1925, but I will describe two cases that

highlight woodland disputes and transition nicely into an examination of the

cooperatives.

Year
Ejido Created Hectares
San Bartolo Ameyalco 1923 78
San Mateo Tlaltenango 1922 250
San Jerónimo Aculco 1923 201
Magdalena Contreras 1923 135
San Bernabé Ocotepec 1924 383
San Nicolás Totolapan 1924 1,300
San Mateo Tlaltenango (extension) 1936 27
San Jerónimo Aculco (extension) 1938 205
San Nicolás Totolapan (extension) 1938 1,405
San Jerónimo Miacatlan 1930 60
San Francisco Tecoxpa 1930 82
Santa Ana Tlacotengo 1930 350
San Andrés Totoltepec 1930 348
Topilejo 1936 1,374
San Andrés Totoltepec (extension) 1939 145

Fig. 6—Forest-oriented Ejidos Created in the Ajusco. Compiled by author.

San Bernabé Ocotepec was nestled on the slopes of the Desierto’s peaks

between the pueblos of San Bartolo, Magdalena, and San Jerónimo. As was the

case for many campesinos of the Valley of Mexico, the villagers of Ocotepec

rarely relied solely on farming. According to the 1923 agrarian census, only fifty-

three of 179 considered themselves farmers. Seventy-one worked as laborers in

the Hacienda Cañada, and nineteen traveled daily to one of the many textile

211
factories alongside the Magdalena River.393 Unfortunately, the census does not

provide a picture of how many relied on the forest as a primary or secondary

economic activity, but based on other community economies and the centrality of

woodlands in the agrarian dispute, one might presume that both hacienda peons

and farmers engaged in these activities.

Amid the collapse of hacienda authority and the agrarian reform opening,

villagers submitted a petition for land restitution. After a several-year wait typical

of the period, agrarian officials informed the petitioners that the signature proving

their ownership of the disputed land was apocryphal. Another petition followed,

this one aimed at a land grant, a minute yet important distinction that villagers

across the country exploited to gain lands. As the petition passed through the

complicated procedures of the labyrinthine agrarian bureaucracy, Medina defended

his lands from what he called a rural proletariat that rarely engaged in agriculture.

Foreseeing an imminent decision in favor of the campesinos, Medina sold his

hacienda for 45,000 pesos. The new ownership rested its own defense, in part, on

forest utilization. They argued that the Cerro de Judío, site of a fragile and sloped

woodlands, had remained intact due to the hacienda’s careful management and

would be destroyed if placed in the hands of the irrational campesinos.394 Neither

this line of argument nor Medina’s held sway for agrarian authorities, and Obregón

393
The peons had occupied the woods, farmland, and livestock of the abandoned
Hacienda Cañada, owned by Francisco Medina. Jorge Durand, La ciudad invade al
ejido: proletarización, urbanización y lucha política en el Cerro de Judío, D.F
(Mexico City: CIESAS, 1983), 45-46.
394
Ibid., 47.

212
confirmed a parcel grant of 383 hectares expropriated from the hacienda.395 For

the 179 people eligible to receive land, the average plot fell well under two

hectares, a dismal amount to restore agricultural subsistence, especially given the

poor conditions of the land. Approximately one-third of the land grant was

forested and included the Cerro de Judío that the hacienda owners defended.

These woodlands, combined with the 373 hectares of pre-existing communal

woodlands and the mostly sterile farmland, ensured that forest use remained a

critical aspect of the village economy.396

San Nicolas Totolapan, situated between the Desierto de Los Leones

(declared Mexico’s first National Park in 1917) and the Ajusco peek, gained the

largest parcel of any forest community. The process was by no measure smooth,

however, and the arguments for and against redistribution were inseparable from

ideas about proper forest management. In an early petition for land, the president

of the pueblo’s resident association, Francisco Nava sought to convince officials

from the Local Agrarian Commission that the Teresa family, owners of the

Hacienda Eslava, were carrying out “a truly unbridled exploitation of the trees that

cover the mountainous and thus inclined terrain…causing (determinando) the

loosening of the soils (tierras vegetales) that will be swept away as soon as the

first rains arrive…with adverse effects on the lands at the bottom of the Valley of

395
Ibid., 47. San Bartolo and La Magdalena were also included in the resolution,
receiving 77 and 135 hectares respectively.
396
Ibid., 53-5.

213
Mexico.”397 Numerous other missives to agrarian and forestry officials noted the

damage that illegal cutting wrought on the climatic and hygienic conditions of the

Mexican capital. The Forestry Department sent guards to halt the practice that a

hacienda peon was carrying out. Although Nava demonstrated his knowledge of

conservation, he likely employed the script to condemn the hacienda owners in the

eyes of government officials rather than for any principled stand for forest

protection or urban hygiene. In fact, a later report issued by the Ministry of

Agriculture discovered that villagers had been extracting forest products from

hacienda property while their leader condemned the illegal activities of

ownership.398 As many other rural subalterns did, Nava walked the tightrope

between two political orders: one urban-centric and exclusionary and the other

revolutionary and more inclusive. Despite efforts to link the hacienda to the

degradation of the environment and thus the nation’s capital below, agrarian

authorities informed the inhabitants that their petition had been denied by virtue of

false documentation.399

Yet, the dispute over the mountainous terrain continued, and the Teresa

family, perhaps sensing the probability of losing a large chunk of land, resorted to

the same tactic of linking the community to illegal forest extraction. The villagers,

the son of the hacienda owner wrote, “carry out an absolute cutting (tala) of Eslava

397
AGA: 23/937, bundle 5, “Nava to Local Agrarian Commission,” January 15,
1921.
398
AGA: 23/937, bundle 17, “Memorandum,” May 31, 1922.
399
AGA: 23/937, bundle 5, “Report of Paleographic Department,” December 6,
1921.

214
without the forestry officials bothering them in the least.” The Teresas appealed to

the Forest Department to aid the hacienda in becoming “a model of scientific

forestry.”400 After a provisional grant and its subsequent reversal in 1923,

Totolapan finally receive an official grant confirmed by presidential resolution.

The parcel totaled 1300 hectares distributed among 340 eligible inhabitants. 401

Similar to the case of San Bernabé, Totolapan’s land was also of poor quality, and

inclined woods of oak, pine, and other conifers composed 1,100 hectares. By

virtue of the size of the community and its abundant forests, the cooperative that

ejidatarios established became one of the more active in the Valley.

Revolutionary Conservation

The same article of the 1917 Constitution that favored campesino access to

the nation’s woodlands also ensured the continuation of Porfirian conservation

policies. Article 27 stated that the nation would always hold the right “to regulate

the utilization of natural resources which are susceptible of appropriation, in order

to conserve them and to ensure a more equitable distribution of public

wealth…and necessary measures will be taken to …prevent the destruction of

400
AGA: 23/937, bundle 17, “Fernando de Teresa Jr. to Ministry of Agriculture
and Development,” August 29, 1922.
401
Ibid., “Presidential Resolution,” April 3, 1924; and Martha Schteingart,
“Expansión urbana, conflictos sociales y detorio ambiental en la ciudad de
México” Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos 2, 3 (1987): 460. After the grant,
Eslava consisted of 101 hectares of farmland and 1,300 hectares of mountainous
forest.

215
natural resources”402 The constitution set up an irresolvable contradiction between

the redistribution of natural wealth and its conservation, with immense

consequences around the Ajusco.

Mexico’s premier forest protector, Quevedo, founded the Mexican Forestry

Society in 1921, and the first issue of the organization’s magazine, México

Forestal, soon followed.403 Quevedo’s vision continued to be influential among

certain sectors of the elite, especially agronomists and hydraulic engineers. The

cadre of scientists continued to see the “primitive”, “uncultured” peasantry—

generally conceived as a homogenous social group—as the chief culprits of forest

devastation.404 Yet Quevedo and the Forestry Society were compelled to frame

forest protection within the language of post-revolutionary, modernizing Mexico.

At the same time that they shunned the agrarian reform for conceding campesinos

too much control over forests, they saw the imperative to instill scientific

management in the new holders of woodlands by regulating and surveilling the

production and transportation of forest products.405 That is, they sought to include

forest communities in developmental goals, under the tutelage of the Forest

Department.

402
http://www.ilstu.edu/class/hist263/docs/1917const.html (Accessed December,
2009).
403
Simonian, 81; and Boyer, “Revolución y paternalismo,” 104.
404
This being said, more blame was put on large commercial interests after the
revolution.
405
See Roque Martínez, “Cooperativas Ejidales. Determinación de Zonas
Forestales y Agrícolas. Reglamentación del pastoreo” México Forestal 8, 4 (April,
1930): 67-9; and Boyer, “Revolución y paternalismo,” 105-11. Boyer has called
this modernizing aim “ecological paternalism.”

216
 Support for forest conservation led Obregón to back the drafting of the

nation’s first Forestry Law, eventually promulgated by Calles in 1926. The law

regulated forest utilization on all private lands (before this was only done within

the Federal District), mandated the creation of a forestry service (Dirrección

Forestal y de Caza y Pesca), restricted cutting near watersheds and urban areas,

and promoted woodlands restoration and the creation of reserves.406 The law also

mandated the creation of ejido cooperatives to govern woodlands utilization in

agrarian communities. As historian Chris Boyer has noted, commercial interests,

unlike communities, were not required to form organizations under the state’s

watchful eye. The rural poor had to jump a number of bureaucratic hurdles in

order to obtain permission for very specific practices such as the fabrication of

charcoal, the cutting of timber for market, and even for the removal of dead wood

for domestic uses.407

In a fashion similar to the Forestry Department’s plan to regulate zacatón

root in the Valley of Mexico in the 1910s, the authors of the law intended to

remove the exploitative contractors and middlemen from forest economies so as to

directly benefit the producers of wood products.408 The normally elitist Quevedo

at one point went so far as to reference Marx, claiming that cooperatives would

406
Simonian, 82-3.
407
Boyer, “Revolución y paternalismo,” 114-15.
408
Boyer, 114; and Jesús Vázquez y Vázquez, La legislación forestal desde el
punto de vista social (Mexico City: UNAM, 1936), 30-33.

217
eliminate the ‘struggle between capitalist and worker.’409 Quevedo’s words, no

doubt, more than a true testament to his personal beliefs, reflected the climate of

popular reform in post-revolutionary Mexico. The cooperative, a unique

combination of agrarian justice and long-standing forest protection ideas, became

the political glue that tenuously and temporarily joined proponents of land reform

with woodland advocates.410 Yet, because of widely recognized beliefs of the

importance of the Valley’s forests and hydraulic system, forest preservation

typically held sway.

Urban Hygiene in the Woods

The mountainous slopes of the southern Basin contained all the ingredients

for the perfect cocktail of woodlands dispute. First, although the forested land had

already undergone significant deforestation over the centuries, the “degradation

narrative” that inhered in conservationism tended to exaggerate both forest

destruction and its consequences.411 Mexican scientists as well as members of the

general public fixated on their own period as being the most environmentally

409
Boletín del Departamento Forestal y de Caza y Pesca, (April-August, 1937),
129-30.
410
The British Raj organized forest cooperatives in India to promote local
conservation measures during the 1920s as well, but social specificities set the two
national experiences apart. See Arun Agrawal, Environmentality: Technologies of
Government and the Making of Modern Subjects (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005).
411
For an examination of this narrative with respect to US forest management, see
Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden
History of American Conservation (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001).

218
destructive, the time in which crisis would inevitably turn to calamity if no action

was taken. The rhetoric of calamity was acute in the Valley of Mexico by virtue of

the fact that many urbanites perceived Mexico City’s future as intricately woven

into the fate of its surrounding forests. Without forests, the city would lack water,

urban inhabitants would lack leisurely escapes to nature, the climate of the Valley

would deteriorate, and desertification would result, exacerbating already extant

dust storms.412 Second, though campesinos generally utilized forests as a

secondary activity, the agrarian reform considerably altered the socio-spatial

relations of the area, setting up an explosive situation that pitted the hygiene of

Mexico’s most populous and important city against revitalized rural economies.

Many of Mexico’s first forest cooperatives, not surprisingly, were

organized around the mountains of Desierto and the Ajusco. The cooperative took

on a populist if ultimately paternalistic form, which sought to guide campesinos

toward more rational forest management. Yet, the special importance of the

Valley’s forests circumscribed revolutionary conservation more so than in many

other Mexican woodlands.

By the beginning of 1929, campesinos had organized forest cooperatives

in San Nicolas Totolapan, Magdalena Contreras, San Bartolo Ameyalco, San

Salvador Cuatenco, San Mateo Tlaltenango, and San Lorenzo Acopilco. Together,

412
For fascinating examples in the press, see, “Con la destrucción de los bosques
la Nación se está hundiendo un puñal en el pecho, ”El Demócrata, June 7, 1923;
“Es inexplicable la morosidad de la camara de diputados para aprobar la ley
forestal,” El Demócrata, June 2, 1923; and “Un desierto como el sahara con sus
arenas candentes y sus espejismos, pero sin oasis, se extiende a las puertas de la
capital,” El Demócrata, June 4, 1923.

219
they formed the Federation of Forest Cooperatives, under the leadership of Miguel

Santibañez.413 In Totolapan, where 400 hectares of woods fell under ejido control,

the stated objective of the cooperative was to direct the “irrational and poorly

guided” campesinos in their exploitation of forest products and “free members

from speculative practices, intermediaries, and monopolizers.”414 Forestry officials

divided exploitable woodlands into zones in order to facilitate both surveillance

and management. Members of the cooperative, upon its official founding, sought

permissions (guías) for the exploitation and transportation of 10,000 vigas and

30,000 rajas.415

From the outset, forestry officials rarely granted permissions to exploit

living trees in the Valley, opting instead to allow campesinos to extract only dead

wood. In this way, by having locals remove fire-nourishing material, forestry

authorities maintained the “order” and “cleanliness” of woodlands. While dead

wood held value, especially in the making of charcoal, such draconian restrictions

induced the local poor to engage in illicit activities—outside the direction of

forestry officials—such as cutting without permission or exploiting areas marked

as reserves. Adeptness and some luck allowed villagers to escape the vigilance of

forest guards and ejidal inspectors. Others, like two campesinos from Totolapan

who claimed to be unfamiliar with the procedures for obtaining permission, did not

413
AGN: SARH, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 2, October 16, 1929.
414
Ibid., “Extraction Plan,” July 10, 1929; and “Statutes of the ejido forest
cooperative of San Nicolas Totolapan,” June 12, 1929.
415
Ibid., “Extraction Plan,” June 10, 1929 and June 19, 1929.

220
escape.416 Once caught, locals were treated as criminals, charged, and in cases of

inability to pay, potentially jailed.417 The dialectic of restrictive forestry

regulations and illicit campesino uses further reinforced the notion that the rural

poor was irrational, in dire need of the very paternalistic control of resources that

led to their “irrationality” in the first place. Thus, when officials caught

cooperative members cutting in a way they disagreed with, their permissions, and

sometimes those of the entire cooperative were eliminated.418 In an extreme case,

agent Luis Macias advised the Forestry Service to suspend all permissions in the

southern Valley until the vigilance necessary to combat ongoing illegal cutting

could be established.419

Gaining permissions to utilize forest products and then transport them was

a bureaucratic nightmare. Permissions lasted a month, and forestry agents delayed

responses.420 In their requests, villagers generally cited their poor economic

conditions, the importance of forests to their livelihoods, and on occasion declared

their support for government’s reforestation and forest protection objectives.

Adopting the hegemonic discourse of conservation, the cooperativists of

416
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 4, “Report of Inspector
Miguel Angel Delgado,” February 23, 1936.
417
To be sure, the procedures to jail an offender in the case of non-payment of
fines was long and tedious, resulting in many releases from custody without
punishment.
418
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 2, July 4, 1929.
419
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal Box 307, Volume 1, “Report of Luis Macias,”
December 2, 1930.
420
See, for example, the various petitions by villagers to exploit dead wood in
Desierto. AGN: LCR 501.2/19.

221
Magdalena, for example, expressed their desire to aid in government reforestation

and asked permission to “clean” the forests of all dead wood.421

The difficulty of forest utilization under the cooperative system continued

from the point of production to the point of distribution, where the objective of

curbing monopolies was put to the test. While the Forest Department’s policy and

the constitutions of each cooperative forbade the participation of outsiders in the

production or transportation of forest products, the absence of transport options

empowered railroad company middlemen to impose derisory pricing. In 1929, all

the cooperatives complained to authorities that Enrique Valencia, chief of the

Contreras station, monopolized the transport of their products.422 Valencia

disappeared from the historical record at this point, but the president of the

confederation, Santibañez replaced him as the source of anger. Margarito Ávila,

president of the Magdalena cooperative, accused Santibañez of unfair pricing at

the train station. According to the angry letter, the federation president owed

$1,705 pesos, the remainder of $13,076 pesos worth of recent cooperative

products.423 The cooperative members’ plea to allow them to sell their products

“to whom will pay us the most” and to disassociate themselves from the

Federation fell on deaf ears, at least for the moment. The cooperatives held

421
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 307, Volume 1, September 21, 1931; and
September 28, 31.
422
See AGN, SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 2, “Report on Conditions
of the Community,” August 5, 1929; and Ibid., “Worker Petition,” July 14, 1929.
423
AGN: SARH, Política Forestal, Box 307, Voume 1, “Ávila to Forestry
Service,” February 28, 1930; and Ibid., “Members of Cooperative to Central
Department Forestry Delegation,” April 23, 1930.

222
breaking the monopoly a top priority, which became a possibility as product sales

boosted budgets. One official, reporting on the state of the cooperative in

Totolapan in 1932, informed his superiors that members were now transporting

their products using Chevrolet trucks.424 The historical record, unfortunately, does

not reveal how widespread autonomous transport methods became in the Valley of

Mexico, but the absence of monopoly complaints after 1931 suggests that many

cooperatives were able to sidestep the middlemen.425

While cooperative leaders struggled to eliminate monopolies at the point of

delivery, they increasingly dominated the forest economy inside their own

communities. Internalizing official policy, they established their own surveillance

systems and cracked down on activities independent of the organization.

Memberships soared; in Totolapan, the cooperative numbered 81 in 1935. This is

not to say that illicit forest uses disappeared—on occasion, even cooperative

leaders negotiated with inspectors to carry out illegal operations—but that in

taking advantage of official sanction, the cooperatives established new hierarchies

within their communities.426 Given the high stakes of controlling the cooperatives,

they often became loci of fierce conflicts between community members. Jesús

Nava, relative of the earlier agrarian leader Francisco Nava, Prisciliano Mendoza,

424
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 3, “Report,” October, 1932.
425
The final complaint against Santibañez is from June 1931.
426
See the example of bribery that allowed some villagers to carry out illegal
operations in the Ajusco National Park in 1938. AGN: SARH, Política Forestal
Box 1430, Bundle 2, “Augustín Castro to Quevedo,” June 22, 1938. Castro wrote:
“Every time they wanted to remove wood without permission or make charcoal,
they would give a reward (gratificación) to the inspector who would let them do
whatever they wanted.”

223
and Román González battled for control over the Totolapan cooperative during the

late 1920s and 1930s. Mendoza and Nava’s failed attempt to take over the

cooperative resulted in the cancellation of their guías in 1929. Three years later,

Mendoza exploited an official visit by a forest inspector. When the inspector

discovered unauthorized cutting, Mendoza informed him that Nava and another

community member were to blame. That the breach occurred near an important

spring inhabitants planned to utilize for drinking water rendered it even graver.427

The inspector recommended that the culprits be punished “according to the

forestry law.” Community power became embedded in nature and government

environmental policies.

If we recall that inhabitants of Ajusco communities sustained themselves

through a variety of economic activities, it should come as no surprise that not

everyone supported the forest cooperatives. A missive from two-dozen factory

workers decried the “immoderate cutting” that the cooperatives sanctioned. They

feared a reduction in water sources upon which their own communities as well as

the Magdalena River factories “the support of thousands of workers” depended.428

Other residents in Magdalena, much like the Totolapan inspector, petitioned to

curtail over-exploitation, generally citing government plans to supply pueblos

drinking water from forest springs.429 Factory workers and other inhabitants

427
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 3 “Report from Inspector,”
November 7, 1932.
428
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 2, “Workers to Minister of
Agriculture and Development,” July 14, 1929.
429
AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Caja 307, Volume 1, various documents.

224
reliant on non-forest means of subsistence looked askance upon the cooperatives,

which, in their eyes, depleted precious water resources. In a sense, they adopted

the same rhetoric as urban-based and elite conservationists who criticized

“irrational” forest use. The rural populace gave diverse, often contrasting,

meanings to uses of the natural world, highlighting social divisions.

Since both the agrarian reform and the forest cooperatives had reached the

forested slopes of the Valley during the 1920s, Cardenismo did not fundamentally

alter the ongoing dynamic of revolutionary conservation in the area under study. 430

By promoting both national park creation through the new autonomous Forestry

Department and agrarian justice, however, Cárdenas did fuel the fires of dispute in

the woodlands surrounding the city.

Cárdenas, as governor of Michoacán, had taken a keen interest in

conservation, and upon taking power of the nation, he invited Quevedo to serve as

head of an autonomous Forestry, Fish and Game Department. Quevedo eventually

agreed, dawning Mexico’s golden age of revolutionary conservation, which aimed

for the “consolidation and organization of campesinos for the better utilization of

the country’s natural resources.”431 Yet, exclusion inhered in conservation as elite

430
Elsewhere, of course, the mid 1930s were the halcyon days of the land reform,
and forest cooperatives proliferated as well. See Christopher Boyer, “Contested
Terrain: Forestry Regimes and Community Responses in Northeastern Michoacán,
1940-2000” in The Community-Managed Forests of Mexico: The Struggle for
Equity and Sustainability Edited by David Barton Bray, Leticia Merino-Pérez and
Deborah Barry (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 30-2.
431
AGN: LCR 502/2 “Considerados sobre el Departamento Forestal por Edmundo
Bournet,” June 6, 1936

225
notions of campesino “irrationality” and the essentiality of forests to important

hydraulic systems persisted.

Both the Forestry Law and the six-year plan authorized the creation of

national parks, and Cárdenas created thirty-one of them over his term—two had

existed previously. Eight of these parks were located either within the Basin’s

walls or along the mountains that formed it. Some, such as Tepeyac, Insurgente

Miguel Hidalgo, and Molino de Flores de Netzahualcóyotl, were designed

primarily as landmarks of cultural patrimony, but others served specific urban

environmental purposes.432

Founded in 1936, the Ajusco National Park exemplified the park creation

philosophy of Cárdenas and the Forestry Department.433 Officials considered The

Ajusco (which in Náhuatl means “where the waters gush”):

one of the most marvelous and significant ranges because of its physical
contrasts and its immediate proximity to the most populated centers of the
Republic, where it is important at all costs to protect its soils against
degradation, maintaining its forests in good state and its meadows of
beautiful contrast as a guarantee of good climate and drinking water to the
capital of the Republic and other towns of the Federal District.434

The Forestry Department exempted populated areas and cultivated land at less than

an 8% incline from expropriation. Indeed, park creation did not approximate the

same level of exclusion and repression that some scholars have studied both in

432
In cases such as Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl, Ajusco, and Tepeyac, support of
the national patrimony and the general stewardship of the Valley’s environment
went hand in hand in their creation.
433
In 1932, the Ajusco was declared a forest reserve, outlawing ranching and
commercial forestry. See AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 1430, Bundle 1,
“Dictamen Forestal,” March, 1932.
434
Diario Oficial, September 23, 1936

226
national and colonial contexts where parks served, above all else, to protect

“wilderness” and preserve nature.435

In post-revolutionary Mexico, forestry officials nominally supported

preexisting farming and grazing activities.436 They also generally permitted the

collection of fallen wood but rejected claims on live trees. Still, communities

found permits hard to come by in both the Ajusco and Desierto de los Leones,

critical suppliers of drinking water to the city and surrounding populations. One

hundred campesinos from a variety of communities surrounding the Desierto

requested a renewal of their expired permits to exploit fallen wood in the park,

claiming that they “lacked in the absolute other means of survival” and that their

labor would not threaten government reforestation efforts.437 Officials generally

renewed permissions, often with the reasoning that the revolutionary government

should aid “the needy classes,” but another round of requests followed each

expiration date. Because the forestry department did not regularly grant

permissions, campesinos took advantage of weak vigilance in the national parks,

much as they did within their own communal or ejidal forests. The forest

employee Gustavo Martinez keenly observed that “experience has shown us that

435
See Jacoby; Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, The Fissured Land: An
Ecological History of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in
India’s Central Provinces, 1860-1914 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); and
Roderick P. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and
Nature Preservation in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
436
For a discussion of community land uses in national parks, see Wakild,
“Resources, Communities.”
437
AGN: LCR 501.2/19: “Petition to Cárdenas,” January 29, 1935.

227
far from obtaining conservation of the forest stands, [the regulations] have

fomented a spirit of rebellion” in the Ajusco National Park. “It is illogical to

assume,” he added, “that they are going to respect dispositions that go against their

right to survival.”438

Year
National Park Founded Hectares
Desierto de los Leones 1917 1867
Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl 1935 25,679
Cumbres de Ajusco 1936 920
Insurgente Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla 1936 1750
El Tepeyac 1937 302
Molino de Flores de Netzahualcóyotl 1937 55
Los Remedios 1938 400
Cerro de la Estrella 1938 1100

Fig. 7—National Parks in the Valley of Mexico, 1917-1940. Adopted from

Simonian.

Residents of the capital often expressed their disgust for campesino forest

uses in the parks, guardians of the hydrological system and crucial sites of tourism.

In one interesting case, the Excursionist Club, located on Madero Street in

downtown Mexico City, pleaded with the Department to revoke all permissions,

and on another occasion claimed to have caught residents who “do not care about

the forest” cutting on a hillside near Magdalena. The president of the club

explained that he felt compelled to inform the president by “elementary duty of

culture and patriotism.”439 One resident of Coyoacán similarly called upon

Cárdenas to stop illegal deforestation carried out by the Ajusco cooperative that,
438
AGN: SARH, Política Forestal, Box 1430, Bundle 2, “Report by Gustavo
Martínez,” October 2, 1942.
439
AGN: LCR 501.2/19, “Enrique Vergeral to Salvador Guerrero,” April, 1938.

228
she claimed, was bringing in carloads of fuel wood past forest inspections.

Evoking an urbanistic logic, she argued that “the scarcity of Xochimilco water,

climate change and the loss of beautiful places for recreation” were caused by
440
immoderate cutting. Particular visions of and relations to the natural world,

either through production (the case of the rural poor) or consumption (the outdoors

club), forged new socio-spatial hierarchies that simultaneously linked city and

hinterland physically while separating them culturally.441

Cárdenas upheld Quevedo’s insistence that further land reform be banned

from all national parks. Under this policy, The Forestry Department protested the

large ejido extension granted to Totolapan in 1938, but the Agrarian Department

was permitted to complete the grant since the community’s petition had been

processed prior to the presidential decree.442 Other potential reform beneficiaries,

either around the Ajusco or other national parks, were not as fortunate, limiting the

redistributive reach of the agrarian reform around Mexico City. Based on his

preconceptions that campesinos were incapable of being nature’s steward,

Quevedo frequently railed against land grants in the Valley. Río Frio, Zoquiapan,

Ixtláhuacán, and Espiritu Santo in the Tlalnepantla Valley were just a few of the

pueblos that Quevedo feared would expand their forest holdings. He highlighted

440
AGN: LCR 151.3/824: “José Guerrero to Cárdenas,” April 19, 1939.
441
Gerardo Murrillo (Dr. Atl), the famous Mexican muralist, came to the defense
of the campesinos, a rarity in Mexico’s capital. His editorial “Incendio en un
Bosque” explained that forest fires around the Valley were caused not by the rural
poor but by careless hikers and campers that left their fires smoldering. See
“Incendio en un bosque,” El Universal, April 26, 1935.
442
AGA: 937, 11 “Presidential Decree,” April 28, 1937; and 937, 18, January 26,
1938.

229
the case of Espiritu Santo, as the city government had planned to capture nearby

river water to quench the thirst of the growing population. Quevedo beseeched

Cárdenas to reconsider the parcel grant “due to the simple fact that the public

interest supercedes the unilateral interest of the particular community.”443

The rights that communities gained to farm new lands did not carry over

smoothly to recently won forests. Ejido land grants may have been composed of

extensive woodlands, but government policy severely circumscribed their uses.

Conflicting visions of woodlands determined poor peoples’ use rights. The

government, along with segments of the urban wealthy, adhered to a narrow

definition of community forest rights whereas cooperatives and other community

members frequently sought to expand that definition through petitions and

requests. Forest users played by the rules of the official conservation game, but

beyond the gaze of the state and often the cooperatives as well, they advanced their

own conception of rights to the woods. The dynamic of restrictive policy and

variegated community responses did not fundamentally change under Cárdenas.

In fact, if nothing else, vigilance increased under the autonomous Forestry

Department. Revolutionary conservation unraveled in the Valley of Mexico,

overwhelmed by its unresolved contradiction between the rights of the rural poor

and ideas of forest protection rooted in a paternalistic vision of urban modernity.

443
See AGN: LCR 404.1/1698; and for the quote see LCR 545.3/100,
“Memorandum,” February 24, 1937. In fact, beginning in 1934, a large forest
reserve circled like a cordon around the city, but evidently the reserve enjoyed few
legal protections. See Quevedo, “Labor Activa del Departmento Forestal de
Mexico.”

230
Petroleum and Paper Mills

Disputed forests were inextricably linked to urban energy needs. In 1923

Mexico City consumed 15,500 kilograms of fuel wood each month, the equivalent

of about 370 hectares of woodlands in Central Mexico, the source of the city’s

energy.444 Although this area included the rich forests of Mexico State, Morelos,

Hidalgo, and Michoacán, the Mexico City press was most concerned about the

comparatively smaller forests just a few dozen kilometers south of the city center.

In 1913, an estimated 22,000 hectares of forests remained in the Federal District,

but by 1935, this figure had shrunk to 6,000. One newspaper blamed the

precipitous loss of forest mass on charcoal consumption in the city, which it

estimated at 700 tons daily.445 Undoubtedly, charcoal production was an important

campesino economic activity in the Valley, but paper demand and slash-and-burn

agriculture also played significant roles in the decline in forest mass. Mexican

dailies and government officials greatly exaggerated the Valley’s charcoal

economy. According to one estimate from 1926, less than 1% of the charcoal

consumed in the Federal District originated there, and no more than 2% came from

areas of Mexico State within the boundaries of the Valley.446

444
“Estamos acabando con nuestros hermosos bosques,” El Demócrata, June 14,
1923.
445
“Un recurso más de Preservación Forestal,” El Universal, January 2, 1936.
446
This statistic, however, only includes charcoal that was transported by rail, and
it is possible that some campesinos traveled to market by foot, or possibly even by

231
 Government and conservationists stigmatized the manufacture of charcoal,

which required the consumption of a significant amount of wood to maintain the

heat necessary for carbonization, and favored their substitution for petroleum

sources. Petroleum energy, considered a modernizing force for Mexico’s

industrial future, transcended the irresolvable contradiction between urban fuel

needs met by “irrational” forest communities and forest protection.447 Likewise,

by the early 1940s, the Mexican state had handed over unprecedented control of

the Valley’s forests to the Loreto and Peña Pobre and San Rafael paper mills.

Forest conservation thus turned away from its momentary and incomplete populist

intonations represented by the cooperative. The postrevolutionary leadership

decided that modernization would be directed from above rather than from popular

rural economies and their attendant environmental imaginaries.

The growth of the Mexican oil industry paralleled the rise of forest

conservation at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1923, the newspaper El

Demócrata insisted that the only way to protect Mexico’s forests was to make the

transition from wood-based energy to tractolina, a petroleum-based product. The

Obregón government agreed, but a number of intertwined factors discouraged the

change. Oil production was arranged to serve the United States and Europe, and

boat (trajinera) via the National Canal to avoid paying railroad fees. Still, most of
the city’s charcoal came from hundreds of communities in Michoacán, Mexico
State, and Hidalgo that relied on wood as their primary economic activity. See
Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, El problema del carbón en el Distrito Federal
(Mexico City: Mundial, 1928): 13-21.
447
The support of petroleum and petroleum-based products as a domestic fuel also
fostered the environmental devastation of the Gulf coast (forests included), a
subject wonderfully studied by Myrna Santiago in Ecology of Oil.

232
as bad as the infrastructure was for the internal distribution of petroleum, it was

that much better for the distribution of firewood and charcoal. An untold number

of Mexicans produced and distributed these goods, and distributors had organized

a union to represent their interests. Consumers of wood-based fuel in towns and

cities also enjoyed price regulations that kept costs down. The transition thus

required both a shift in social policy and major investments in industrial

infrastructure.

The Forestry Department under Cárdenas considered the elimination of

charcoal production paramount to larger conservation aims. Yet, just as the

Forestry Department clashed head-on with the government’s agrarian reform

program, its attempted suppression of charcoal production sparked enmity from

charcoal producers and distributors. The Totolapan cooperative denounced the

department’s new restriction limiting the number of loads (cargas) its members

could sell, “which makes the subsistence of our families completely impossible.”

The cooperative claimed that their members only used dead wood and thus did not

work against the department’s reforestation program.448 Opposition to the

department also emanated from Cárdenas himself who demanded that the

department desist from threatening local charcoal economies.449 Charcoal

production continued unabated under the protection of Cárdenas’s larger rural

program.

448
AGN: SARH, Política Forestal, Box 265, Volume 3, “Letter to Forestry
Department from Totolapan,” August 13, 1935.
449
See various documents from 1935 in AGN: LCR 500/15.

233
 The election of Ávila Camacho signaled the death knell of both the

carboneros and the Valley’s cooperatives. Yet the seeds of change in forestry

policy were located within the Cárdenas administration, which never

wholeheartedly supported campesino forest economies. The Forestry Department

continued to grant concessions to large timber industries all over Mexico while

cooperatives constantly fought for their piece of the productive pie.450 Ávila

Camacho simply did away with the ambivalence inherent in Cardenismo. Many

proponents of conservation maintained that only large companies could execute

scientific forest management because of the stake they held in sustaining the

natural elements essential to their profits. This logic helped to eliminate an entire

charcoal industry and disempower most of the Valley’s cooperatives.

In the early 1940s, Ávila Camacho banned all cutting in the states

surrounding the city.451 This was nothing new to communities within the Valley

of Mexico who had experienced over a decade of bans on felling trees. But it hit

charcoal producers all over central Mexico, who found their production limited to

fallen wood, and distributors within the city who could sell less. Consumers,

moreover, complained of fuel shortages and often outrageous pricing that they

450
See AGN: LCR 545.2/47 on the forestry law of 1935 and discussions of large-
scale exploitation; and Wakild, “Resources, Communities,” 200. In March, 1938,
Forest Inspector Antonio Sosa informed Quevedo that the Ajusco stands were in a
precarious condition having been exploited by communities and the paper
industry. AGN: SAHR, Política Forestal, Box 1430, Bundle 1, “Sosa to Quevedo,”
March 10, 1938
451
See Diario Oficial, “Agreement that bans the exploitation of forested land in the
Federal District,” June 10, 1941; and AGN: MAC 521/7, “Presidential Accord,”
June 3, 1944.

234
blamed on hording, a common practice involving a host of commodities during the

war years.452 One charcoal tradesman declared the “people cry because of the

charcoal shortage.” Urban community organizations petitioned that the

government send them a number of goods, including charcoal. In December 1941

a riot broke out outside a carbonería (charcoal store) on the corner of Lerma and

Amazonas in Cuauhtémoc (a middle-class neighborhood) after the owners tried to

swindle consumers by selling 800 grams of waterlogged fuel as one kilogram.

Adulteration of charcoal products was not a new phenomenon, but consumer

patience was wearing thin.453 Amid the chaos, a certain Joel Torres, claiming to be

a politician, began distributing all the charcoal in the place to the people (mainly

women) in line, which “won the applause of ‘the lines [of people].’454 The moral

economy of fuel consumption had already been strained due to the shortages, and

the owner’s fraudulent practice caused a total breach.

Fuel shortages in Mexico City paved the way for official support of

petroleum-based energy in the kitchens, restaurants, and on the construction sites

of Mexico’s capital. The National Block of Revolutionary Women and the Central

Women’s League, for example, offered to support the protection of Mexico’s

forests through the sale of tractolina ovens at an economical fee for the “working

452
AGN: MAC 521/7, “Exposition of Causes about the charcoal problem from the
Ministry of National Economy,” n/d, 1941. For a description of the polítical
fallout of speculative business practices during WWII, see Stephen Niblo, Mexico
in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 1999), 124-31.
453
See Espinosa de los Monteros, 13.
454
El Universal, December 18, 1941; and AGN: MAC 521/7, “Women’s
Organizations to Ávila Camacho,” January 12, 1942.

235
class masses.”455 Although the government did not take up this specific project

with the women’s organizations, the government did distribute some of the ovens

to Mexico City residents. Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) began selling the same

or similar stoves for 15 pesos, but while they had some success, the scarcity of

tractolina was much greater than the relative ease with which one could still

purchase charcoal or firewood.456 The transition to petroleum was long and

painful for those who could ill-afford technological updates. Yet, by 1946 the

Union of Charcoal Sellers became the Frente Único de Expendedores de Petroleo,

an indication of the extent of the transition immediately following the War.457

Just as urban sellers had to adjust to the new energy realities, so did

Mexico’s charcoal producers. A Union representing forest producers, a member of

the Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM), denounced the existing forest policy

that punished the charcoal industry, leaving the thousands of workers associated

with the industry jobless. Again, campesinos chose forest protection within the

Valley of Mexico to defend their industry. Union representatives claimed that

their use of oak, which they asserted was more renewable, did not harm the

woodlands. Yet they derided the paper mills’ destruction of most of the less

renewable pine stands around the major volcanoes of Popo, Iztaccíhuatl, and

455
AGN: MAC 521/7, “Women’s Organizations to Ávila Camacho,” January 12,
1942.
456
AGN: MAC 521.5/15, “Julio Madero to Ávila Camacho,” March 23, 1944; and
AGN: MAC 521/7, “Accord to create a commission in charge to foment domestic
use of combustibles,” 1942.
457
The Charcoal Union reported a decrease in sales of charcoal by 50% and
constantly petitioned the government to permit them to sell PEMEX products. See
AGN: MAC 521/7 various documents.

236
Ajusco.458 Regardless of the veracity of their defense, it represented a last stand

against the industrial turn of policy. A sign of the vanishing industry, the union

continually demanded agricultural land and other forms of employment for its

members.459

The divestment from the forest cooperatives in favor of the paper industry

mirrored the industrialization of energy. In 1928, the paper mills Loreto and Peña

Pobre merged under the ownership of Alberto Lenz, a German immigrant who as a

young man in Porfirian Mexico began working on the construction of the San

Rafael mill.460 In 1940, he constructed a new mill that could handle the mass

production of paper needed for an increasingly urbanized population during a time

when imported paper was in short supply.461 Ávila Camacho created a Unidad

Industrial (Industrial Unit) in 1947, which handed over an immense tract of

community and ejido woodlands in the southeastern mountains of the Ajusco and

Desierto to the Loreto and Peña Pobre mill.462 The underlying motive was clear:

campesinos had destroyed the forest stands around the city, and only scientific

forest management spearheaded by the paper industry would save remaining

458
AGN: MAC 521/7, “Executive Committee of the Union of Forest Workers to
Ávila Camacho,” March 30, 1943.
459
Ibid., various documents.
460
Hans Lenz, Historia del papel en México y cosas relacionadas (Mexico City:
Porrua, 1990), 553.
461
Ibid., 650
462
AGN: MAC 404.1/3195, “General Agrarian Committee of Magdalena
Contreras to Alemán,” October 11, 1949.

237
stands and reforest desolate lands.463 From 1947, the paper company had more

complete control of not only its resource base but also the labor necessary to

obtain the raw material. Communities of the sierra, stripped of other commercial

uses of the woodlands, signed contracts with the company to sell wood products

destined to make newspaper, bags, and boxes. The industrialization of woodlands

was a national trend; by 1960 twenty-nine other similar Industrial Forest

Production Units controlled over 1/6 of Mexico’s woodlands. 464 The

government’s support of the paper and oil industries—where industrialization fit

technical resource management like a glove—shattered campesino forest

economies and their attendant environmental imaginaries of community forest

subsistence.

Part III The Waters of Revolution

For a host of urban planners, engineers, conservationists, and other power-

holders, the mountainous woodlands perpetuated a hydrological system upon

which Mexico City’s drinking water depended. But for thousands of campesinos

residing near the springs, the water served not just for drinking and washing but

also composed the very backbone of their economy, contingent upon lakes,

abundant marshes, and a series of interconnected canals. The communities of

Xochimilco, San Gregorio Atlapulco, Tulyehualco, Santa María Nativitas,

463
See “Decreto por el cual se establece una Unidad Industrial de Explotación
Forestal en favor de las Fábricas de Papel de Loreto y Peña Pobre” Diario Oficial,
January 9, 1947.
464
Chris Boyer, “Contested Terrain.”

238
Mixquic, Tláhuac, and others lined Lake Xochimilco and had built their

livelihoods fishing, hunting, and farming the lacustrine environment. While

reduced in proportion over the course of several centuries, Lake Xochimilco

avoided the fate of its counterparts: Chalco and Texcoco. If the water environment

had remained largely intact, this did not mean its resources were adequately

distributed. Seven years of revolutionary violence brought along with the

devastation of livelihoods a political opening, just as it had for forest-oriented

communities above them. The 1917 Constitution catapulted debates over the

ownership and uses of the nation’s water resources into the political limelight.

Communities experienced mixed and varied results across the contested landscape.

Meanwhile, the urbanizing forces unleashed or sharpened during the twentieth

century degraded the lacustrine environment. Simultaneous to land reform and

water nationalization in the Valley, the twin motors of environmental citizenship,

lake and marsh desiccation increased, a result of urban resource needs.

Urbanization and its attendant socio-natural consequences conditioned

revolutionary reform around the lakebed and challenged local means of

subsistence. The intermingling of the urbanizing order and revolutionary

development forged new agro-ecological identities and diverse citizenship

practices that left an indelible mark on Xochimilco’s social and political fabric.

239
Xochimilco’s Agrarian Reform

Land reform assumed a more volatile state around the waterscapes of the

southern Valley of Mexico than the forests of the surrounding mountainsides. At

issue was not conservation, but the immediate utility of that water, in the domain

of competing rural interests and as critical urban commodity. Under the

Constitution and a 1922 presidential resolution, the state took ownership of most

of the Valley’s waters. If earlier federalization decrees had resulted in concessions

favoring landowners and developers, for instance in the cases of Noriega’s Chalco

project and Aureliano Urrutia’s smaller marsh drainage works, postrevolutionary

policy operated under the legal imperative to distribute resources more equitably.

Thus, the nationalization of an essential natural resource encouraged Mexican

communities to press for more control over the environments that guaranteed their

livelihoods, long before the more famous expropriation of oil. As in the forests

above them, a number of communities succeeded in reestablishing control over

their formerly productive environments, but many others gained little or nothing at

all. Here, I use four case studies, Xochimilco, San Gregorio Atlapulco, Tláhuac,

and Santa María Nativitas, to illustrate the variety of struggles that took place as

well as the successes and failures of community political action in sustaining local

economies.

240
 Ejido Year Created Hectares
San Juan Ixtayoapan 1917 406
Mixquic 1918 558
Xochimilco 1918 820
San Gregorio Atlapulco 1922 476
Santiago Zapotitlan 1922 244
Tulyehualco 1923 407
Santa Cruz Xochitepec 1923 60
Tláhuac 1923 1,049
Xochimanca 1924 53

Fig. 8—Ejidos Created Around Xochimilco. Compiled by author.

Composed of sixteen barrios and the town center, Xochimilco had a

population of around 8,000 people at the time of the revolution.465 As the cabecera

of the municipality, the town was not solely an agricultural community—

craftsmen, government functionaries, and merchants also populated it—but

farming and a variety of lake-oriented activities figured prominently. As the

largest and most politically well connected community in the area, some

Xochimilcans expanded their landholdings into the communal property of other

smaller communities. While neighboring communities such as Atlapulco and

Nativitas considered Xochimilco the resident bully, often on par with local

haciendas, its inhabitants had also lost two marshes, Ciénaga Grande and Ciénaga

Chica, to the nearby Hacienda Coapa, and other lands to the Hacienda San Juan de

Díos.466 Local leaders Buenaventura Morales, Julian Urrutia and Facundo

Olivares led the community’s petition to recover all of these lands lost during the

465
AHDF: Ayuntamiento, CSGD, Saneamiento y Higiene, 645, 8, “Sanitary
Inspector to Consejo de Gobierno,” September 4, 1904.
466
Antonio Escobar Ohmstede, Estudios campesinos en el Archivo General
Agrario vol. 3 (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1998).

241
middle of the nineteenth century. Curiously, the generally more conservative

Carranza revoked an earlier negative resolution by the commission. The 1918

grant, one of the earliest partitions in the Valley, included 820 hectares in benefit

of nearly 2000 inhabitants. Most importantly, the parcel included the two marshes,

once bastions of chinampa agriculture that community leaders strove to obtain. As

a strategy to avoid expropriation, the owners of Coapa had sold parcels to local

farmers who had since let water pass to maintain chinampa plots. Yet, the

landowner had employed pumps to drain the remaining swampy lands, and, as

evidenced by the effort to buy pumps, ejido leaders showed little interest in

returning to chinampería on most of the land. In fact, a majority of the ejidos

practiced dry-land farming, a testament to the process of desiccation and perhaps

also changing local agro-ecological visions that shunned chinampería. Not only

did chinampería take a hit, but ejido administrators often broke their own

prescribed rules favoring needier individuals during parcelization. Regardless of

the fairness of distribution, the grant was insufficient in meeting the land and

resource needs of Xochimilcans, who would number 33,000 people by 1940.467

For the largest community in the area, the victory was bittersweet; the ejido plan

marginalized proponents of chinampería and reproduced local social

467
María del Carmen Berdejo Bravo and Héctor Hernandez Silva, “La
Revolución,” in Xochimilco Ayer volume 3, 106.

242
inequalities.468 Charges of corruption and land hording mired the Xochimilco

ejido from its birth through the 1930s.469

On January 22, 1918, the inhabitants of San Gregorio Atlapulco demanded

the return of the San Gregorio swamp that Díaz had granted to Aureliano Urrutia

in 1909 under the rubric of the federalization of Lake Xochimilco. Urrutia went

on to serve as secretary of state under Huerta, and from his position of power

threatened community members who had not relinquished their chinampa plots. In

1912, the revolutionary lawyer and politician, Luis Cabrera, referenced the conflict

over the swamp as an example of illegitimate protest against a small landholder, in

contrast to the legitimate demands against the massive usurpations of Iñigo

Noriega in the Chalco basin. “There is the case of…Aureliano Urrutia of

Xochimilco,” Cabrera wrote, “who must deal with the agitation of some

individuals and some ridiculous local authorities who provoke the people with

claims that his ‘enormous estate’ of 300 hectares is a threat to the sacred promises

proclaimed by the 1910 revolution.”470 According to Cabrera’s loose definition of

small property, community members had no right to oppose Urrutia even if they

had farmed and fished the marshland only two decades prior.

468
This account of the reform in Xochimilco derives from Antonio Escobar
Ohmstede, Estudios campesinos; and AGA 23/897 legajo 1.
469
AGN: LCR 402.4/32, “Barrio San Pedro Xochimilco to Cárdenas,” September
10, 1935.
470
Luis Cabrera, “The Restoration of the Ejido,” in The Mexico Reader ed Gilbert
M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002),
348.

243
 Neither the Federal District government nor the pertinent provisions of the

Constitution that Cabrera helped to author classified Urrutia as a smallholder. The

government’s 1921 resolution nullified Urrutia’s right to the land, leaving its

ownership uncertain. Urrutia defended his property through a productivist rhetoric

that implicitly targeted campesino chinampería. “The only way to improve them,

foment them, and make them give forth their best yield,” Urrutia maintained, “is to

keep them in the power of a single owner who year after year will make new

works and improvements that render them more productive and increase their

value.”471 He claimed to have already made major investments, in which drainage

topped the list, in order to plant a variety of trees.

In June of 1922 Obregón granted 476 hectares to Atlapulco, and much of

the land came from Urrutia’s Rancho de la Luz. This time, water federalization

had worked in favor of local campesinos. The prevalent concern for small

property in post-revolutionary Mexico, however, came back to haunt the

inhabitants of Atlapulco. Following the grant, they struggled to formalize

occupation of their parcels. Over a decade later, the chief engineer of the Agrarian

Organization of the Federal District explained to the Agrarian Commission that

until officials conferred definitive titles, the ejido could not initiate important

drainage works to prevent water from nearby chinampa sites from flooding the

mostly dry land. Some evidence indicates that chinampería continued on some of

the swampier land, but the majority was too dry most of the year to construct

471
AGA: 23/906, Bundle 5, “Urrutia to Agrarian Commission,” April 24, 1922.

244
chinampas. Meanwhile, during the rainy season the land suffered serious flooding,

convincing some ejidatarios to abandon their plots.472

The environmental disputes in Tláhuac, located between Lake Xochimilco

and the then-extinct Lake Chalco, illustrate the changing motives and politics of

water federalization in the post-revolutionary reform period. The community of

884 “jefes de familia” (heads of household) held only 722 hectares, divided into

small parcels, clearly insufficient in spite of the high productivity of its chinampas.

In one petition among many, over 100 inhabitants demanded a sizeable land grant,

and one agrarian engineer recommended a grant of 2,600 hectares—which would

have made it the largest single land grant in the Valley of Mexico both then and

now. Instead, Obregón approved the commission’s 1923 approval of nearly 1,000

hectares of Xico, Noriega’s rich estate, along with seventy-one hectares of the

Tláhuac marsh that had been under federal jurisdiction since the late nineteenth

century. Tláhuac campesinos had won the right to fish the marsh from the

Porfirian government, but there is no evidence indicating that they had been

farming it.473 Under the new constitution, the marsh, located within the ex-Chalco

bed, had become national property, and local campesinos targeted this particular

environment. What is more, in 1926 the ejido received water from the Magdalena

Spring, declared national property in accord with the 1922 decree, to irrigate 666

472
Ibid., “Ricardo Acosta to Chief of the Agrarian Commission,” October 16,
1933.
473
See AGA 23/923, Bundle 2, “Community Petition,” February 18, 1920;
“Engineer to Commission,” July 9, 1923; and “Memorandum by consultative
lawyer,” November 11, 1921.

245
hectares.474 New federal water policies favored Tláhuac, whose ejido

encompassed a productive parcel of Xico’s rich lands as well as a sizeable water

environment where fishing and chinampería could prosper.475

Realizing the political opportunity that water nationalization represented,

Tlahuacans similarly fought for the San Andrés pond. This battle proved more

difficult in the face of its alleged owner, Simón Ruíz Morelos, a magistrate on the

Military Tribunal. About sixty chinamperos from around the edges of the nine-

hectare pond objected to Ruíz Morelos’s efforts to drain it, arguing that as property

of the nation he did not enjoy that right. If not for threats of “taking them to jail if

they sign the petition,” community leaders maintained that other chinamperos in a

similarly desperate situation would have endorsed the letter.476 Another petition

stated that Ruíz was committing “theft of the nation” and enjoined the government

“to reproach an act similar to Noriega’s in the time of Porfirismo.” Another

invoked article 27 and the equitable distribution of resources.477 On the other

hand, about fifty other Tláhuac farmers—not chinamperos—backed Ruíz’s

actions, claiming that draining the pond was a public health necessity and a

474
The nearby ejidos of Mixquic and Tulyehualco also received sizeable portions
of spring water for irrigation needs during the dry season. See AHA: Aguas
Nacionales, 32/408.
475
From the first land grant in the Valley awarded to Ixtapalapa in 1915 until
1937, seventeen communities received various tracts of Hacienda Xico land,
reducing the emblem of Porfirian rural productivity to nearly a small property.
476
AHA: AS, 289, 6936, “Chinamperos to Ministry of Agriculture and
Development,” October 9, 1930.
477
Ibid., “Feliciano Ramirez to Ortiz Rubio,” February 20, 1930; and Ibid.,
“Petition,” October 7, 1931.

246
solution to the salinization of their soils.478 Both sides, one in favor of

chinampería and the other advocating dry-land agriculture, claimed representation

of the entire pueblo. This is an example of the growing division between

proponents of chinampería and those of dry-land agriculture, a theme that will be

explored in greater depth in the subsequent section.

Ruíz centered his defense on the legitimate ownership of the Laguna San

Andrés, confirmed by a Supreme Court decision in 1931, which held that

Zapatistas had formed the pond by breaking dams constructed by Noriega,

indicating that it was not a natural body of water and thus not national property.479

This verdict ran contrary to most government accounts that the pond water

originated in a nearby spring and was connected to a much larger pond within the

Chalco Basin. Such reports generally confirmed that the San Andrés pond must

therefore be considered property of the nation, making Ruíz’s drainage works

illegal without proper authorization.480 The production of knowledge about the

Valley’s nature was often entangled with social disputes over how resources

should be used.

Despite local protests and most government engineers’ and surveyors’

reports backing the chinamperos, Ruíz Morelos was too formidable a foe, even

during the more radical years of the Cardenista reforms. Under Cárdenas, the

chinamperos demanded ownership of the pond bed itself, at that point completely

478
Ibid., “Tláhuac farmers to Ministry of Agriculture,” November 27, 1930.
479
Ibid., 163-171
480
See Ibid., various documents.

247
drained. They accused the “rich, renowned Spaniard [Gachupín]” (Ruíz Morales)

of committing acts of violence against them and called upon the president to return

what belongs to them as he had done for workers in the case of the oil

expropriation.481 In Tláhuac during the late 1930s, the nationalization of water had

become a vehicle to promote popular ownership of a potentially productive

environment, as significant locally as the oil expropriation had been for the

nation’s working class. In post-revolutionary Xochimilco, popular groups

challenged private dominion over productive environments. At times, as in the

case of Ruíz, the state upheld private property rights, but a number of cases around

Xochimilco and Chalco proved that community protests were not in vain.

Campesinos became, in these cases, environmental citizens, entrusted by the

government to use the nation’s water and land in a productive and rational way.

Whereas Xochimilco, Atlapulco, and Tláhuac all gained land, other

communities were left by the wayside. In fact, Santa Maria Nativitas not only

failed to gain a land parcel but also suffered the adverse effects of the Xochimilco

water works earlier than most communities. Their petition was inauspicious, for it

attacked the land grab not of nearby haciendas but of Xochimilcans and the

Xochimilco waterworks. Given that agrarian laws sought the expropriation of

large landholdings and the city’s drinking water system could not easily be

tampered with, the prospects of reform in Nativitas were dim. The biggest

complaint of the community involved the Xochimilco water works, which they

481
AGN: LCR 151.3/833, “List of Petitions,” March 23, 1939.

248
claimed “cut as if it were the Great Wall of China all communication” between the

center of town, local woods and chinampa plots. Even before the works began to

seriously deplete the springs and the surrounding water environments, the

waterworks had threatened the community economy. Nativitas, famous in the city

as the community where Mexico City’s pure and abundant water originated

(community members still referred to “their springs” in missives to officials), was

isolated by the very system that made it a familiar name.

Making Do amid a Disappearing Lake

While lakeshore communities struggled for the water and land that they

had lost over the course of the nineteenth century, they were subjected to a series

of phenomenon over which they had little recourse: the gradual desiccation of the

lake environment. A number of scholars of Xochimilco have explained the

transformation of the space from a rich lacustrine ecosystem to a dry, flood-prone

basin through the insatiable water needs of the emerging metropolis.482 On

occasion, scholars add other factors such as sedimentation or the ineluctable

imperative to drain the Valley’s lakes.483 Regardless of which factor or

482
See Pérez Zevallos, Xochimilco Ayer; and Ernesto Aréchiga Córdoba, “De la
exuberancia al agotamiento: Xochimilco y el agua, 1884-2002 in A la orilla del
agua: Política, urbanización y medio ambiente, historia de Xochimilco en el siglo
XX ed. María Eugenia Terrones López (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2004): 97-
152.
483
See Patricia Romero Lankao and Eike Duffing, “Tres procesos contradictories:
Desarrollo urbano, medio ambiente y políticas públicas durante el siglo XX,” in A
la orilla; and Patricia Romero Lankao, Obra hidraúlica de la ciudad de México y
su impacto socioambiental, 1880-1990 (Mexico City: Mora, 1999).

249
combination of factors explains ecological change, the inhabitants tend to be cast

either as victims of inexorable and uncontrollable natural and social forces, or,

alternatively, as valiant resisters romantically standing up for their age-old

agricultural practice, the chinampa.484

In regard to accounts of ecological change, instead of the separation or

weighting of isolated causes, it is more useful to see change as part and parcel of a

larger dynamic whole: what I have termed urban modernity. With respect to the

second interpretation, indeed, campesinos resisted, if use of that loaded term is

permitted, but resistance involved more than the chinampa. The revolution opened

the door for an enhancement of environmental rights. Yet the rights obtained often

marginalized the previously dominant chinampa agro-ecological vision in favor of

another centered on land-based agriculture.

The sanitary ideal, in tandem with an exponential boom in demand for

wood and charcoal around the Valley, drove the rapid desiccation of the lake

between 1890 and the late 1940s. The seemingly independent variables of

desiccation were more accurately intertwined processes inherent in late nineteenth

century visions of the modern city. The Porfirian drainage works most directly

affected Lake Texcoco, but by furnishing the Basin with a drainage canal and an

expanding sewer system, the water table around the city began to drop. Moreover,

water from the National Canal that had flowed into Lake Texcoco was diverted

484
See Beatriz Canabal Cristiani, Xochimilco: una identidad recreada (Mexico
City: UAM-Xochimilco, 1999); Beatriz Canabal Cristiani, Pablo Alberto Torees-
Lima, and Gilberto Burela Rueda, La ciudad y sus chinampas (Mexico City-UAM-
Xochimilco, 1992); and Vuelta a la ciudad lacustre.

250
directly into the Gran Canal. So-called malicious water had to be evacuated while

health-giving waters had to be tapped in ever-larger quantities. During his

investigations of the hydrological system of Xochimilco, Marroquín y Rivera

determined that by extracting 1,700 liters per second from the springs Noria, Santa

Cruz, Nativitas, and Quetzalapa, “no damage would follow other interests,”

namely the chinamperos of Xochimilco. 485 He based his calculations on

production of the springs and on aquifer recharge. He asserted that only 5% of the

run-off from the Ajusco range cascaded down into the Valley while the rest was

absorbed by the semi-permeable soil to recharge the underground aquifer.486 Yet,

the project took 2,100 liters per second, not 1,700 liters. Supply increased to

nearly 3,000 liters per second with the opening of the Santa Ana well in the late

1920s, and to over 4,000 by the late 1940s.487 Not only did Marroquín fail to

calculate the effects of the increased supply that he authorized, he also considered

the rate of recharge a constant. Beyond potential changes in rainfall over time, the

forests, as have been already discussed, were subjected to an increased rate of

destruction. The effects of deforestation were twofold: on the one hand, stripped

lands prevented moisture from seeping into the ground, and on the other, erosion

swept soil down the mountainsides to be deposited in the beds of canals and the

lake itself. The process of desiccation as a result of sedimentation had already

485
Marroquín y Rivera, 19
486
Ibid., 17.
487
I compiled this data from Memorias del Distrito Federal; Gustavo Garza, El
proceso de industrialización en la ciudad de México, 1821-1970 (Mexico City:
Colmex, 1985); and Romero Lankao and Duffing, 246.

251
dried large extensions of the lake by the turn of the nineteenth century, thereby

limiting the space available to extend chinampería.

Shrinking water environments combined with an increase in the number of

chinamperos to generate a totally different kind of explanation for environmental

destruction: that the chinamperos themselves were responsible for drying the lake.

One newspaper article from the era was titled “The Chinampas Are Devouring

Lake Xochimilco,” and in 1918, the state banned the formation of new chinampas

in canals—a restriction on the commons—as a way to maintain the lakebed’s

capacity and curb traffic congestion of peasants and tourists alike. 488 This claim

raises the intriguing question of whether chinampa agriculture was ultimately

“sustainable,” as most environmentalists and scholars suggest. Too often,

however, the loaded term masks the hierarchies embedded in environmental use.

A better question might be: for whom was the practice sustainable? While for

chinamperos the decrease in carrying capacity could have resulted in increased

flooding of their communities, it was a small price to pay for their economic

livelihood. But for nearby ejidatarios, the flooding of their lands would have been

the only consequence. For urban elites, the proliferation of the chinampas sent

more water into the National Canal that would more likely overflow its banks in

urbanized zones north of Xochimilco. Sustainability, though the specific term was

not used in the early twentieth century, encompasses, then, a set of social interests

488
“Las chinampas están devorando el lago de Xochimilco” El Universal April
28, 1935; and “Limpia de los canales de Xochimilco,” El Demócrata, January 12,
1918.

252
and power relations.489 Placing blame on the chinamperos was one way for the

government to avoid discussing other causes of desiccation, especially the tapping

of spring water.

Demands for wood and water control speeded up the adverse effects on

chinampería, as noted by outside observers and chinamperos alike. The German

geographer and traveler Elisabeth Schilling observed that, shortly after the

completion of the water works, traffic on the National Canal was suspended for

twenty days on account of low water levels and noted that “the complaints of the

indigenous people is increasing.”490 The historical anthropologist William Sanders

observed in his travels to the chinampa zone of Xochimilco that whereas

Xochimilco’s, Nativitas’ and some other historically productive chinampa areas

had suffered, the 400 hectares of chinampería in San Gregorio Atlapulco, which

relied on spring water untapped by the waterworks, flourished well into the

1950s.491 The chinamperos of Nativitas were more concerned initially with the

physical obstacles the infrastructure of the waterworks placed, but by the late

1930s they, along with the community of Xochimilco began to voice concerns

over the lack of water. Chinamperos from the barrio de Guadalupita in

Xochimilco, for instance, deplored common accusations that they—and other

chinamperos—were responsible for the desiccation of local canals. Instead, they

489
David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.
490
Elisabeth Schilling, “Los ‘jardines flotantes’ de Xochimilco (1938). Una
selección” in La agricultura chinampera: Compilación histórica ed. Teresa Rojas
Rabiela (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 1983), 93.
491
William Sanders, “El lago y el volcán: la chinampa (1957” in La agricultura
chinampera, 121.

253
connected the decrease in water flow to the “decreased volume of water that the

nearby springs bring up,” suggesting that the city should tap water from Lerma in

order to reduce the water from Xochimilco.492

During the 1930s, a number of local organizations began to call for the

conservation of the lake, which resulted in a “Reglamento para la conservación y

vigilancia del Lago de Xochimilco.” It is unknown what the regulations consisted

of or the impact they had, but as the water levels dropped, local concern for water

conservation escalated. In the late 1930s, Xochimilco’s Neighborhood

Improvement Association worked with architects, engineers, and the municipal

government to promote lake conservation, as well as other improvements to the

community.493 At stake was not merely chinampería but a growing tourist

economy that faced imminent extinction without action. The language of

environmental demands often obfuscated the provenance of petitions, as was the

case of one lengthy and astute petition from Xochimilco whose forty-four signers

may have been chinamperos, residents involved in tourism, or some combination

of the two. According to the petitioners, the scarcity of water was “public and

notorious for locals and foreigners, [and] Xochimilco’s beauty and life are soon to

disappear within no more than five years and then in Mexico’s Venice visited by

tourists and residents of the capital they will not find more than dry chinampas and

492
AGN: MAC 496/2: “Barrio de Guadalupita to Ávila Camacho, August 14,
1943.
493
AGN: LCR 418.5/11

254
the desolation and ruin of a beautiful town.”494 Again, they focused scorn on the

water system, a visible and symbolic marker of environmental usurpation, and the

Xochimilcans, showing a keen awareness of hydraulic engineering, proposed local

streams as alternatives to the springs upon which their town owed its prosperity.

They realized their petition would get nowhere without recognizing the priorities

of urbanization, but they boldly exclaimed in the same breath: “Thirty years of

desiccation has been enough.”495

Not all farming interests in the region felt threatened by the waterworks, or

lake desiccation in general for that matter. As a petition from the Material

Improvement Committee of Santiago Tepalcatlalpan—a community of

predominantly dry agriculture—indicated, the most significant problem was the

sedimentation of the lakebed. For them, dredging the bottom would guarantee:

two important values: the social because it constitutes both a typical

picturesque outing that we could say is unique in the Central Plateau, to
which flow a large number of foreign and national tourists who have the
opportunity to admire both the perseverance of our indigenous race and the
extraordinary farming that they do in the chinampas…; and the economic
value represented by the source of produce supply for the inhabitants of
Mexico City.496

Here, conserving the lake, like other requests to safeguard local rural

environments, tapped into the urban order, this one of food supply and leisure.

Whereas complaints centered on the waterworks fell on deaf ears, those that held

sedimentation as the root cause were answered, if not always sufficiently. Most

494
AGN: MAC 496/2: “Xochimilco petition,” July 3, 1941.
495
Ibid.
496
AGN: MAC 496/2, “Santiago Tepalcatlalpan to Ávila Camacho,” May 12,
1941.

255
government-contracted engineer accounts located sedimentation on the top of the

list of causative factors. The Ministry of Communications and Public Works

(SCOP), the main government authority in charge of water management in the

Valley, dredged the National Canal to much fanfare in 1926, regularly dredged the

rivers that flowed into the lakebed up until the late 1920s, and during the early

1940s began dredging the lake itself.497 The government found investment in silt

removal much more practicable than the massive expenditures needed to

reconfigure the city’s water supply.

Sedimentation certainly contributed to desiccation, but the petitioners

likely held ulterior motives for their request of dredging the lake bottom.

Tepalcatlalpan, located at the edge of the dry lakebed, had at some point turned

predominantly (or solely) to dry-land agriculture, and like many other dry-land

communities, had to deal with flooding. Since Lake Xochimilco could no longer

serve as a container of water during the rainy season, their fields were susceptible

to inundation. Under the same logic, the Material Improvement Association of

Tepalcatlápan sought to convince the government to dredge the Amecameca,

Tepalcatlalpan, and San Luis Xochimanca streams.498

Many communities and ejidos emphasized river control in their agrarian

politics. According to one agronomist, ejidos composed 60% of the land in the

497
Ibid.
498
Ibid., see Santiago petition. Of the three, only the Amecameca had a constant
flow of water.

256
lakebed in 1940, a statistic that indicates the threat flooding posed.499 A conference

of The League of Agrarian Communities and Campesino Unions of the Federal

District (Liga de Comunidades Agrarias y Sindicatos Campesinos del DF), a

major agent of environmental politics during Cardenismo, gave rise to an

extensive petition demanding the dredging of the Amecameca and the construction

of the Piaje dam to be located upstream, among other pressing concerns of

communities around the capital.500 The League continued to request the dam,

asserting that “year after year,” the nine ejidos and a multitude of other

communities in the Xochimico/Chalco lakebed “irremissibly suffer from floods

originating in the overflowing of the Ameca[meca] River.”501 After submitting a

remarkably detailed plan about how to construct the dam, the SCOP accepted the

proposal but gave no timetable for its construction. In an era of dam-building in

Mexico and elsewhere, the agrarian communities around the Xochimilco bed

asked for their own, in order to diminish flooding and store irrigation water.

The Agrarian League galvanized support for the dam across the southern

Valley of Mexico, and one community after another, whether ejidal or not,

centered the dam in their agrarian politics. The construction of the Piaje dam

499
AGN: LCR 545.3/122, “Mariano Angulo of the Agrarian Department to
Cárdenas,” August 14, 1940
500
AGN: LCR 151.3/779, “Isaias Juárez General Secretary of the League to
Cárdenas,” January 18, 1938. Another key demand in the petition was the
installation of drainage and drinking water in the centers of communities, which
were rife with floodwater but absent drinking water. As discussed in chapter 3,
Cárdenas held the sanitation of the hinterlands as a goal of his administration in an
effort to close the gap between urban and rural standards of living.
501
Ibid., “League to Cárdenas,” September 2, 1938.

257
faced technical concerns and conflicted with urban interests, however. One

government engineer explained that although the dam was under study, the land

set aside for it was highly permeable, rendering it unsuitable for water storage and

potentially harmful to several important springs that were nourished by river

overflow.502 A dam would have certainly mitigated sedimentation, but, according

to Carlos Betancourt, it also would have cut off a significant source of

underground water at a time when the springs were increasingly being exploited

for urban consumption.

If Betancourt’s concern for the springs evoked the critical rift between

Xochimilco agrarian society and Mexico City’s resource needs, it also suggested

that a similar rift existed between dry-land farmers—increasingly ejidal—and

chinamperos, as the dam would have jeopardized the spring recharge upon which

chinampería depended. The Piaje dam, however, was merely one aspect of

widespread and variegated disputes between the two farming practices. In 1926,

colonists of the ex-hacienda San Juan de Díos suffered from flooding caused by

the overflow of a nearby stream and the “infiltrations of Lake Xochimilco,” which

they claimed was lower than their parcels. As they demanded the lowering of the

lake, along with the proper “encauzamiento” of the river, the fifteen colonos came

together to buy a pump that directed the water toward a nearby canal.503

502
AGN: MAC 496/2, “Carlos Betancourt to Delegate of Milpa Alta Aarón
Camacho López,” July 7, 1941.
503
This action met the ire of the Xochimilco ejido and the Ministry of Agriculture,
which notified the farmers that their drainage work was forbidden due to the

258
 During a rainy summer of 1934, the Xochimilco ejido experienced a heavy

dose of flooding, which they also blamed on the rising level of the neighboring

lake. In September of that year, the ejidal leadership, Raymundo Zarco, Ricardo

Eslava, and Tiburcio Altamirano, reached an agreement with the SCOP to set a

schedule to periodically open the floodgates of the National Canal and dredge the

canal, actions that both curtailed the flooding of ejidal fields and urbanized lands

at the canal’s endpoint in Jamaica.504

While the Xochimilco ejido convinced authorities to diminish the lake

through the altered management of the floodgates, the Campesino Social League

of the Federal District—another organizational product of Cardenismo—

demanded the full drainage of all of Xochimilco’s canals, which they claimed were

“stagnant” and thus “a public health threat.”505 In another moment, conflict erupted

when chinamperos hoping to extend or establish new chinampas, broke the boards

of Xochimilco’s canals, resulting in the inundation of neighboring ejido lands.506

Ejidos and chinampas enjoyed little spatial separation in the water environment,

leading to numerous conflicts.507

flooding of Xochimilco’s ejidal lands. AHA, AS: 652/9442, various documents

from October 1926.
504
AGN: ALR 552.5/388, “Mariano Moctezuma of the SCOP to Rodriguez and
Ejidal Authorities,” September 26, 1934.
505
AGN: LCR 418.1/1: Campesino League to Cárdenas,” February 25, 1935.
506
For one example, see AHA, AS 2084, 31499, “League of Agrarian
Communities to Cárdenas,” July 3, 1937.
507
One newspaper report told of ejido agriculturalists who “look with evil eyes”
upon those who desire to raise the lake’s water level. “Conflictos riberenos,” El
Universal, June 25, 1941.

259
 Because of their varying spatial locations and the lakebed’s volatile

hydrological dynamics, even chinamperos could not agree on a water management

plan. In December 1926, Xochimilco chinamperos explained that their plots had

been flooded during the previous year not only due to heavy rains but also

improper lake management that prevented water from passing through the

National Canal.508 These chinamperos suffered from flooding, but others, perhaps

around the outskirts of the lake, were prone to drying chinampas. Another group

of campesinos complained that their chinampas had dried due to the dredging of

the National Canal and scarce rains, leaving them unable to produce corn and

flowers.509

Since the same campesino league that had called for the drainage of all

Xochimilco’s canals also wrote this unequivocal statement of support for local

chinampería, their petition and the response to it serve as useful illustrations of the

contradictory agro-ecological visions of Xochimilcans. An unknown number of

ejidatarios held chinampa plots of their own, and still others continued to rely on

the chinampa nurseries to plant their seeds.510 The Campesino League and

undoubtedly some of its own members thus straddled two identities: one of “wet”

agriculture, the other “dry.” The government’s response to the League’s petition

noted that ending canal dredging would meet with resistance from “the immense

508
AHA: AS 654, 9481, “Chinamperos to Ministry of Agriculture,” December
1926
509
AHA: AS 2234, 32969, “Liga Social Campesina del DF to Ministry of
Agriculture,” August, 1933.
510
AGN: MAC 404.1/1497; and Patricia Romero lankao and Duffing, “Tres
procesos contradictories,” La orilla, 224.

260
majority of the residents of Xochimilo.”511 Though the SCOP failed to explain

why this would be, we might imagine that ejidatarios would have supported

dredging to prevent flooding, and many chinamperos unaffected by desiccation

would have approved it to maintain their transportation route to urban markets.

Xochimilcan campesinos did not unite in defense of chinampas or lake

conservation. Rather, they held different and conflicting agro-ecological interests.

Government hydraulic policies, meanwhile, shifted tenuously among contradictory

social interests. Policies reflected not only local environmental citizenship but

also the power of the urbanizing impulse. Xochimilco’s productive chinampas

remained an important source of urban food supply, but the expansion of the

highway system opened up more distant markets to feed the growing population.

Xochimilco, as a source of sustenance, became more expendable than before, but

became even more important as a source of water for the industrializing capital.

That being said, government did not advance a unified plan to eliminate the lake,

as some scholars would have it. Neither did it work with locals to conserve it. The

latter would have entailed a paradigmatic shift in urban modernity, a change that

chinamperos, even assuming they could have allied with other local interests,

would have struggled to force.

By 1940, the National Canal closed due to consistently low water levels,

and by the late 1940s, the twin processes of underground pumping and

aboveground sedimentation had caused complete desiccation. Chinampería

511
AHA: AS 2234, 32969, “Response by Ministry of Agriculture,” August, 1933

261
persisted precariously only in communities with surviving springs and ponds, most

notably Atlapulco but also parts of Xochimilco, Mixquic, Tláhuac, Tulyehualco,

Tetelco, Tezumpa, Atzompa, Ixtayoapan, and Tlaxialtemalco.512

Dry-land agriculture could not match the productivity of chinampería,

although as William Sanders observed, some early ejido yields of Atlapulco and

Tláhuac rivaled those of neighboring chinampas.513 The lakebed soil was humid

and rich in nutrients from centuries of sedimentation, but dropping water tables

and salinization by capillarity—where salts emerge to the top of soil—slowly

wrecked havoc on the land. The Chahuixtle, a black bug that thrived in dry

farming conditions, plagued the maize seeds, which were less susceptible to the

bug when grown in chinampas.514 The flooding of lands remained a constant thorn

in the side of local peasants, and government authorities offered inconsistent help

in holding back the waters.515 Ejidatarios complained that river dredging had

stopped in the late 1920s, and their golden demand, the Piaje dam, never moved

beyond preliminary planning. The League of Agrarian Communities calculated

that the ejidos in the Xochimilco/Chalco basin had lost 720,00 maize cargas (worth

512
Robert C West and Pedro Armillas, “Las chinampas de México: Poesia y
realidad de los ‘jardines flotantes’ (1950)” in La agricultura chinampera, 103; and
Sanders, 139. Many of these communities had built chinampas on ponds and
canals left over from lake desiccation, both in the Xochimilco and Chalco basin.
513
Sanders, in La agricultura chinampera, 133, 146-7.
514
Ibid., 189; and Romero Lankao and Duffing, in A La orilla, 223.
515
The historical record indicates that the Xochimilco ejido developed the most
sophisticated anti-flooding plan, which would employ pumps to flush water down
canals that crisscrossed the ejido and eventually empty out into the National Canal.
There is no evidence that the project was carried out, however. See AHA, AS
3319, 45513: “Plano General del Anteproyecto del Drenaje de los terrenos
Comprendidos entre Coapa y el Cerro de la Estrella,” 1938.

262
11 million pesos) to floodwaters in the eleven years since the SCOP had stopped

dredging the Amecameca.516 Even though demands for corn, flowers, and fresh

produce—the staples of the Xochimilcan farming system—rose, declines in

productivity went from steady to rapid in the 1940s when the city began pumping

groundwater at a clip much greater than the natural recharge. The ejidos and other

dry farming communities were subjected to environmental extremes: severe

flooding in the summer, and dried out, saline, and bug-infested lands in winter.

The campesinos of the Xochimilco bed gained land parcels at the same

time that the desiccation of the lacustrine environment increased its pace. The

social power invested in the ejido bore an identity often at odds with the

“traditional” chinampa identity. Conserving chinampas was just one piece of a

much larger set of environmental demands that locals placed on government. The

drying of the lake may have originated in the varying consequences of

urbanization, but the internal agrarian dynamics of Xochimilco made a political

solution in favor of conservation that much more difficult. For every call to

conserve the lake and its canals, another demand sought just the opposite, or

emphasized another environmental threat. Since UNESCO has named Xochimilco

a world heritage site and lake recuperation is on the political agenda, the historical

memory of a unified and homogenous chinampa identity may be advantageous for

local chinamperos, ejidatarios, tourist outfits, and environmentalists. But such a

perspective on the local past skews our understanding of the experiences of the

516
AGN: LCR 545.3/122: “Executive Committee of the League to Cárdenas,”
1940.

263
people who lived around the lake and how the place came to be both socially and

environmentally what it is today.

Conclusion

Water and trees, the two most important natural resources of the Valley of

Mexico—and also fundamental to its ecosystem—were entangled in two

simultaneous historical forces: the revolutionary impulse of environmental reform

and the urbanizing hegemonic order. The former conferred the rural poor with

newfound power to make political claims on land and resources that could sustain

local livelihoods while the latter clamped down on those livelihoods either through

regulations or environmental change. Campesinos involved in forest production

provided fuel essential for the functioning of the city, but they were also targeted

as culprits of deforestation, a prime threat to urban hygiene. Thus government

imposed a host of restrictions that generally exceeded regulations elsewhere in

Mexico upon the forested land that campesinos had obtained. Xochimilcan

farmers, meanwhile, provided urban residents with large amounts of corn,

produce, and flowers, but pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary governments

considered chinampería a vestige of the past, not a technique to be pursued in

modern agriculture. The gradual pace of lake desiccation led to competing agro-

ecological visions of Xochimilco that made a consistent and congruent lake

management plan impossible. In both Xochimilco and the forests above, policies

of unfettered urban and industrial growth either marginalized or destroyed the

264
local economies of the rural poor, tossing alternative environmental imaginaries of

the urbanizing Valley into the waste bin of history.

265
 Chapter 5: “The Lands with Which We Shall Struggle:” Land Reclamation

and Revolution in Mexico’s Lake Texcoco Basin, 1910-1950

On May 7 1912, Francisco Madero declared that the land reclamation

project in the partially dry, saline Lake Texcoco bed, located on the then eastern

edge of Mexico City, served the general public interest.517 He intended to drain

the federalized lakebed, wash the soil of its salts, and fertilize the land for crops to

eliminate the dust storms that ravaged the city, as well as create a breadbasket for

the growing metropolis. Where the land was not farmed, trees and shrubs would

be planted to fix the soil. The public works project arose from the massive

drainage works of Díaz, but it deepened their original intent. Madero viewed lake

drainage as merely the first step in a larger process of environmental

transformation that also involved fertilization—what I term land reclamation.

Armed revolution and the recalcitrant soil frustrated Madero’s vision of the

27,000-hectare lakebed. However, subsequent revolutionary presidents, most

notably Cárdenas and Ávila Camacho, extended Madero’s initiative, bringing to

the fore a central axis of postrevolutionary state formation in the Valley: the

ongoing tension between urban hydraulic engineering and popular environmental

imaginaries.

At the onset of Madero’s land reclamation works, thousands of

campesinos, whose principal means of subsistence derived from lake products,

517
Archivo General de la Nación: Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas,
544/116, “Presidential Decree,” May 7, 1912.

266
inhabited the Texcoco area. As lake desiccation and alkalization had increased

during the late colonial and early national periods, these villagers surrendered to

the pull of labor either in the city, as peons on the haciendas, or, ironically, as

workers in the drainage works of the Valley of Mexico. Village ties loosened, but

they did not break.

If we recall that upon the termination of the massive desagüe system Díaz

pronounced the end of inundations and, in consequence, the vexing ‘Texcoco

problem,’ scholars of Mexico have reproduced the spurious claim, as if the Gran

Canal drained the lakebed of its historical import, along with its water.

Accordingly, historians have overlooked the subsequent and more dynamic history

of the lakebed involving land reclamation for agricultural production and

afforestation.

The revolutionary government’s vision of a verdant and productive

Texcoco bed generated widespread dispute over both the nature of rural

development and the appropriate way to secure continued urban prosperity. The

Mexican revolution set the stage for fertilization schemes in the lakebed, but the

initial project, by restricting access to the bed and expediting drainage, alienated

the lakeshore poor. The subsequent agrarian reform, however, enabled

campesinos to gain access to the dried federal lands, unleashing a change in

environmental imaginaries similar to what many Xochimilcans experienced. With

water less accessible, campesinos’ continued rural existence depended on their

267
capacity to farm. The power of their ejidos eventually enabled them to convert the

exclusive, urban-centric project into an example of populist, rural development.

Meanwhile, the financial and technical difficulties of fertilization paralyzed

the public works project during the late 1910s and 1920s, and the drying lakebed

gave rise to worsening dust storms. A small group of urban planners and

engineers, concerned about the fate of Mexico’s capital, proffered an alternative

vision of their city, an imaginary of lake regeneration and afforestation ultimately

rooted in the same developmental paradigm to which their object of criticism

adhered. Cárdenas, with his own environmental vision in mind, rejected their

proposals in order to fuse urban goals with his larger populist, agrarian program. In

the late 1930s and early 1940s, the public works project reflected a marked

campesino hue as part of the government’s program to uplift the peasantry.

Miguel Alemán’s presidency (1946-1952) signaled a return to exclusionary land

reclamation, but rising costs rendered the works impracticable. In both axes of

environmental dispute, between campesinos and the state and among engineers

themselves, lake desiccation, a product of the sanitary ideal and sedimentation,

shaped the various environmental imaginaries in play. And, the clash among

campesinos’, engineers’, and officials’ divergent visions of the lakebed determined

the state’s role in local development and, in the process, intertwined the history of

the Texcoco hinterlands with that of its urban neighbor.518

518
This perspective differs greatly from other works regarding the transformation
of waterscapes in the United States and Germany. Whereas Donald Worster and
David Blackbourn employ a top-down approach where private enterprise and the

268
Land Reclamation, Agrarian Reform and Campesinos, 1910-1934

From the start of the revolution in 1910, the Texcoco lakebed underwent a

profound social and environmental transformation. As sedimentation and the

drainage system dried the bed, engineers experimented with washing the fields of

salts and fertilizing them for plant growth. In 1912 Madero declared the lakebed

federal property, and through its role as owner and beginning in 1915 as arbiter of

land and resource disputes, the state altered the social relations and uses of the

local environment. With reclamation work underway, officials debated how to

best distribute the fertilized land. For the lakeshore villagers, meanwhile, the

reclamation project posed a threat to their lake-based economies, which they

struggled to maintain through a variety of covert actions and political negotiations.

Faced with desiccation and restricted access to the lakebed, communities tried

their luck in the government’s agrarian reform program.

Land reclamation with the purpose of agricultural production was the

product of both changing scientific opinion regarding the future of the lake and

revolutionary state formation. The hydraulic engineer Mariano Barragán asserted

that the desagüe works—while absolutely necessary—did not adequately resolve

the problem of Lake Texcoco. Erosion had caused the sedimentation of the lake

state are construed as virtually omnipotent, by examining a case of failure, I

emphasize the limitations that socio-natural phenomenon and local populations
place on the process of land reclamation. See Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water,
Aridity and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985);
and Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, landscape and the Making of
Modern Germany (New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2006).

269
bottom for centuries, and with increased deforestation, Barragán declared, the lake

bottom would soon be even with Mexico City’s downtown streets. Since, at that

point, the lakebed would no longer serve as the container of the Valley’s water, it

had to be drained completely as quickly as possible and fertilized in order to

safeguard the city from both flooding and dust storms.519

At the turn of the twentieth century, Díaz had gained immense prestige

from the construction of the desagüe. Madero and his secretary of state, Manuel

Urquidi, followed the scientific opinions of Barragán and hoped that land

reclamation in Texcoco would do the same for their fledgling government. They

re-imagined the lakebed (rather inaccurately) as a place devoid of either ecological

obstacles or social importance, and thus a prime laboratory for state building. A

productive, ordered agricultural economy would replace the “primitive” and

increasingly moribund lake-based economy. The new economy would not only

liberate the city of dust but also its dependency on international food markets.

Imports of most basic foods had steadily risen during the old regime as the

prevailing hacienda system increasingly produced cash crops for the world

economy.520 For Madero, Lake Texcoco was ideally suited to provide the

519
Mariano Barragán, “Memoria del saneamiento y cultivo del Lago de Texcoco,”
(1910) in Carlos Contreras Servín, “El crecimiento urbano de la Ciudad de México
y la desecación del Lago de Texcoco” Relaciones 76, (1998), 150-153; and
Mariano Barragán, Proyecto de bonificación de las tierras del vaso del Lago de
Texcoco (México: Secretaría de Communicaciones y Obras Públicas, 1913), 8-9.
520
Concerned about Mexico’s food supply, Manuel Schwartz optimistically
declared that Lake Texcoco “would be transformed into a fertile agricultural
colony.” In 1911, Mexico imported almost 230 thousand tons of corn, but in 1912
this number plummeted to 39 thousand. Foods such as beans and wheat followed

270
sustenance to ensure Mexico City’s future growth without having to challenge

prevailing political-economic relations. Thus, a new era began in which the

‘Texcoco problem’ became an opportunity to transform the lands for the city and

create a fertile hinterland.

During the course of the project, with Mexico in the throes of revolution

and fraught with conflicting plans for the remaking of rural society, government

officials debated the future property regime that would govern the new economy.

Barragán was keen on justifying the massive public work, which had a general

budget of over three million pesos, by recuperating its high cost.521 Estimating

that each reclaimed hectare would have a market value of at least 350 pesos,

Barragán calculated that each one sold would reap a profit of at least 67 pesos.522

In addition to the social benefits the project would generate, the new revolutionary

government would emerge as financial winners.

Some project employees had other ideas about what to do with the

fertilized land. The agrarian engineer Santiago González Cordero offered a

strikingly different analysis of the necessity of Texcoco reclamation. “In this

historical moment,” González explained, “in which there is an inexhaustible thirst

a similar trajectory. See Schwartz, “La desecación del Lago de Texcoco” Boletín
Oficial del Consejo Superior del Gobierno del Distrito Federal 27, 2 (1913): 417-
20; and Diego López Rosado, Historia del abasto de productos alimenticios a la
ciudad de México (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988), 192.
521
To put the figure of 3 million pesos in perspective, the entire budget of the
Federal District in 1910 was 9.5 million pesos. See José Romero, Guía de la
Ciudad de México y demás municipalidades del Distrito Federal con los datos
más recientes de su regimen politico como asiento de los suprmemos poderes de la
Federación (México: Librería de Porrúa Hermanos,1910), 35-37.
522
Barragán, Proyecto, 15.

271
for land and multitudes of men join the Zapatista ranks each day, the need to

complete these interesting works at a rapid pace becomes clear, using the least

amount of machinery and the largest number of workers.”523 Given that few

lakeshore villagers joined the Zapatistas, González likely brought up the specter of

zapatismo as a smokescreen to promote the project. Nonetheless, fears that the

wildfire of peasant rebellion might spread ran rampant, and distribution of

government lands could have served to douse the flames without dispossessing

politically entrenched groups. In response to González’s reports, the engineer Luis

C. Campoamor in an editorial in El País essentially agreed with his findings and

confirmed the government’s interest in “possessing a large quantity of lands

distributable to the indigenes.”524 Similar to changing conservation policies on the

slopes of the Ajusco, land reclamation proponents pondered ways to generate

consent through environmental politics.

Manuel Nava, a forestry expert working on the project, was even more

convinced of the transformative potential and revolutionary goals of the project.

In 1916, three years after the death of Madero, Nava contended that the

reclamation works:

would bring public benefits not only for Mexico City… but also for the
Texcoco district, whose inhabitants, mainly indigenous,…have vegetated
with the ruinous fishing of the unhealthy animals that the lake produces, an
industry that kept them in a state of misery and ignorance….Mr. Madero
knew that it was of humanitarian work to transform these swampy lands of
Lake Texcoco into agricultural lands, converting these hapless fishermen
into farmers and more importantly into landowners because he was aware

523
AGN: SCOP 544/87, Report, July 26, 1912
524
Luis C. Campoamor, editorial, El País, August 16, 1912.

272
 that the fundamental base of civilization is agriculture and forestry and for
a nation to have freedom its children/sons must be owners at least of their
homes and the plots they work.525

Nava envisioned the project to be more than just an affirmation of urban goals. He

portrayed the liberal Madero as a civilizing leader of the “ignorant,”

underdeveloped indigenes. He was a Mexican Jefferson, who sought to uplift

these “hapless fishermen” and lead them to liberty through small-scale production.

Ideas of land tenure and use after reclamation were not etched in stone;

rather, they were contentious and politically charged issues in a time of

revolutionary uncertainty. Barragán preferred the selling of parcels at a high price

in order to paint his project as financially viable. Others viewed the project in

terms of a civilizing mission or saw the obvious political capital to be gained

through land distribution. A constant tension inhered within the project between

tendencies to include the lakeshore poor within a revolutionary program and

exclude them in favor of financial viability.

While opinions over the future property relations differed, the immediate

task at hand involved the transformation of the lakebed environment. Following

his assumption to power, Madero placed Barragán and Urquidi in charge of the

Junta de las Obras de Bonificación del Lago de Texcoco (Board of the

Reclamation Works of Lake Texcoco), another technocratic committee that

governed a major public works project to sanitize the city and foment its

525
AGN: SCOP 544/134, “Informe General y Sintético de los experimentos
llevados a cabo para la reforestación de las tierras del antiguo Lago de Texcoco de
los años 1912-1916, April 12, 1916.

273
growth.526 Engineers exhibited confidence in the future accomplishments of this

immensely challenging project to prepare the briny lands for plant growth. From

the beginning, Ángel García Lascuraín proudly proclaimed that the works were

“based on scientific principles” and “only some element hitherto unknown would

make the works fail.”527 By early 1913, about seven hectares of land were divided

into five agricultural experimental zones and two afforestation zones.528 Tamarix,

eucalyptus, and willows comprised the more effective tree species, while the

agricultural zones supported radishes, brussel sprouts, lettuce, oats, alfalfa, and

barley.529 A year later, following the rise of the reactionary Victoriano Huerta,

over 6,000 of the 27,000 total hectares were under the immediate “protection” of

the reclamation project, and over 1,000 of those were “influenced” by drainage

and irrigation. 530 This small beginning lasted only as long as political stability

would allow.

Revolutionary violence knocked out the Texcoco infrastructure as well,

only Barragán, in the middle of his experiments, could not return to complete what

he had started. “Zapatista hordes” from areas south of Texcoco stole supplies and

526
Margarita García Luna, Nezahualcóyotl: Tierras que surgen de un desequilibrio
ecológico. Decretos relativos a los terrenos desecados del Lago de Texcoco,
1912-1940 (Toluca: Gobierno del Estado de México: 1990), 35; and AGN: SCOP
544/116: May 7, 1912.
527
AGN: SCOP 544/ 116, June 15, 1912.
528
See AGN: SCOP 544/134, Manuel Nava “Informe General y sintético de los
experimentos llevados a cabo para la reforestación de las tierras del antiguo Lago
de Texcoco, 1912-1916,” April 12, 1916.
529
AGN: SCOP 544/98, “Barragán to Uriquidi,” March, 1913.
530
AGN: SCOP 544/132, August 29, 1914.

274
allowed their horses to eat plants and trees.531 The dwindling finances obtained

from 1914 to 1916 went toward fixing the infrastructure and saving the vegetation

that Zapatistas had destroyed. Without constant maintenance of the infrastructure,

the salts wrecked havoc on the project. In August of 1914 the Convention, the

official governing body of Mexico at that point, disbanded the Directive Board,

and only modest funding for one experimental zone remained.532 The curtailment

of Madero’s project in 1914 left the question of land tenure unresolved.

The rise of Venustiano Carranza (1915-1920) brought about no new large-

scale land reclamation projects, but the experimental zone, the drainage works, and

the rest of the lakebed remained under federal control. Campesinos employed a

variety of tactics to contest the state’s ongoing presence and negotiate

environmental use rights. In 1918, local residents from La Magdalena, Peñón de

Los Baños, and Tocuila used the petition to air their grievances to the newly

constituted state. Based on their historical uses of the lake-based environment and

their appropriation of prevalent public health discourse, these villagers called for

the conservation of the lake environment, challenging the prevailing urban and

exclusionary status quo. The villagers explained that even with proper agricultural

knowledge the transformation of the lands from saline to fertile would be slow,

and their poor communities did not enjoy the privilege of time. Yet they astutely

connected their suffering to the urban sanitary ideal, explaining that “the

531
AGN: SCOP 544/70, September 8, and November 16, 1915; and SCOP
544/132, November 16, 1915.
532
AGN: SCOP 544/116, August, 1914.

275
uncovered lands that remain after desiccation produce with harm to this capital

those suffocating clouds of dust so damaging to the eyes and throat of the residents

of the capital as well as completely changing the atmospheric conditions of the

area.”533 The moribund lake, coupled with the failures to fertilize the land, created

an opportunity to defend their “traditional” and oft-condemned means of

subsistence. Although ostensibly willing to become farmers, they were leery of

such endeavors, and their own efforts had not borne fruit.

The handling of the petitions reflected the debates that government

officials had with respect to lake drainage and soil fertilization. A project engineer

issued a report to Joaquin M. Alegre, the chief of the Obras del desagüe del Lago

de Texcoco (Drainage Works of Lake Texcoco). The engineer parsed the

advantages and disadvantages of drainage and then advised that a decision be

based on the respective pros and cons. The advantages of the regenerated lake

included the suppression of the dust storms that damaged the health of city

residents and nearby farms; the facilitation of cloud formation and an increase in

levels of humidity; the conservation of local subsistence patterns dependent on

lake water; and the relative prevention of the process of capillarity, through which

salt rose to the soil surface. The advantages of the dried lake basin included the

ability to embark on a reclamation project at any moment; the prevention of

533
AGN: SCOP 544/251, see various petitions, August, 1918.

276
possible flooding of the city should waters rise precipitously; and the more

effective maintenance of desagüe works already in place.534

Several days later it seemed that the issue was resolved when the director

of National Public Works received a letter from Alegre in which he explained that

President Carranza had decreed that the gates to the Gran Canal remain open, “it

being his wish that all the water that arrives to the lake be given a quick exit.”535

However, a week later Alegre tried to broker a compromise between the villagers

and the government. He proposed that a certain level of water be maintained in

the basin during the dry season so that “in this way the residents can collect and

capitalize off [lake] products.”536 The proposed solution was not approved, and

the centuries-old pattern of lake drainage continued so as not to “cause disorder in

the development of fertilization projects (proyectos de bonificación) that are

planned on the lands of the referenced lake.”537 Local campesinos called attention

to the damaging effects of lake drainage, but the dust storms and local subsistence

patterns did not match the deeply ingrained fears of flooding and the power of

land-reclamation ideology in Mexico City.

The remarkable petitions notwithstanding, more frequently lakeshore

residents challenged the public works less directly by claiming the dried federal

lands for their own purposes or seeking usufruct rights within the federal zone.

Engineers who had been assigned to delimit government property reported that

534
Ibid., “Report to Alegre,” Sept 20, 1918.
535
Ibid., “Report of Alegre,” Sep 24, 1918.
536
Ibid., “Report of Alegre,” October 2, 1918
537
Ibid., “Manuel Gutierrez Rodriguez to Eugenio Esquerro,” Nov 2, 1918.

277
villages were not cooperating with these boundaries and were farming lands

rightfully belonging to the state.538 Surveyors were seemingly ubiquitous figures

in the lakebed. In 1912 the government assigned one to determine federal property

in the lake basin, as did Carranza in 1917. Encroachments by villagers and

haciendas necessitated constant measuring of the land. A surveyor hired to delimit

the lands of Aztacoalco, for example, reported that some villagers had illegally

occupied and farmed lands recently gained from Lake Texcoco.539

In 1917, Carranza decreed that all land formerly under water belonged to

the nation unless village or personal property rights could be proven.540 In some of

the cases in which private property rights were upheld, the state bought back those

lands believing them beneficial to the public works. In 1922 one employee of the

project suggested the government investigate land occupations by farmers who had

recently sold the same property to the state. Francisco Castro, head of the works at

the time, replied that the government had already taken up the problem in order to

punish those responsible for “dispossessing the Nation.”541

It was common for villagers residing on the shore to expand their land

according to the receding waters whether they rightfully owned that land or not.

The villagers of San Pedro Xalostoc embodied the position of lakeside residents

when they appealed to their right “of accession to those lands…by virtue of the

538
See AGN: SCOP 544/168; and 54/267, “Report by Castro,” August 1920.
539
AGN: SCOP 544/25, “Report by Hydrographic Commission,” January 26,
1911
540
García Luna, 35.
541
AGN: SCOP 544/267, “Report by Castro,” August, 1920.

278
simple withdrawal of the waters.”542 The lake had been their source of sustenance

for centuries, and no federal decree was going to usurp their perceived rights.

Taken together, these conflicts evinced the nebulous and contested property

relations in and around the lakebed, which circumscribed state sovereignty over a

space located just miles from where political power resided. State-contracted

engineers not only struggled to transform the lakebed environment but also

engaged in a pitched battle to maintain state property.

Land tenure was at stake in the federalized lake basin, as was the use of

that land and its natural resources. Villagers from Peñon de los Baños, San Juan

de Aragón, San Pedro Xalostoc, and others negotiated usufruct rights to federal

lands and waters from a more lenient postrevolutionary state in the late 1910s and

1920s. Locals won hundreds of contracts enabling fishing, hunting, as well as salt

and bug collection in the lakebed as long as no disorder or damage was caused to

existing works.543 Even if permissions were not granted, it is easy to surmise that

many locals, like their counterparts in the Ajusco, would have ignored the rules in

order to sustain their livelihoods—just as some had done by attempting to grow

crops on federal property. Engineers sought to control and transform the lands first

and foremost, and government officials acquiesced to rural demands when they did

not undermine the drainage/reclamation paradigm. Through petitions, land

542
AGA, 23/2434: legajo 1, ejido to CNA, June 15, 1939.
543
AGN: SCOP 544/224, “Reglamentación de concesiones o permisos para la
explotación de diversos aprovechamientos de que son suceptibles, tanto en
terrenos como el agua del Lago de Texcoco,” September 28, 1916. See also
various documents in 544/141, 251 and 256.

279
occupations, and negotiations, campesinos employed a wide repertoire to secure

environmental rights in the face of an exclusionary public works project designed

just a few miles to the southwest, in Mexico’s capital.

Despite small-scale agricultural experiments in the federal zone, the

government attempted to sell the new lands for the first time, placing the

responsibility of fertilization on the buyers. With an affinity for smallholder

production units, in 1919 Carranza set the price at 60 pesos per hectare with a

maximum purchase of ten hectares.544 Realizing the prohibitive price of the land,

the next president Alvaro Obregón (1920-1924) cut the price in half to 30 pesos

per hectare in 1922.545 The privatization of the works excluded a majority of

villagers from the potential benefits of newly fertile lands.

Interest remained scarce until the government offered the much more

agreeable price of 1 peso per hectare (an individual could purchase up to twenty).

While the revolutionary government of the 1920s upheld small producers as the

privileged subject of Mexico’s agricultural progress, there is no evidence that the

new landowners successfully reclaimed the land for agricultural production. In the

1920s, while the government sought to resolve the problem of Lake Texcoco

through private initiative, many lakeshore communities petitioned for land through

the agrarian reform.

544
“Acuerdo relativo al fraccionamiento de los terrenos del antiguo Lago de
Texcoco,” Diario Oficial de la Federación, November 10, 1919. See also García
Luna, 39.
545
García Luna, 40.

280
 During much of the period of armed revolution (1910-1920), the Mexican

state fulfilled a double role as landowner of the vast lakebed and as arbiter of both

land and resource disputes within the federal zone. With the post-revolutionary

agrarian reform, the state performed the additional role as the distributor of lands

in and around the lakebed. Land reform served as the life preserver for villagers

who saw their means of subsistence eroded by encroaching haciendas and the

exclusionary state-run public works project. The communities around Lake

Texcoco shared similar experiences to those of Xochimilco, only on a much

greater scale given the advanced state of drainage. In both cases, the combination

of agrarian reform and environmental degradation gave rise to a new

environmental imaginary of dry farming practices. However, communities were

limited in what they could obtain. Without the infrastructure necessary to drain

the salts and fertilize the land, villagers were incapable of constructing a new

economy, no matter how much land was granted.546 Yet the regional power that

the ejidos attained in the 1920s proved instrumental in forging new political

connections and negotiating conventional agricultural economies with the

reinvigorated land reclamation works executed under Cárdenas and Ávila

Camacho.

Two communities on the western shore of the lakebed, San Juan de Aragón

and Santiago Atzacoalco, embodied many of the conflicts over land and resources

546
Historians have largely dodged questions of soil quality during Mexico’s post-
revolutionary agrarian reform. One exception is Joseph Cotter, Troubled Harvest:
Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880-2002 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).

281
in this period. In 1917, over forty residents from Santiago Atzacoalco recalled

when the government unrightfully expropriated lands for the relocation of the

Remedios River during the reign of Díaz, a project linked to the general drainage

of Mexico City.547 Similarly, the campesinos demanded access to the restricted

federal lands east of the Gran Canal, which had created a barrier separating their

village from the lakebed.548 Dozens of villagers from San Juan de Aragón related

another tale of dwindling resources, only this time more directly the result of

government works:

This pueblo has sustained itself principally from the salt marsh and from
the different products of Lake Texcoco…. Now all those resources have
been exhausted, as much from the desiccation of the lake as from the
diversion of the Guadalupe River, which provided us, apart from irrigation
water, the land that we used for the extraction of the salts…There are no
longer work options other than agriculture and ranching.549

Other communities similarly highlighted their abysmal economic conditions in the

face of hacienda encroachment and a disappearing and restricted lake environment.

For all these petitioners, the agrarian reform was the only hope for a future in the

countryside.

Despite years of waiting, most communities received lands of varying

quantity and quality in the 1920s. In 1922 agrarian officials reversed previous

conclusions on the fertility of Atzacoalco’s lands. Instead of “easily cultivable,”

they were generally saline and not arable. The government overruled the

547
Archivo General Agrario (AGA): 23/913, legajo 7, Atzacoalco petition, April
14, 1917.
548
AGA: 23/913, legajo 7, Report by Alejandro Argandar, May 21, 1918.
549
AGA: 25/914 Legajo 1, San Juan de Aragón petition, May 15, 1918.

282
objections of the owner of the neighboring Hacienda Risco Roberto Martinez,

confirming that the village possessed scant fertile land and that salt extraction

provided little remuneration. The same year a presidential resolution confirmed

the grant, and the village received 50 hectares from The Hacienda Risco and 209

from federal Texcoco lands.550 Although the ejido parcel was a start, it was a far

cry from satisfying the villagers’ needs.

A few years later, engineers built a canal through the village’s new ejido

lands without installing a bridge for the ejidatarios to cross. Instead of a short

jaunt back to the town, the engineers’ work turned the walk into a nine-kilometer

journey. In response, the campesinos petitioned for a bridge “as otherwise we

would bring to a standstill our future development…because the ejido is all we

have.” The missive continued, “We know that the work is of the utmost

importance, but just as you search for a solution either to the floods or the dust

storms that rise from Lake Texcoco, we should be offered the easiest means of
551
communication.” In a fashion similar to the 1918 petitions, the ejidatarios

recognized the precedence of the public works’ urban objectives, but claimed that

their needs could be accommodated without sacrificing those goals.

The land available to San Juan de Aragón was similarly pitiful in the early

1920s. Hinting at external influence in the town, one surveyor observed that thirty-

nine of its 148 hectares were controlled by several outsiders.552 The Hacienda

550
AGA 23/913, legajo 8, Presidential Resolution, November, 1922
551
AGA 23/913: legajo 8, Luis García to CNA, April 28, 1926.
552
AGA: 23/914, Legajo 3, agrarian survey, May 15, 1918.

283
Santa Ana Aragón, owned by the Porfirian business magnet and brother of Iñigo,

Remigio Noriega, completely surrounded village lands.553 In 1921, agrarian

officials agreed to expropriate over 1000 hectares of land from the hacienda.

Unsurprisingly, Noriega was primed to contest what he perceived as nothing short

of government insolence. He shrewdly deceived the campesinos into believing

that they would have to reimburse him for the land, and that if they did not, “he

would seize our land, even our homes.”554 With destitution in mind, the

campesinos rejected the government’s offer. The hacendado’s subterfuge took

him only so far. The villagers soon realized their gaffe, and agrarian officials

accepted the renewal of their request.

Undaunted, the landowner continued his defense, invoking notions of

productive agriculture and property rights as ammunition against campesinos’

water-borne economies and increasingly urban lifestyles. “For nineteen

consecutive years,” Noriega’s representative averred, “he has with rare tenacity

been improving the lands, which were once absolutely arid and unproductive.”

Formerly under water, the land, according to its owner, was rendered productive

through costly works and large investments. According to typical productivist

reasoning that shunned campesino land use, Noriega claimed to have ‘created’

fertility and was furious that his efforts would “benefit those who have not put

553
The Spanish Remigio Noriega, in partnership with his wealthy brother Iñigo,
won contracts from Díaz in the late nineteenth century to reclaim Lake Chalco and
a marshland outside Naranja, Michoacán for agricultural production.
554
AGA: 23/914, legajo 3, villagers to CNA, August 21, 1922.

284
forth any effort.”555 He cynically derided the villagers as workers without interest

in agriculture, arguing that the ejido lands would be abandoned and revert to their

natural saline state. Obregón rubber-stamped the 1,074-hectare grant over the

hacendado’s powerful remonstrations. Regardless, the tract the villagers received

was not the one they sought, but rather another poor-quality parcel that lacked

Noriega’s irrigation and drainage works.556 The ejidatarios had to wait for

Cárdenas’s revolutionary vision, when the ejido became the vehicle for local

development, to prove Noriega wrong about their unwillingness or inability to

make the land produce.

Since the lakebed produced little without substantial investments, many

poor residents continued to fish, hunt, and extract salts. Even these enterprises

were diminishing in value, however. The ducks and geese that used to cover the

Valley of Mexico’s skies no longer arrived as before, victims of the unsustainable

hunting practice, the armada, and habitat loss. 557 A 1930s conservation agreement

with the United States prohibited the customary armada, further affecting

campesino economy. Ejidatarios of Peñón de los Baños, a community south of

San Juan de Aragón, pleaded with President Cárdenas to revoke the ban and

declared that without maize “the only hope is from the duck.” They appropriated

the burgeoning ideology of resource nationalism in 1930s Mexico, affirming “we

555
AGA: 23/914 Legajo 3, Eduardo Pérez, October 10, 1922.
556
AGA: 23/914, legajo 3, report by Edmundo Vázquez, July 29, 1923.
557
Gibson, 343; and Ola Apenas, “The Pond in Our Backyard,” Mexican Life XIX,
1943, 15-18.

285
believe that what there is in Mexico should belong to the Mexicans.”558 Whereas

fishing obviously declined, salt production became easier due to desiccation.

Political economy rendered it an ancillary activity, however. Residents sold

tequesquite (sodium chloride and carbonate) to soap factories and some haciendas,

but competition from foreign trade was squeezing small-producers out of the

market. In addition, its scant commercial value made it unsuitable for large-scale

exploitation, whose costs exceeded profits.559

Neither agrarian officials nor the public works proposals provided the

infrastructure necessary to convert the infertile ejido lands into substitutes for

moribund village economies. Since the ejidatarios did not legally own their

parcels, they could not offer their land as collateral to obtain credit for machinery

and other tools that could fertilize the lands.560 Lakeshore residents stood between

the half-fulfilled promises of the agrarian reform and the malaise of the

floundering land reclamation project. The communities were left with land where

often times one could “dig over a meter deep to bury the salts and still not obtain

[productivity].”561 If the barren land threatened to eliminate the rural economy, the

558
AGN: LCR 502.1/1, Ejidal commissioner to Cárdenas, November 17, 1936.
559
AGA: 23/913 Legajo 8, Report by engineer, April 4, 1923.
560
Christopher Boyer, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian
Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920-1935 (Stanford: Stanford Univ.
Press, 2003), 76.
561
AGA: 23/2171:legajo 7, Ejidal commissioner of San Salvador Atenco to CNA,
June 26, 1929. Or, in the words of writer Juan Rulfo, they gave them the land, but
nothing would “take root and come up…not even buzzards.” See The Burning
Plain and other Stories (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 12.

286
dust that arose from that land posed an increasing threat to the city that engineered

those environmental conditions.

The Dust Strikes Back: Public Debates in the 1920s and 1930s

While the agrarian reform diverted campesino dissent away from drainage

and land reclamation, the increasing intensity—and perhaps frequency—of dust

storms (tolvaneras) led some engineers to question the enduring paradigms of

development. The dust storms were most frequent in the warm, dry season

between January and May when winds whipped out of the north and east, picking

up the contaminated, salted earth of the lake basin only to then dump it on

Mexico’s largest urban center. They literally brought the urban and rural together,

just as occasional floods had only decades earlier. The dust blowing in from the

countryside generated renewed discussions among the urban elite over how to

solve the problem of Lake Texcoco, which in turn provoked diverging

environmental imaginaries among the technical elite.

The idea of preserving lake Texcoco had a long, if inconsistent, history,

extending back into the late nineteenth century when engineers considered the

drawbacks of massive drainage plans. But, during the 1920s and early 1930s, it

appeared that the ideological balance was tipping away from agricultural

production and toward a new paradigm based on afforestation and lake

regeneration. Engineers, armed with rising soil as ammunition, challenged the

predominant land-reclamation paradigm. Some of the participants in the debate

287
began to hammer away at the long-standing perspective of water-as-enemy,

espousing a view that considered the lake as something worth reviving. While

stripped of its agricultural component, advocates of afforestation and lake

regeneration sang the same urban developmentalist song, seeking the curtailment

of tolvaneras and the promotion of public hygiene.

The dust storm became a normal, seasonal phenomenon, almost equal to

the first hot days of spring. It was a slow, silent killer, causing grave respiratory

and gastro-intestinal illnesses. When a big one pummeled the city, these

“avalanches of soil” grabbed headlines. On June 1, 1923, one of these severe

tolvaneras swept across the city. It was so intense that “it was difficult to make out

the silhouette of a person from three or four meters away.”562 The saline dust

would land everywhere. It would ruin food on market stands, it would enter

houses and businesses, and it would be swallowed and inhaled. With each deadly

storm, the poorer neighborhoods of the city, closest to the lake, were most

affected.563

The most sinister dust storms, especially, generated both public outcry and

disputes about how to resolve the depressing condition of Lake Texcoco. After the

suffocating 1923 storm, one citizen asserted that lake drainage “has brought not

one benefit to Mexico City but indeed many evils.” Based on statistics of

mortality, he continued, the desiccation of the lake “was completely useless” and

562
“Una Tolvanera ayer invadió la metropolis,” El Excélsior, June 1, 1923
563
“La Capital cubierta con un manto de fino salitre,” El Universal, June 18, 1932.

288
its land “does not even serve to distribute among the indigenes.”564 Journalists,

echoing the words of conservationists like Quevedo, began to see the tolvanera as

part and parcel of the larger problem of deforestation. On June 4, the popular daily

Excelsior warned that the invasion of saline sand into the city and its surroundings

was only worsening, and it would proceed to transform the Valley of Mexico into

a place unfit for vegetation.565 The next day a more alarmist article appeared in

the same newspaper. The dust storms arose primarily from the lake basin but also

from deforested land. The consequences were immense as the tolvaneras

threatened to transform the Valley into a desert, “presaging the hunger and

desolation that already reign in African, Asian, and some European regions where

there were once magnificent forests.”566

The daily El Demócrata matched Excelsior in its coverage on deforestation

and dust storms in June of 1923. The newspaper was quick to link the tolvaneras

of the Valley to forest policy and waxed almost daily about the horrifying

consequences of deforestation. Editors compared the health of Mexico City to

“those on the edge of the Ganges” due to the invasion of dust, and they equated the

destruction of forests with the nation stabbing its own heart with a dagger.567 The

564
“Ya van a desaparecer las peligrosas talvaneras [sic],” Universal Gráfico, June
6, 1923. According to the revolutionary politician Alberto J. Pani, Mexico City
was the most unhygienic city in the world. He saw the dust rising from the
Texcoco basin as a contributing factor. See his Hygiene in Mexico, 7.
565
“Grave Peligro para el Valle,” Excélsior, June 4, 1923.
566
“La amenaza de desolacion de nuestro valle,” El Excélsior, June 5, 1923. The
editors considered deforestation a threat to development and feared that Mexico
could soon join other nations as bottom-dwellers in the hierarchy of nations.
567
See El Demócrata, articles on June 4, 1923 and June 7, 1923.

289
Forestry Agency issued a stinging critique of Congress for not passing forest

legislation while the House of Representatives “drowns daily in the dust storms

that deforestation provoke.”568 The Forestry Agency and the editors of El

Demócrata shared the idea that only state-sponsored reforestation could effectively

do the job—along with the education of the campesinos, whom El Demócrata

claimed should be treated “like children.”569 These were not the first discussions

over how to put an end to the tolvaneras, but they were some of the more intense

ones. The Texcoco tolvaneras galvanized support for forest protection and

creation, three years before the first postrevolutionary forest law was passed.

Mexico City’s dailies, adopting Quevedo’s ideas as their own, deemed vegetation

a source of national prosperity and a key to Mexico City’s future.

Science became a weapon in the debates about how the lakebed could best

be transformed in benefit of the city. Similar to the way in which El Demócrata

approached the problem of Texcoco, Quevedo viewed the reality of worsening

dust storms and deforestation as further incentive to execute afforestation plans.

Reminiscent of Barragán’s conclusions years earlier, he argued—with some

reason—that Díaz’s drainage project was not the chief cause of the dust storms.

Rather, because of sedimentation, the lake had lost its carrying capacity. Quevedo

lauded the massive technical work and considered continued drainage both

necessary and correct. Writing in 1922, he referred to lake regeneration as a

568
Quoted in “Es inexplicable la morosidad de la camara de diputados para
aprobar la ley forestal” El Demócrata, June 2, 1923.
569
Editorial in El Demócrata, June 22, 1923.

290
“utopia that can only sustain itself through the complete ignorance of the problem

at hand,” for it would require the excavation of enormous quantities of soil. For

Quevedo, these schemes contradicted nature and reflected “human

stubbornness.”570 He proposed state-run afforestation for the lakebed, not

agricultural endeavors and certainly not lake regeneration.571 His afforestation

plan, however, required its own engineering to extirpate the salts that stunted plant

growth.

Some engineers such as Ruíz de Velasco and Alonzo Patiño believed that

Díaz’s drainage project was an error but advocated land reclamation as the only

true solution, not lake regeneration. For these engineers, not only did the reality of

the rising lake bottom impede the viability of lake regeneration, but the expensive

hydraulic infrastructure already in place was too costly to suddenly abandon. The

latter of these claims corresponds with what historian Martin Melosi and others

have referred to as “path dependency” and what the geographer David Harvey has

termed “social sclerosis.” Neither of these conceptualizations, however, accounts

570
Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, “Las polvaredas de los terrneos tequezquitosos del
antiguo Lago de Texcoco y los procedimientos de enyerbe para remediarlas,” Las
MSCAA 40 (1922): 534; and Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, “La necesaria orientación
en los trabajos de la desecación del Lago de Texcoco y problemas con que ella se
ligan,” MSCAA 40 (1922): 291.
571
Quevedo, “Las polvaredas de los terrenos,” 535 and 545-548. Even before
Barragán’s project in the 1910s, Quevedo was a proponent of land reclamation for
farming, but by 1922 he had changed his tune. For his small agricultural
experiments in the lakebed during the Díaz regime, see Alejandro Tortolero, El
agua y su historia, 83-4.

291
for how ecological change, in this case sedimentation, alkalization, and dust

storms, conditioned discourses about urban infrastructure and development. 572

The idea of reclamation through fertilization and/or afforestation

increasingly had to share time with the vision that the lake system—or at least part

of it—should be regenerated. Luis G. Caceaga linked the desiccation of the lake to

the subsidence of the city’s soil, which posed a grave threat to the city’s

infrastructure and architecture. The remedy, he asserted, was to rescue all the

Valley’s lakes.573 Over a decade later Gilberto Galindo advised that “the spongy

saline desert be turned into a giant Xochimilco…with wider, longer, and deeper

canals.”574 All that was needed, he quixotically stated, were “a few tons of

explosives,” which when detonated would form “enormous water deposits.”575

One of the most imaginative public proponents of lake regeneration was

the engineer Rafael de la Cerda, the frequent contributor to El Universal on issues

of environmental management. De la Cerda in the early 1930s proposed that a

lake up to 40 kilometers long and up to 30 wide be created throughout the entire

Valley of Mexico using the most modern dredge technology. Such a public work,

he argued, “would give the entire Valley enormous beauty [and] clear health

572
See, “Un río de oro se ha vaciado sin provecho en el Lago de Texcoco,”
Excélsior, December 6, 1922; Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City; and David
Harvey, 416.
573
See the description of Caceaga’s proposals in Quevedo’s very critical response,
“La ciudad de Mexico no se hunde por la falta de lagos en sus alrededores”
MSCAA 41 (1922), 49.
574
“Unica Forma de resolver el problema del Lago de Texcoco,” Excélsior, June
5, 1935.
575
Ibid. Galindo’s proposal makes clear that lake recuperation was no more
“natural” than land reclamation efforts.

292
advantages.”576 Turning back the clock to the days of a much more ecologically

diverse Valley of Mexico, de la Cerda acknowledged, would be costly, but he

argued that the economic, recreational, and health benefits to local inhabitants

would compensate the price over the long run.577

Galindo and de la Cerda eroded the water-as-enemy ideology and also

steadfastly opposed the notion that the lands could be made fertile. Together with

Quevedo, they were the trailblazers of a nascent vision of the Texcoco basin and of

the Valley of Mexico, an imaginary that flowered in the 1970s. These engineers

laid the foundation for Mexico City’s influential urban-environmental movement,

which advocates the regeneration of the Valley’s lakes and promotes reforestation.

The movement incubated within the dominant early twentieth-century urban order,

which prioritized the supposed hygienic and economic needs of the growing

metropolis.

“From Pariahs to Citizens:” Land Reclamation for the Ejidos, 1934-1946

Mexico’s post-revolutionary government, despite discussions during the

Carranza regime, was not interested in foregoing agricultural production in the

Texcoco bed. The governments of Lázaro Cárdenas and Manuel Ávila Camacho

embarked on the most diligent effort yet to transform the land for productive use

as well as to prevent dust storms by planting trees and shrubs. Couched in a

576
Rafael de la Cerda, “Arenitas y Tolvaneras,” El Universal, June 21, 1932.
577
See also his “Rincón de la maravilla: el porvenir del Valle de Mexico,” El
Universal, April 2, 1942.

293
discourse of the public interest, large-scale reclamation under Cárdenas had

different priorities than past projects. The expansion of ejidos in the early 1920s

reduced the portion of the lakebed belonging to the state, so any major

governmental effort to fertilize the lands needed to consider their interests.

Moreover, Cárdenas entered office on the populist platform to rejuvenate the ejido,

and it would have been politically unwise for him to renege on that promise in

such a high-profile project. For both administrations, reclamation became a way

to boost agricultural production in the service of a growing city as well as to

fertilize ejidatarios’ centrally located lands.

Yet there was a more situational reason driving the renewed interest in

resolving the ‘Texcoco problem.’ Cárdenas’s key political constituents were

workers—specifically industrial unions—and peasants, but his radical social

program generated a number of enemies. The urban middle class was one of these

groups that increasingly felt alienated by the administration. As discussed in

chapter 3, Cárdenas seemed to devote much more attention to the surrounding

countryside, carrying out land reform, installing potable water service, sewerage,

lighting, and roads, than to urban infrastructural needs. Land reclamation was an

opportunity for the government to please both city and country by fomenting

agricultural production and eliminating the dust storms once and for all. Like most

public works, reclamation served a legitimizing function for the Cardenista state,

but this one was especially important in smoothing over emerging divisions

between the urban and the rural. Cárdenas thus bridged urban development with

294
his rural revolutionary program, linking local environmental citizenship to the

postrevolutionary state.578

Cárdenas sought first to drain, fertilize, and reforest the lands in and around

the ejidos of San Juan de Aragón and Peñón de los Baños, as this area on the

southwestern portion of the lakebed was situated next to the fertile waters of the

Gran Canal and close to several fresh water streams. If engineers were to succeed

at land reclamation, this area was the place to start. In 1934, the government’s

initial plan was to indefinitely expropriate 400 and 300 hectares of land from the

ejidos of San Juan de Aragón and Peñón de los Baños respectively in exchange for

five-year permits and subsidies for usage of the Gran Canal’s rich waters.579 In

addition to draining and fertilizing the expropriated lands, the expropriation plan

called for the Forestry Department to curtail the dust storms by creating a curtain

of vegetation. 580

In a 1935 meeting with a regional ejido organizer concerning the public

works, the campesinos of San Juan de Aragón were seemingly unaware that the

project entailed land expropriation. The ejidatarios expressed tremendous gratitude

578
Cárdenas’s aim to transform the Texcoco bed for the public good paralleled
similar efforts in Franklin Roosevelt’s United States in places such as the
Tennessee River Valley and the Columbia River. See for example, Richard White,
The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1995), chapter 3, “The Power of the River.”
579
AGA: 23/914:legajo 3, “Memorandum por el ingeniero Jorge Rodríguez
Moguel,” June 4, 1936.
580
See “La reforestación en el vaso de Texcoco”, El Universal, January 27, 1936;
and “El Gral. Cárdenas en San Juan de Aragón,” El Universal, January 31, 1936.
Also see “Otra Visita a las obras de Texcoco,” El Nacional, December 3, 1937.

295
that at last “the government shares in their desire to work the land.”581 Protesting

his exclusion from the beneficial project, one attendee expressed hope that those

left out “could also have the chance to conquer their plots for agricultural

production.”582 Once the ejidatarios realized the government planned

expropriation, they rejected the offer, and government officials discarded

expropriation as a principal means by which to pursue development in the lakebed.

Negotiations between the government and the ejidos on the western shore

begot a compromise in early 1936: villagers provided the Forestry Department

with access to part of their ejido in exchange for government-funded irrigation

works utilizing the waters of the Gran Canal. The concession to use the rich aguas

negras of the city was instrumental in the transformation of the briny soil. Once,

communities such as Aragón and Peñon de los Baños looked askance at the

monumental Porfirian drainage project, but under Cárdenas, the villagers

embraced it to farm their barren lands. In addition to irrigation water, engineers

helped ejidatarios to install drainage systems and plow the land. 583 In total, the

government assigned 1,400,000 pesos over two years to execute the reclamation
584
works for the two ejidos. These communities finally garnered the support

necessary to render the lands fertile. They also maintained a level of autonomy to

581
AGA: 23/914: legajo 4, meeting summary, April 19, 1935.
582
Ibid.
583
Ibid., and García Luna, 62-3. The Bosque de Aragón, an expansive urban park
in which the Mexico City zoo is now located, originated in the work of the
Forestry Department during the late 1930s.
584
AGA: 23/914: legajo 4, report by Federal District Government, February 14,
1936

296
ensure that the works would not result in another form of dispossession in the

guise of state aid. The Cardenista state was neither monolithic nor omnipotent,
585
even in its own backyard. The government was obligated to adapt to local

political culture, highlighting the importance of the ejidatarios’ environmental

citizenship in the evolution of the state’s urban-driven project. The lakeshore

poor, therefore, became agents in Cardenista state formation even if the

government retained ownership of all machinery and works on the land.

Fig. 9—Land Reclamation in Texcoco, 1930s. AGN: LCR 545.3/48.

585
Alan Knight, “Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?” Texas Papers on Mexico
no. 90-09. (Austin: The Mexican Center of the Institute of Latin American Studies,
1994). See also, Gil Joseph, Everyday Forms of State Formation.

297
 Between 1936 and 1938 the public works in the Texcoco basin spread to

include other ejidal lands from a variety of lakeside towns. By 1938, the project

was reaping immense political dividends for President Cárdenas, who not only

could boast that he was putting an end to the dreaded urban dust storms but also

aiding the rural poor in the process. That same year, Cárdenas issued a decree

stating that ejido production would be prioritized in the public works over all other

social interests.586 Clearly, the inclusive tendency within the land-reclamation

vision had assumed a dominant role, as Cárdenas attempted to turn the rural poor

into productive revolutionary citizens.

The campesinos’ unremitting support of the project became evident when a

political scandal involving fired union workers threatened to bring down José

Favela, the director of the works. The ejidos that worked in tandem with the

public works project vociferously defended the engineer for his labor “done with

intelligence, honor and care.” The ejidal commissioner of Santiago Aztcoalco

declared that his work “has resulted in the immediate benefit for the comrade

campesinos of these villages, which have provided their labor contingents,

winning the means of subsistence for their families.” “In the future,” he added, the

campesinos would “continue realizing the extensive agrarian program of the

Government of the Republic [and] respond with all the necessary diligence to the

development of these works, making the land produce even more and better for the

586
See García Luna, 62-3.

298
grandeur of the country and this area of the Valley of Mexico.”587 The

commissioner from Atenco, championed Favela for “fully guaranteeing the

program that the Revolution turned Government is carrying out.”588 Further

support of Favela soon followed as the ejidatarios had developed a strong personal

bond with the director and associated his downfall with the expiration of the

project itself and thus the gains made over several years.589 If these same

campesinos had previously rejected the land-reclamation paradigm, they now

embraced it under the banner of populist development.

587
AGN: LCR 889 545.3/48, various ejidos to Cárdenas, February 21, 1939.
588
Ibid.
589
Ibid., March 4, 1939; and March 15, 1939. Among these correspondences with
President Cárdenas, more than a dozen communities endorsed Favela, including
Peñón de los Baños, San Juan de Aragón, Santa Clara, Ixtapam, Atenco, and
Santiago Atzacoalco.

299
 Fig. 10—Afforestation in the Texcoco Bed, 1939. Biblioteca Lerdo de
Tejada: Archivos Económicos, Lago de Texcoco-desecación Agricultura,
December, 1939.

Land reclamation flourished well into the regime of Manuel Ávila

Camacho, extending beyond the confines of the 27,000 hectares that defined the

lakebed in the twentieth century. Confronting engineers who scorned the project as

counterproductive—especially given the available tracts of arable land

elsewhere—the government justified the project as “elevating the cultural and

economic level of 50,000 families.”590 Indeed, as one campesino organization put

it, the works—most notably the concession to use the city’s drainage—

590
AGN: Manuel Ávila Camacho, 523 494/2, “El Tesoro de Moctezuma
Encontrado en el Lago de Texcoco,” 1942.

300
transformed villagers “from pariahs to the category of citizens.”591 The public

works aided dozens of villages in the fertilization of their land, but not every ejido

received equal treatment. Because they were crucial forestation sites and prime

beneficiaries of the drainage waters, San Juan de Aragón, Peñon de los Baños, and

San Pedro Xalostoc on the western shore enjoyed the vast majority of farmland.

Other ejidos, although they fervently supported the works, were not as fortunate.

Santiago Atzcoalco, Ixtapalapa, Ecatepec and others were left more with empty

promises than concrete results.592

A 1949 report by the director of the reclamation project Fernando Vizcaíno

claimed that by 1946, 3,300 of the lakebed’s 27,000 hectares had been drained and

readied for cultivation. Each hectare demanded a whopping 3,300 pesos

(remarkably higher than the figure of the 1910s), and in total, land reclamation

consumed nearly 14 million pesos over an eleven-year span.593 Vizcaíno detailed

President Alemán’s project to reclaim another 11,700 hectares over seven years,

which in his estimation would exceed an astounding 49 million pesos.594 This

reclamation proposal reached deeper into government coffers than past works, but

unlike those spearheaded by Cárdenas and Ávila Camacho, concern for the

surrounding poor was conspicuously absent. Alemán supported reclamation

591
AGN: Manuel Ávila Camacho, 404.1/824, “Frente de campesinos ribereños al
ex lago de Texcoco to Ávila Camacho, March 4, 44
592
See Ibid., chart and map; and AHA, Consultivo Técnico, 177, 1424, see map.
593
Fernando Vizcaíno, “El Lago de Texcoco,” Ingeñiería hidraúlica en México 3,
3 (1949), 17-18. Including the works executed to industrialize the basin’s salts,
the total expenses of the project reached 23 million pesos.
594
Ibid., 20. The average yearly sum of 7 million pesos would have amounted to
around 1% of the national budget.

301
schemes for individual landowners and the planting of salt-resistant shrubbery in a

last-ditch effort to forestall the tolvaneras.

Fig. 11—Miguel Alemán visiting the Texcoco works, 1948. AGN:

Hermanos Mayo, 3.260 (1948).

Historians generally identify Ávila Camacho’s term as a transition to

Alemán’s conservative turn in 1946. In the case of the Texcoco public works, the

persistent populist program under Ávila Camacho suggests greater continuity with

Cardenismo and a rupture with Alemán. Such immense investments would have

to be compensated through land sales, at the expense of neighboring ejidos. Once

again, the state excluded the lakeshore poor from the land reclamation vision.

The experiences of San Juan Aragón highlighted this policy shift. In 1938,

the ejido handed over 94 hectares to the government so that the National Irrigation

302
Commission could install an agricultural experimentation camp. The government,

in turn, agreed to return the parcel “with all the uses that were obtained.” Five

years later, the ejido received only a small portion of the reclaimed tract, at which

time the campesinos decided to occupy and work the larger portion of land.

Despite a promise from Alemán to officially return the remaining land as well, the

ejidatarios reported that in the summer of 1949 “federal forces raided the

tract…trying to evict us with violence.”595 In 1952, the ejidatarios anxiously

requested that agrarian authorities continue the works that Cárdenas had initiated,

as “all the machinery and agricultural instruments were sold,” leaving only part of

the irrigation service in order.596 Unsurprisingly, their petition was denied.

A month later, David Arias, who purchased a tract of reclaimed land in

1952, notified agrarian officials that six ejidatarios from Aragón had invaded his

“legitimate property” and had planted seeds “without any rights whatsoever.” Half

of the ejido’s lands were abandoned for lack of resources and another tract was

occupied by friends of the corrupt ejidal commissioner.597 Agrarian officials

expelled the ejidatarios from Arias’s property. By mid century, the village faced

595
AGA: 23/914: legajo 3, Ejidal commissioner to Agrarian Department, October
19, 1949.
596
AGA: 23/914 legajo 3, ejido to Agrarian Department, December 11, 1952.
597
Ibid, Arias to Agrarian Department, January 10, 1953; and Ibid, January 14,
1954.

303
an abusive ejido administration and an almost complete dearth of arable land.

Both these conditions caused the decline of this once populous town.598

The troubles faced by this ejido were emblematic of developments around

the lake basin. The rural poor saw their hopes for productive land vanish amid the

reversion of the soil to its more natural state: covered in a layer of salt and bereft

of all but the most resistant vegetation. As one local peasant quipped, the Texcoco

bed was analogous to cultivating in a ‘hot comal [griddle].”599 The lakeshore poor

left in droves to search for work in the bustling capital, often selling their lands to

urban developers. Whereas fertilization for the ejidos met its demise, the scheme

to industrialize Texcoco’s salts saw resounding success. The para-state company

Sosa Texcoco began operations in the 1940s and soon became the top producer of

alkali in Latin America.600 The sharp contrast between the successful profit-

making scheme and the failed ejidal reclamation works highlighted both the

triumph of the exclusive tendency within the larger public works project and the

shifting priorities of the Mexican state, from relative support of popular

environmental imaginaries to a vision of an industrial, technocratic future.

Vizcaíno’s project was doomed to failure by virtue of its prohibitive cost as

well as the inexorable encroachment of the city. Even Vizcaíno realized that

598
AGA: 25/914: legajo 8, Agrarian Census, 1948. The 1948 agrarian census put
the village’s population at 230. In the early 1920s, the population exceeded one
thousand people.
599
“El estudio para fertilizar el vaso Texcoco y los sanos propositos oficiales,” El
Nacional, April 24, 1935.
600
Benito Bucay, “Apuntes de historia de la química industrial en México,”
Revista de la Sociedad Química de México 45, 3 (July-September 2001).

304
clients would struggle to make the land produce at a rate that would compensate

their own investments. Those occupants closest to the expanding metropolis

decided to urbanize rather than cultivate their tracts.601 Even if government

engineers believed that the land could be rendered arable, the investment would

bear little utility if houses, apartments, and parking lots were to fill the landscape.

If not for urbanization, it is entirely possible that land reclamation for

agricultural production would have continued. This raises an intriguing question:

what sustained the Sisyphean project once government officials abandoned the

ejidos and realized the prohibitive expenses necessary to maintain the lands? Of

course, the original motive of the project remained. Governing elites sought to

transform a perceived wasteland that posed threats to economic development into a

source of development itself, under the watchful eye of the government. Yet the

continuation of the works likely held a deeper rationale. Successful developmental

projects elsewhere in Mexico would have encouraged confident perseverance in

the Texcoco bed, even in the face of mounting obstacles.602 The idea that modern

engineering could surmount all obstacles to serve human needs held sway, and the

works were evidence that the government was in constant pursuit of

601
Vizcaíno, 21.
602
Mexico witnessed a rush of dam-building activity in the 1930s and 1940s that
provided nourishing irrigation water to arid land in northern Mexico. Advertised
as paragons of hydraulic engineering, these public works turned low-yielding areas
into productive farmland.

305
development.603 And as I have argued here, the lakebed was an especially

important space to develop.

Conclusion

The problem of Lake Texcoco, ultimately a challenge to both urban and

rural development, was not resolved, as Díaz maintained, with the general

desagüe. In fact, the partial desiccation of the lake marked the beginning of efforts

to transform the lakebed through environmental engineering. If Díaz rested on the

laurels of the Gran Canal (and elsewhere largely relegated the task of land

reclamation to private interests), the revolutionary state assumed a leading role in

fomenting agriculture and afforestation in the Texcoco bed. While the lakeshore

poor did not defeat the exclusionary land reclamation project and retain their local

water-based economies, after 1910 the question of land tenure assumed a

prominent position. By acquiring ejido plots through the agrarian reform,

campesinos adopted a distinct environmental imaginary, one more in tune with the

government’s developmental agenda. Their control over thousands of hectares of

the lakebed placed them in an ideal position to shape the next round of large-scale

land reclamation in the 1930s and 1940s.

603
Land reclamation in the Texcoco bed can be seen as a microcosm for
Mexican—and for that matter Latin American—economic development. The state
strives for it, but it always remains just beyond reach. The artist Francis Alÿs
explores the tantalizing nature of development in Latin America using striptease as
a metaphor. See his excellent documentary video, The Politics of Rehearsal, 2005.

306
 Faced with the failures to reclaim the uncovered lands, Mexico City

residents began to question the government’s developmentalist script. Despite

often opposing viewpoints, engineers, journalists, and other residents of the city

proposed an alternative reading of the same script. Here, urban hygiene and

prosperity remained the chief objectives of environmental engineering, at the

expense of what was perceived to be hubristic agricultural experimentation. The

widespread media coverage of the dust storms notwithstanding, the government

pursued fertilization for agricultural production.

When the Cárdenas administration approached the ejidos about

expropriating their land for the reclamation and afforestation of the lakebed, the

campesinos balked at the idea. After an agreement was reached, the political ties

between the Texcoco hinterlands and the public works project strengthened.

Indeed, the local poor became the principal advocates both of the project and the

government’s larger agrarian program. Land reclamation had gone from an

exclusive project working against their local economies to an inclusive one for

communities. Inclusion did not mean control, however. The government

continued to manage the project from above, and all infrastructure fell under state

ownership. Land reclamation in the 30s and 40s may have been populist, but it

was also highly paternalistic: the campesinos would reap the benefits of the state’s

good will thereby becoming productive revolutionary citizens and key government

supporters.

307
 The cessation of the public works in the early 1950s marked the end of

nearly a half-century of experiments in agriculture and afforestation—whether

exclusionary or inclusive of local community economies. Instead of an ordered

system of fertile and forested plots, the lakebed quickly converted into the focal

point of poor urban settlement. Ironically, the project, which had urban objectives

at its core, received its death knell from the city it had sought to protect. The city

covered over half of the lakebed by the early 1970s. The largest settlement in the

lakebed was Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, subdivided by ex-military officers who had

bought the land on the cheap, mushroomed to over a million inhabitants seemingly

overnight. 604 Ejidatarios illegally sold their worthless lands, and developers sold

other plots in and around the lakebed. A geography that once sustained a wealthy

ecosystem and a diverse lake-based economy now contains the shacks of millions

of poor and the “agricultural” land of thousands more. The rural poor still relate to

the state through an increasingly intricate agrarian bureaucracy. But with urban

settlements, concern over the fertility of the soil gave way to concerns over rents,

water supply, sanitation, and flood control.

604
For various perspectives on the urbanization of peripheral lands during the
twentieth century, see Diane Davis; Perló Cohen, La estructura urbana; Soledad
Cruz; Durand; Wayne Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City
(Stanford: University Press, 1975); and Alan Gilbert and Peter Ward, Housing,
The State, and the Poor: Policy and Practice in Three Latin American Cities
(Cambridge University Press, 1985).

308
 Conclusion

“One of the oddities with cities is that they become more and more fixed
with time, more and more sclerotic, precisely because of the way they
incrementally add things on rather than totally shedding their skins and beginning
all over again. Planners, architects, urban designers—‘urbanists’ in short—all
face one common problem: how to plan the construction of the next layers in the
urban palimpsest in ways that match future wants and needs without doing too
much violence to all that has gone before. What has gone before is important
precisely because it is the locus of collective memory, of political identity, and of
powerful symbolic meanings at the same time as it constitutes a bundle of
resources constituting possibilities as well as barriers in the built environment for
creative social change.” David Harvey (1996).605

One July afternoon in 2008, I sat at a table in the National Agrarian

Archive (AGA), located on the top floor of a National Agrarian Registry building

in Mexico City, researching the land disputes between San Juan de Aragón and

Noriega’s hacienda of the same name. The building had been noisier than usual

that day, but engrossed in documents I took little notice. At 2:30, with my

stomach screaming for lunch, I hurried down the stairs only to discover to my

surprise about forty-five men, young and old, some wearing sombreros and others

baseball caps, standing quietly in the fourier. They had occupied the building and

blocked its access. I was hungry and trapped inside—precisely the type of

situation the protesters needed to gain leverage—but I was more curious than upset

and disposed to complain. A man wearing a sombrero explained to me that they

605
Harvey, 417.

309
had been petitioning for years to have the government indemnify their community.

The government, he told me, had refused to pay their ejido for land it had

expropriated to build housing over forty years ago. Then, naturally, I asked where

they were from. The man replied: “San Juan de Aragón.” For better or for worse,

I decided not to discuss the irony of being trapped by the same community whose

conflictive past I had researched that day. After several more hours of waiting, an

agrarian official agreed to meet with them and the building emptied.

The experience brought my work as a historian in direct contact with

actually existing social struggle, blurring the boundary between scholarship and

politics. In fact, to understand their protest one must excavate over a century of

environmental history, and the story uncovered is emblematic of many of the other

stories related here. The land for which the protesters had sought compensation

was likely under water in 1890, as a small portion of the western edge of Lake

Texcoco. Díaz’s drainage and subsequent land reclamation works dried the land,

evidence of the transformative potential of the modern Mexican state. The state

played a central role in the production of the sanitary city, which, in turn, created

rifts between the urban elite and the Valley’s population. The salt-caked, barren

land materialized those rifts, but it also represented hope for an agrarian future.

The ideas and legal supports for land reform, resource distribution, and public

health built bridges for popular groups to cross those rifts, but the bridge for San

Juan de Aragón was blocked by infertile soils. Around the Valley, some bridges

proved more difficult to traverse than others, even during Cardenismo, a period of

310
intense popular mobilization in both city and hinterland. Yet in the Texcoco basin,

the salt-caked, barren land became the centerpiece of a united campesino and

Cardenista imaginary of verdant, fertile fields next to the largest single market in

the country. When the state reneged on its vision, as it reneged on its support—

however partial and momentary—for other popular environmental imaginaries, the

city began a period of staggering growth, reaching population figures that seemed

impossible at the beginning of the century. The Mexican state largely achieved

drainage but failed miserably at fertilization, and campesinos, lacking means to

make the lands produce, succumbed to the urbanizing impulse.

A similar story could be told about communities in Xochimilco, Chalco,

and the mountain communities of Totolapan and Magdalena Contreras. In the end,

the state pursued an agenda of unrestrained, unconditional urban growth and

industrialization, and there was no room to accommodate alternative uses of the

Valley’s nature and their attendant imaginaries. By the 1940s the opening for

environmental citizenship was fading into history, and industrialization, driven in

part by the profits of real estate capital, intensified.606 These forces combined to

lure droves of villagers to the city in search of that tantalizing position among the

industrial proletariat, and perhaps later the urban middle class. For most of the

communities under study here, if their inhabitants did not go the city, the city

eventually went to them.

606
See Flores, Tratado.

311
 Upon arrival in Mexico City—migrants came from across the Mexican

countryside and smaller cities as well—many settled in illegal, unauthorized

colonias, a form of settlement dating back to the late nineteenth century. Others

invaded federal or private lands to form colonias proletarias, which first sprouted

up during the Cárdenas sexenio. Regardless of the settlement type, all

unauthorized settlements lacked essential urban services such as water, drainage,

pavement, electricity, and garbage removal. This mass of urban poor rarely joined

forces to push community demands prior to 1968, but after that tumultuous year

the state struggled to control popular organizations. The Resident Restoration

Movement (MRC) and a plethora of other organizations that invoked the protest

form of Cardenismo emerged. But the response of the state was unyielding; urban

sanitary reform remained localized and did not threaten the immovable pattern of

real estate speculation. Instead, service provision served the purpose of

establishing vertical connections between state and colonia through patronage

networks or institutional channels. According to one municipal official in 1979,

‘water is not used simply to put out real fires but also to douse political fires.’607

The demographic explosion, new factories, and more commerce required

an increasing quantity of water that placed the city—quite literally—on precarious

footing. As the Xochimilco pumps exhausted the springs, the city increasingly

tapped into the Valley’s underground aquifer. The first pozo profundo (deep well)

was built in the 1930s, but by the mid-1950s the city had perforated dozens around

607
Quoted in Gilbert and Ward, 168.

312
the Valley—especially in the Xochimilco/Chalco lakebed. Octavio Dubois and

others had understood the adverse effects of the wells as early as 1930, but they

proved to be a quick and cheap method to supply a rapidly expanding city.

Buildings subsided, water mains sunk, and sewer lines shifted, rendering sections

of the hydraulic infrastructure obsolete. The city placed a ban on well perforations

in the Valley in the 1950s, but soon thereafter broke its own restriction.

In an effort to increase supply and diversify the city’s water source, the

DDF inaugurated the Lerma water supply in 1951. First proposed by William

Mackenzie in 1902, the project transferred the spring water of the Lerma Valley to

the Valley of Mexico—and in the process crossed a continental divide. While the

new system only moderately eased the pressure on the wells, the ejidos and

agricultural communities of the water-rich Lerma Valley suffered the

consequences immediately.608 In exchange for schools—a concession also won by

San Pedro Atlapulco for the transfer of water to the Tacubaya supply in 1930—the

Lerma campesinos lost their irrigation water as well as their fishing and hunting

environments. Meanwhile, subsidence continued unabated, worsening the

catastrophic effects of the 1985 earthquake, as much a social disaster as a “natural”

one.609

608
Led by Vicente Riva Palacio prominent liberals of Mexico state had attempted
to drain the Lerma lakes and swamps but failed due to community resistance. See
Gloria Camacho Pichardo, Agua y liberalismo: el proyecto estatal de desecación
de las lagunas de Alto Lerma, 1850-1875 (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2007).
609
See Ted Steinberg Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in
America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

313
 Mexico City’s engineers, backed by the state, had remade the Valley of

Mexico, but not out of some determined aim to “destroy nature,” or as the

unflinching leaders of “unsustainable” practices. Rather, engineers understood the

environmental consequences of their actions. Dubois noted the adverse effects of

wells, Gayol and Quevedo understood the threats of deforestation, de la Cerda and

Galindo admonished government drainage schemes, and José Argüelles and Gayol

proposed the recycling of rainwater. Yet their ideas, when compared

retrospectively to contemporary ecological movements, remained at best inchoate

and incomplete. For example, de la Cerda promoted lake regeneration and well

perforation simultaneously, and Quevedo was an adamant supporter of lake

drainage while resolute in his reforestation campaigns.

It is more appropriate to view engineers in a more nuanced light. They

worked within particular political and economic frameworks and held a single goal

above all others: the prosperity of Mexico’s capital—broadly conceived as

healthful and amenable to further growth. Despite knowledge that deep wells

would cause soil subsidence, they constructed them for their inexpensiveness and

efficiency at meeting growing demand. Although engineers understood the value

of Lake Xochimilco as a productive farming environment and key tourist spot,

they valued its water as an urban resource that much more. The drainage of Lake

Texcoco, state engineers understood, posed hazards to both rural and urban

populations, but the risk of flooding and the opportunity of fertilization proved

more appealing. Thus one engineer writing in the mid-1940s spoke in a language

314
that resembled what we might call “sustainability” today, only that for him, what

made Mexico City “livable” (habitable) were the major hydraulic engineering

works of the previous fifty years. 610 For this engineer, as for many others, Mexico

City’s existence depended on the continued functioning of built infrastructure.

Just as I argue for a more nuanced interpretation of historical engineering

practices in the Valley of Mexico, I aim to reinterpret the foundations of Mexico

City’s urban environmentalism, a movement associated with a dedicated group of

engineers and architects concerned with the city’s imprint on the Valley’s delicate

environment. This bourgeoning environmentalism, which promotes city

beautification, lake regeneration, reforestation, and pluvial water supply projects,

neither emerged as a simple reaction to Mexico’s urban modernity nor as a

derivative ideology from the United States and Europe.611 The roots of the

movement, as I suggest in chapter 5, can be found within Mexico’s urbanizing

vision. The very ideas that many environmentalists now support incubated within

the debates regarding Mexico City’s growth. More importantly for our purposes,

their ideas have garnered government support during a period unfavorable to

popular movements, adding another layer to an exclusive brand of urban

610
AHA: AS 118, 939 Fernando Madrid Mendizabal, “Breve reseña histórica de
los principales problemas hidráulicos y sus derivados que han tenido que
resolverse para hacer habitable la ciudad de México,” 1946.
611
Mexico’s urban modernity, as I have argued here, also emerged as much from
distinctively Mexican polítical and scientific traditions as European influences.

315
modernity.612 Exclusion has not been distributed evenly across the Valley’s space,

however, as the cases of Texcoco and Xochimilco make clear.

Mexico City’s environmental movement entered the political scene in

1971—before residents considered air pollution a serious problem. This was the

year President Luis Echeverría approved Project Texcoco. As the first case of a

new environmental politics, I will use the project to exemplify the underlying

commonalities of purpose between “old” and “new” environmental projects. The

engineer Nabor Carrillo, author of the plan, had studied the relation between soil

subsidence and the loss of surface water, a correlation first exposed by Luis

Caceaga over forty years earlier.613 Carrillo called for a new type of public works

project that would restore the lake, afforest the lakebed, reforest the surrounding

hillsides, and control torrential streambeds. Whereas similar proposals had fallen

612
Since its inception in the 1960s, environmentalism has had a torturous and
strained relationship with social justice movements. Elites have often employed
narratives of environmental decline to justify dispossession of resources and
exclusionary social policies. Social justice movements often push for
environmental rights—the right to water, uncontaminated food, and industrial
safety, etc.—but less often environmentalism, if one defines the latter as the
conservation and protection of ecosystems. The experience of Mexico City fits this
wider tendency. One exception has involved the case of Xochimilco, which I will
outline below, where land use and environmental protection have overlapped.
Another involved the poor residents of recently formed colonias proletarias on the
foothills of the Ajusco. In response to government razing threats due to the
environmental importance of the area, the residents bonded together to promote an
ecological settlement replete with pest control, reforestation, and waste recycling.
See Keith Pezzoli, Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability:
The Case of Mexico City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
613
Nabor Carrillo, El hundimiento de la ciudad y el Proyecto Texcoco (Mexico
City: Secretaria de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 1969). The earliest cohesive
ecological perspective on Mexico City’s development, however, may have been by
Guillermo Zárraga, not incidently the president of a construction firm. See his La
tragedia del Valle de México (Mexico City: Stylo, 1958).

316
on deaf ears decades before, this time governing elites changed their tune.

Agricultural schemes, which had cost the government over 14 million pesos

between 1912 and 1946, had run their course, and dust storms had remained a part

of daily life in the city. 614 Land reclamation thus evolved into a plan of ecological

regeneration and afforestation.

Project Texcoco has achieved what previous projects could not: the

afforestation of the saline bed. Project engineers have built dams and diversion

canals to control water flow and planted trees along surrounding hillsides. It has

also renewed part of the old lake by pumping ground water in order to subside the

soil. Lake Nabor Carrillo and three other artificial lakes now cover over 2,000

hectares of the lakebed with treated wastewater. Another project goal, which has

gone unrealized to date, is to treat the city’s wastewater well enough to inject it

into the depleted aquifer.615

These achievements notwithstanding, the regenerated lake is merely a

bleak reminder of what it once was, and additional afforestation work awaits

funding. Both urban and rural residents have largely rejected the project due to its

exclusivity and unaccountability. Residents have protested a garbage dump and

fetid wastewater located near their homes. Both the urban and rural poor have

614
By the 1970s the average yearly financial costs of the tolvaneras peaked at 319
million pesos, according to one estimate, in addition to the worsening problem that
gastro-intestinal and eye infections posed to city residents and health services.
“Intensificación de las Obras del Plan Lago de Texcoco,” El Nacional, December
28, 1972.
615
For descriptions of the public works, see Plan Lago de Texcoco (Mexico City:
SRH, 1975); and Gerardo Kruickshank, Proyecto Lago de Texcoco (Mexico City:
Comisión Nacional del Agua, 2005).

317
sought access to federal lands, but the government—reminiscent of conflicts from

the 1920s—has responded with increasing coercion and surveillance. The lines

separating the federal project and the surrounding poor have ossified over the past

several decades, foreclosing the possibility of a more inclusive urban

environmentalism.

The feeble and isolated state of Project Texcoco has made it vulnerable to

another vision of the lake basin, one that deepens the project’s original intent.

First proposed in 1998 by the architect Alberto Kalach, Plan Texcoco calls for the

nearly full recovery of all of the Valley’s historical lakes and treatment facilities to

purify urban wastewater for reuse. A series of reservoirs would store rainwater

that washes down into the Valley. Parks, new housing, and hotels, among other

developments, would line the lake. Kalach has scorned power holders’ lack of

vision and imagination, proclaiming “the return to the city of lakes is not only a

reality but the only possibility to guarantee the future of the city.”616

616
See Alberto Kalach, “Vuelta a la Ciudad Lacustre” in La ciudad y sus lagos ed.
Teodoro González de León and Antonieta Cruz, et al. (México: Clío, 1998), 43.

318
 Fig. 12—Lake Nabor Carrillo, August 2008. Photo by author.

Indeed, the city lacks a creative imaginary of a more environmentally

friendly future, but the plan would potentially turn a case of environmental

degradation into an “evil paradise.”617 Under Plan Texcoco, environmentalism

fuses with neoliberalism, as lake regeneration and upscale development would

evict untold numbers of the local poor. If the early twentieth-century land

reclamation project isolated the rural poor, efforts to restore the lacustrine

environments aim to obliterate them. It is unclear whether this transformative

vision of the Valley of Mexico is feasible, or if the urban poor and other

entrenched interests will ultimately undermine it.618 Regardless, Plan Texcoco is

617
Mike Davis and Daniel B. Monk, Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of
Neoliberalism (New York: New Press, 2007).
618
After gaining traction in the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the
plan has since fallen out of favor. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD),

319
the most recent iteration of a long tradition of government efforts to eliminate ‘the

Texcoco problem.’

Fig. 13—Afforestation in the Texcoco Bed, August 2008. Photo by author.

Efforts to revitalize Lake Xochimilco have paralleled the Texcoco schemes.

In the early 1960s, the government began to pump treated wastewater into the

desiccated canals. The government dressed the project in the language of national

patrimony and tourism rather than the agricultural interests of the rural poor. The

ship of populist development had sailed, and the injected water—treated first at a

primary level and then later at a secondary level—clogged access to the canals

with plagues of lilies and other vegetation. Chinamperos finally won back their

the governing party of the Federal District since the democratic transition, has
looked askance at the plan.

320
water, but it arrived infected with detergent residue, fecal matter, and industrial

waste. 619 Mexico’s Venice had become Mexico’s Love Canal avant la lettre.

In 1989, two years following the UNESCO’s designation of Xochimilco as

a world heritage site, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari introduced the Plan for

the Ecological Rescue of Xochimilco. Salinas, in tandem with Mexico City’s

mayor Manuel Camacho Solís, planned to expropriate 257 hectares of the

Atlapulco ejido and 780 of Xochimilco’s in the name of ecological balance.

Mirroring work in Texcoco, the plan consisted of a rejuvenated lake and canals,

reforestation, water treatment for reuse, and “regulation ponds” to control

flooding. Yet this was merely the ecological façade hiding the plan’s neoliberal

structure of tourism and urban integration. The plan included the extension of the

Periférico, Mexico City’s circle freeway, opened up the northern section of

Xochimilco to high-rise buildings, and called for an exclusive ecological theme

park replete with private clubs, golf courses, and hotels. With expropriated ejidal

land, the government envisioned a ‘Xochilandia,’ similar to current proposals for

the Texcoco basin.620 In return ejidatarios would receive reduced chinampa plots, a

key part of the larger tourism-centered scheme, instead of the agricultural land that

they had farmed for decades. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the government did

619
Romero Lankao and Duffy, in A la orilla, 226; and Aréchiga Cordoba, in A la
orilla, 104.
620
José Genovevo Pérez Espinosa, “Xochimilco y su region lacustre: de las
chinampas a los asfaltos” in Jorge Legoretta ed. Ciudad de México: A debate
(Azcapotzalco: UAM, 2008), 243.

321
not oppose urban expansion per se, but rather poor and unauthorized settlements

that burdened government coffers.

Ejidatarios, chinamperos (who at that point represented a mere 5% of the

local population), academics, some enviromentalists, and other popular

organizations united in protest against the proposal. Their unifying discourse: the

special place Xochimilco held in the national narrative and the urgency of

recuperating it for all citizens. Ejidatarios had given up chinampería over the

course of the century and even opposed government efforts to reconstitute them as

chinamperos, but they rallied around Xochimilco’s indigenous, pastoral, and

revolutionary identity, an identity that obtained its force, in part, through that very

agricultural practice. Placards at one protest rally read: “History is not sold,” a

reference to their ‘ethic of place’ where the ejido embodied the triumph of the

revolution and the persistence of local agricultural identity.621

The alliance, which broke with Xochimilco’s past of fractured

environmental imaginaries, proved to be formidable. In an outcome similar to the

Texcoco area ejidos a half-century earlier, Atlapulco and Xochimilco protesters

successfully transformed the plan in their favor. Camacho Solís reduced the area

of the proposed lake from 360 to 52 hecaters and offered ejidatarios 230 hectares

of irrigated farmland in place of chinampas. Tourism remained a central objective,

but the revised plan emphasized more affordable and educational activities in the

Ecological Park.

621
Canabal Cristiani, Xochimilco: una identidad recreada, 229.

322
 These concessions divided the movement, and only a small minority

continued to pressure the government to provide more to the local population.

Their organization, the Zapatista Front for the Defense of the Ejido, has pointed

out the continuing problems that Xochimilcans face: contaminated and diminished

canal water (which they claim is siphoned off for the tourist zone), the

disproportional effects of soil subsidence in the well-heavy lakebed, and

urbanization pressures—a problem that increased with the extension of the

Periférico.622 If to enter the Texcoco project one needs an invitation, Xochimilco’s

“rescue” has merged tourism with ecology and ejido agriculture. Both projects,

however, share an underlying objective: the continued privileging of an exclusive

brand of urban modernity over the concerns of local populations.

With a population of twenty million, Mexico City is arriving at another

turning point in its environmental history. Just as Xochimilco’s and Texcoco’s

lacustrine environment exist precariously thanks to state-run environmental

projects, the city’s water and drainage networks also hang delicately in the

balance. In 2009, drought forced the city to reduce the water taken from the

Cutzamala reservoir, a major hydraulic project executed once the Lerma works

622
My description of the Xochimilco recuperation project is based on; Jorge
Legorreta “Xochimilco: el rescate de una histórica tradición lacustre” in Ensayos
sobre la ciudad de México: Reencuentro con nuestro patrimonio cultural vol. 6 ed.
Magdalena Mas and Isabel Tovar Arrechederra (Mexico City: Universidad
Iberoamnerican, 1994); Jorge Legorreta, “Transformación y restauración lacustre
de la ciudad de México,” in Ciudad de México: A debate ed. Jorge Legorreta
(Mexico City:UAM-Azcapotzalco, 2008); Pérez Espinosa; Canabal Cristiani,
Xochimilco: una identidad recreada; and Aréchiga Cordoba.

323
proved deficient.623 Yet, the water “crisis” was socially produced as well. The

surrounding denuded land has caused silt to build up in the reservoir, reducing its

holding capacity. On the supply end, soil subsidence has ruptured pipes, which

together with poor maintenaince of public and private installations, result in water

waste of 40%. The drought exacerbated the low pressure and scarcity already felt

in poor colonias furthest from the primary distribution pipes. The National Water

Commission, reminiscent of Nicolás Durán’s suggestion to commercialize water in

1930, has used the shortages in Mexico City to discuss water as a scarce resource

in need of rational use, rather than as an urban right.624 The drought may be a

natural phenomenon, but its effects on urban water are compounded by forest

economies and the layered history of unequal urbanization.

In February of 2010, the drought surrendered—perhaps temporarily—to a

massive deluge atypical of the Valley’s dry season. Torrents of water rushed

down the mountainsides, far outstripping the capacity of the city’s complex

drainage system. Once again, Mexico City experienced the pitfalls of its

unfortunate geographic location. And, once again, the disaster that resulted was

the product of a multi-layered urban history. Hundreds of thousands of migrants

had settled the Chalco and Texcoco lakebeds, once spaces of ejido parcels,

chinampa plots, and state fertilization schemes. Instead of flooding crops or

623
According to Joel Simon, 6% of the city’s total energy output is dedicated to
pumping water from the Cutzamala River to the city. Simon, Endangered Mexico:
An Environment on the Edge (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997), 84.
624
Maria Kaika, “The Polítical Ecology of Water Scarcity: The 1989-1991
Athenian Drought” in In the Nature of Cities: 157-72.

324
barren, briny land, the immense rainfall flooded streets and residences, especially

the poorest communities without adequate sewerage.

Two visions of the city are competing for dominance: the conventional

imaginary that I have traced throughout this dissertation and another more

ecological imaginary that seeks to restore lost environments and recycle water

resources. Both remain ensconced within an exclusionary brand of urban

modernity and require large-scale social and environmental transformations. Their

objectives to secure a prosperous and sanitary city have reinforced inequalities

both within and without the urban milieu. Despite their similarities, the

conventional vision of urban modernity, what Manuel Perló Cohen has termed the

“Porfirian paradigm,” has turned a charming, intimate city into an urban

monstrosity. The largest city in the western hemisphere needs another vision, as

Kalach has averred. The question for the future is: will the Mexican government

and its engineers find ways to reconcile environmentalist objectives with the

multiple environmental needs of the Valley’s population, including its slum

dwellers, chinamperos, ejidatarios, and forest users?

325
 Bibliography

Archives

Archivo General de la Nación (AGN)

Obegón/Calles (O/C)
Emilio Portes Gil (EPG)
Abelardo L. Rodríguez (ALR)
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (LCR)
Manuel Ávila Camacho (MAC)
Miguel Alemán Valdes (MAV)
Secretaría de Agricultura y Fomento (Fomento)
Secretaría de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos (SARH)
Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (SCOP)

Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal (AHDF)

Ayuntamiento
Municipalidades Foráneas
Consejo Superior del Gobierno del Distrito Federal (CSGD)
Departamento del Distrito Federal (DDF)

Archivo Histórico del Agua (AHA)

Aguas Superficiales (AS)
Consultivo Técnico (CT)

Archivo General Agrario (AGA)

Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (AHSSA)

Biblioteca Lerdo de Tejada

Archivos Económicos

326
 Newspapers
El Universal
El Universal Gráfico
Excelsior
La Prensa
El Demócrata
Boletín de la Union Panamericana
Agricultura

References

Aboites Aguilar, Luis. El agua de la nación: una historia política de México

(1888-1946. México: CIESAS, 1998.

------. “La illusion del poder nacional: Provisión de agua y alcantrillado en

México, 1930-1990.” Ciudades Mexicanas del siglo XX: Siete estudios
históricos, ed. Carlos Lira Vasquez and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, 181-216.
Mexico City: Colmex, 2009.

------. La irrigación revolucionaria: Historia del sistema nacional de riego del Rio
Conchos, Chihuahua, 1927-1938. México: CIESAS, 1988.

Agostoni, Claudia. Monuments of Progress: Modernization and Public Health in

Mexico City, 1876-1910. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003.

Agrawal, Arun. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of

Modern Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

327
Almondoz Marte, Arturo. Planning Latin American Capital Cities, 1850-1950.
London: Routledge, 2002.

Alonzo Romero, Miguel. Un año de sitio en la presidencia municipal: Crónica y

comentarios de una labor accidentada. Mexico City: Editorial Hispano-
Mexicana, 1923.

José Alvarez Amezquita, Miguel E. Bustamante, Francisco Fernández del Castillo

and Antonio López Picasos, Historia de la salubridad y de la asistencia en
Mexico. 4 vols. Mexico City: 1960.

Appuhn, Karl. “Friend or Flood—The Dilemmas of Flood Control in Early

Modern Venice.” The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, and Urban
Space, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg, 79-102. Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press, 2006.

------. “Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry, and State Power in

Renaissance Venice.” The Journal of Modern History 72, no. 4, (2000),
861-89.

Aréchiga Córdoba, Ernesto. “De la exuberancia al agotamiento: Xochimilco y el

agua, 1884-2002.” A la orilla del agua: Política, urbanización y medio
ambiente, historia de Xochimilco en el siglo XX, ed. María Eugenia
Terrones López, 97-152. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2004.

Arrom, Silvia. “Popular Politics in Mexico City, the Parian Riot.” Riots in the
Cities: Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America, 1765-1910,
ed. Silvia Arrom and Servando Ortol. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 1996.

Alÿs, Francis. The Politics of Rehearsal. DVD Documentary, 2005.

328
Barragán, Mariano. “Memoria del saneamiento y cultivo del Lago de Texcoco.”
(1910) “El crecimiento urbano de la Ciudad de México y la desecación del
Lago de Texcoco” Carlos Contreras Servín, 150-3. Relaciones 76, (1998).

------. Proyecto de bonificación de las tierras del vaso del Lago de Texcoco.
México: Secretaría de Communicaciones y Obras Públicas, 1913.

Bataillon, Claude. La ciudad y el campo en el México central. Mexico City: Siglo

XXI, 1971.

Becker, Marjorie. Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacan

Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995.

Bedollo, Eugenio. “La junta flexible impermeable y su función en el

aprovechamiento de agua potable de la ciudad de México.” Revista
Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura (January, 1933), 13.

Beezley, William. Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian
Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Benjamin, Thomas. La Revolución: Mexico’s Great Revolution as Memory, Myth

and History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.

Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity.
New York: Penguin, 1988.

Berra, Erica. “La expansion de la ciudad de México y los conflictos urbanos,

1900-1930.” PhD diss., Centro de Estudios Históricos, Colmex, 1983.

Bliss, Katherine. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender

329
 Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City. University Park: Penn State
University Press, 2001.

Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, landscape and the Making of
Modern Germany. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2006.

Boletín del Departamento Forestal y de Caza y Pesca. Mexico City (April-

August, 1937).

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

trans. Richard Nice Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Boyer, Christopher. Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian

Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920-1935. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2000.

------. “Contested Terrain: Forestry Regimes and Community Responses in

Northeastern Michoacán, 1940-2000.” The Community-Managed Forests
of Mexico: The Struggle for Equity and Sustainability. ed. David Barton
Bray, Leticia Merino-Pérez and Deborah Barry. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2005.

------. “Revolución y paternalismo ecológico. Miguel Ángel de Quevedo y la

política forestal en México, 1926-1940.” Historia Mexicana 225 (2007).

Brenner, Neil, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon Macleod ed. State/Space: A
Reader. New York: Blackwell, 2008.

Bucay, Benito. “Apuntes de historia de la química industrial en México.” Revista

de la Sociedad Química de México 45, no. 3 (July-September 2001).

Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Trans. William Weaver. Orlando: Hartcourt, 1974.

330
Camacho de la Rosa, Gerardo. Raíz y razón de Totolapan, el drama de la Guerra
zapatista. Mexico City: Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2007.

Camacho Pichardo, Gloria. Agua y liberalismo: el proyecto estatal de desecación

de las lagunas de Alto Lerma, 1850-1875. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2007.

Camarena, Mario. Jornaleros, tejedores y obreros: historia social de los

trabajadores textiles de San Angel, 1850-1930. Mexico City: Plaza y
Valdés, 2001.

Camp, Roderick Ai. Mexican Political Biographies, 1884-1935. Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1991.

Canabal Cristiani, Beatriz, Pablo Alberto Torees-Lima, and Gilberto Burela

Rueda. La ciudad y sus chinampas. Mexico City: UAM-Xochimilco, 1992.

Canabal Cristiani, Beatriz. Xochimilco: una identidad recreada Mexico City:

UAM-Xochimilco, 1999.

Candiani, Vera S. “Bad Neighbors: City and Country in the Desagüe de

Huehuetoca” (paper presented at the New York Workshop in Latin
American History, New York, September 2007).

Carrera Stampa, Manuel. Los planos de la ciudad de México (desde 1521 a

nuestros días). Mexico City: Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de
Geografía y Estadística, 1949.

Chapa, Sostenes. San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, D.F. Mexico City, 1959.

Carrillo, Nabor. El hundimiento de la ciudad y el Proyecto Texcoco. Mexico City:

Secretaria de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 1969.

Castells, Manuel. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban

331
 Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Cisneros Sosa, Armando. La ciudad que construimos: Registro de la expansión de

la ciudad de México, 1920-1976. Mexico City: UAM, 1993.

Coatsworth, John. Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of

Railroads in Porfirian Mexico. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University
Press, 1981.

“Colonias o fraccionamientos sin servicios o con servicios muy deficientes.”

Obras Públicas (April, 1930), 232.

Comisión especial para estudio de abastecimiento de aguas de la ciudad de

México. Informe sobre el proyecto del Ing. Marroquín y Rivera, Estudio
sobre las proposciones del Sr. Mackenzie. Mexico City: Secretaria de
Fomento, 1902.

Connoly, Priscilla. El contratista de Don Porfirio: Obras Públicas, deuda, y

desarrollo desigual. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997.

Cope, Douglas R. The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial

Mexico City, 1660-1720. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

Córdova, Arnoldo. La ideología de la revolución mexicana, (Mexico City: ERA,

1974.

Cornejo, Antonio. “Mejoramiento de las dotaciones de agua de Tacubaya y

Mixcoac.” Obras Públicas (1930), 27.

Cornelius, Wayne. Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City. Stanford:
University Press, 1975.

Coronil, Fernando. The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in

332
 Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Cotter, Joseph. Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880-

2002. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York:
W.W Norton, 1991.

Cruz Rodríguez, María Soledad. Crecimiento urbano y los procesos sociales en el

Distrito Federal (1920-1928). Mexico City: UAM, 1994.

Davis, Diane. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

Davis, Mike and Daniel B. Monk. Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism

New York: New Press, 2007.

Dean, Warren. “The Tasks of Latin American Environmental History.” Changing

Tropical Forests, ed Harold K. Steen and Richard P. Tucker, 5-15. Forest
History Society, 1992.

De Gortari, Hira and Regina Hernández ed. Memorias y encuentros: La ciudad de

México y el Distrito Federal (1824-1928). Instituto Mora: DF, 1998.

Departamento del Distrito Federal, El Departmento del Distrto Federal y la

habitación para empleados y obreros. Mexico City, DDF: 1934.

------. Memorias del Departamento del Distrito Federal (1932-1933).

------. Memorias del Departamento del Distrito Federal (1933-1934).

------. Memorias del Departamento del Distrito Federal (1934-1935).

------. Memorias del Departamento del Distrito Federal (1936-1937).

333
------. Memorias del Departamento del Distrito Federal (1938-1939).

------. Memorias del Departamento del Distrito Federal (1939-1940).

Dolores Morales, María. “La expansion de la ciudad de México en el siglo XIX: el

caso de los fraccionamientos.” Ciudad de México: Ensayo de Construcción
de una historia, ed. Alejandra Moreno Toscano and Carlos Aguirre, 189-
200. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1978.

Dulles, John W.F. Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1909-1936.

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.

Durán, Nicolás. “Política y Obras Públicas.” Revista Mexicana de Ingeñeria y

Arquitectura, 11 (May 1933), 154.

Durand, Jorge. La ciudad invade al ejido: proletarización, urbanización y lucha

política en el Cerro de Judío, D.F. Mexico City: CIESAS, 1983.

Dyl, Joanna. “The War on Rats versus the Right to Keep Chickens: Plague and the
Paving of San Francisco, 1907-1908.” The Nature of Cities: Culture,
Landscape, and Urban Space, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg, 38-61. Rochester,
NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

Escobar Ohmstede, Antonio. Estudios campesinos en el Archivo General Agrario

vol. 3. Mexico City: CIESAS, 1998.

Espinosa de los Monteros, Antonio. El problema del carbón en el Distrito

Federal. Mexico City: Mundial, 1928.

Evans, Sterling. “La angustia de la Angostura: Consecuencias socioambientales

Por la construcción de presas en Sonora.” Signos Históricos 16 (July-
December, 2006), 46-78.

334
Ewald, Ursula. The Mexican Salt Industry, 1560-1980, a Study in Change. (New
York: Gustav Fisher Verlag, 1985.

Feijoo, Rosa. “El tumulto de 1692.” Historia Mexicana 14 (1964-65): 656-91.

Fisher, Brodwyn. A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth

Century Rio de Janeiro. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Flannagan, Maureen. “Environmental Justice in the City: A Theme for Urban

Environmental History.” Environmental History 5, 2 (April 2000), 159-
164.

Flores, Edmundo. Tratado de economía agrícola. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura

Económica, 1961.

Forsyth, Tim and Andrew Walker. Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The
Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand. Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2008.

Fuentes, Carlos. Where the Air is Clear. New York: Noonday Press, 1960.

Gadgil, Madhav and Ramachandra Guha, The Fissured Land: An Ecological

History of India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Galindo y Villa, Jesús. Reseña histórica-descriptiva de la ciudad de México.

Mexico City: Díaz de Leon, 1901.

García Cubas, Antonio. El libro de mis recuerdos. Mexico City: Porrua, 1904.

García Luna, Margarita. Nezahualcóyotl: Tierras que surgen de un desequilibrio

ecológico. Decretos relativos a los terrenos desecados del Lago de
Texcoco, 1912-1940. Toluca: Gobierno del Estado de México: 1990.

Garner, Paul. Díaz: Profiles in Power. London: Pearson, 2001.

335
Garza, Gustavo. El proceso de industrialización en la ciudad de México, 1821-
1970. Mexico City: Colmex, 1985.

Gayol, Roberto. “Informe sobe varios asuntos relativos a las obras de saneamiento
y desague de la Ciudad de México.” Revista Mexicana de Ingeñeria y
Arquitectura 9 (March, 1933).

Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the
Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1964.

Gilbert, Alan and Peter Ward. Housing, The State, and the Poor: Policy and
Practice in Three Latin American Cities. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985.

González de León, Teodoro and Antonieta Cruz ed. La ciudad y sus lagos.
Mexico City: Clío, 1998.

González Navarro, Moíses. “México en una laguna.” Historia Mexicana 4 (1955),

506-22.

------. Población y sociedad, 1900-1970. vol. 1. Mexico City: UNAM, 1974.

Gramsci, Antonio. “Notes on Italian History.” Selections from the Prison

Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York:
International Publishers, 1971.

Grandin, Greg. The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation. Durham:
Duke University Press, 2000.

Grundmann, Reinar. Marxism and Ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1991.

336
Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Acts of Peasant Resistance in Colonial India. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983.

Guthrie, Chester L. “Riots in Seventeenth-Century Mexico City: A Study of Social

and Economic Conditions.” Greater America: Essays in Honor of Herbert
Eugene Bolton. Adele Ogdon and Engel Sluiter. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1945.

Hale, Charles. Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Harvey, David. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge,

MA: Blackwell, 1996.

------. The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of

Capitalist Urbanization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1985.

Henderson, Timothy. The Worm in the Wheat: Rosalie Evans and Agrarian
Struggle in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of Mexico, 1906-1927. Durham:
Duke University Press, 1998.

Herrera, Alfonso L. “Fauna del lago de Texcoco.” Estudios Referentes a la

desecación del Lago de Texcoco. Instituto Médico Nacional. Mexico City:
IMI, 1895.

Heynen, Nik, Maria Kaika, and E. Swngedouw ed. In the Nature of Cities: Urban
Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. Cambridge:
Cambrige University Press, 2006.

Holston, James and Arjun Appuradai. “Cities and Citizenship.” Cities and
Citizenship, ed. James Holston. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

337
Holston, James. “Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship.” Cities and Citizenship, ed.
James Holston Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Horcasitas, Fernando. De Porfirio Díaz a Zapata: Memoria náhuatl de Milpa Alta.

Mexico City: UNAM, 1968.

Hurley, Andrew. Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial

Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995.

Illades, Carlos and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri ed. Instituciones y ciudad: Ocho estudios
históricos sobre la ciudad de México. Mexico City: Sábado Distrito
Federal, 2000.

Informes Rendidos por los inspectors sanitarios de Cuartel. Mexico City:

Imprenta del Gobierno, 1898.

Isenberg, Andrew C. “Banking on Sacramento: Urban Development, Flood

Control, and Political Legitimization, 1848-1862.” The Nature of Cities:
Culture, Landscape, and Urban Space. ed. Andrew C. Isenberg, 103-121.
Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

------ed. The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, and Urban Space. Rochester,
NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

Jacoby, Karl. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the
Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2001.

Javier Carpinteiro, Francisco Gómez. Gente de azúcar y agua: modernidad y

posrevolución en el sureste de Puebla. Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán,
2003.

338
Jiménez, Christina. “From the Lettered City to the Sellers’ City: Vendor Politics
and Public Space in Urban Mexico, 1880-1926.” The Spaces of the Modern
City, ed. Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008.

------. “Popular Organizing for Public Services: Residents Modernize Morelia,

Mexico, 1880-1920.” Journal of Urban History 30, no. 4 (2004), 495-518.

Jiménez Muñoz, Jorge. La traza del poder: historia de la política y los negocios
urbanos en el Distrito Federal, de sus origenes a la desaparicón del
ayuntamiento. Mexico City: Codex, 1993.

Johns, Michael. The City of Mexico in the Age of Díaz. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1997.

Joseph, Gilbert M. and Daniel Nugent ed. Everyday Forms of State Formation:
Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Durham: Duke
University Press, 1994.

Joseph, Gilbert M. and Mark D. Schuzman ed. I Saw a City Invincible: Urban
Portraits of Latin America. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1996.

Joseph, Gilbert M. and Timothy J. Henderson ed. The Mexico Reader. Durham:
Duke University Press, 2002.

Kaika, Maria. “The Polítical Ecology of Water Scarcity: The 1989-1991 Athenian
Drought.” In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics
of Urban Metabolism, ed. Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, and E. Swngedouw,
157-72. Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 2006.

Kalach, Alberto. “Vuelta a la Ciudad Lacustre.” La ciudad y sus lagos, ed.

339
 Teodoro González de León and Antonieta Cruz, et al. Mexico City: Clío,
1998.

Kandell, Jonathan. La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City. New York:

Random House, 1988.

Kelman, Ari. A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Klingle, Matthew. Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Knight, Alan. “Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?” Texas Papers on Mexico no.

90-09. Austin: The Mexican Center of the Institute of Latin American
Studies, 1994.

------. The Mexican Revolution. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,

1986.

------. US-Mexican Relations, 1910-1940 an interpretation. La Jolla: University of

California, 1988.

------. “Weapons and Arches in the Mexican Revolutionary Landscape.” Everyday

Forms of State: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico,
ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent. Durham: Duke University Press,
1994.

Kreiger, Peter. Acuápolis. Mexico City: UNAM, 2007.

Kroeber, Clifton B. Man, Land, and Water: Mexico’s Farmlands Irrigation

Policies, 1885-1911. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Kruickshank, Gerardo. Proyecto Lago de Texcoco. Mexico City: Comisión

340
 Nacional del Agua, 2005.

Lear, John. Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.

-------. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2003.

Legorreta, Jorge ed. Ciudad de México: A debate. Azcapotzalco: UAM, 2008.

------. “Transformación y restauración lacustre de la ciudad de México.” Ciudad de

México: A debate, ed. Jorge Legorreta, 207-24. Mexico City: UAM-
Azcapotzalco, 2008.

------. “Xochimilco: el rescate de una histórica tradición lacustre.” Ensayos sobre

la ciudad de México: Reencuentro con nuestro patrimonio cultural. vol. 6.
ed. Magdalena Mas and Isabel Tovar Arrechederra, 19-36. Mexico City:
Universidad Iberoamericana, 1994.

Lenz, Hans. Historia del papel en México y cosas relacionadas. Mexico City:
Porrua, 1990.

Licéaga, Eduardo. Mis recuerdos de otros tiempos. Mexico City, 1949.

Lomnitz, Claudio. Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

López Rangel, Rafael. La planificación de la ciudad de México, 1900-1940.

Mexico City: UAM, 1993.

López Rosado, Diego. Historia del abasto de productos alimenticios a la ciudad

de México. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988.

------. Los servicios públicos de la ciudad de México. Mexico City:

341
 Porrua, 1976.

Lorenzo Cossio, José. Algunas notas sobre el servicio de agua potable en el

Distrito Federal. Mexico City: E. Rivera, 1933.

------. Guía retrospectiva de la ciudad de México. 2nd ed. Mexico City: Segumex,
1990.

------. “Las aguas de la ciudad.” Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana

de Geografía y Estadística 45 (1935-1937).

Macedo, Miguel. La criminalidad en México: medios de combatirla. Mexico City:

Secretaría de Fomento, 1897.

MacLeod, Murdo. “Some Thoughts on the Pax Colonial, Colonial Violence, and
Perceptions of Both.” Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New
Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Mallon, Florencia. “Reflections on the Ruins: Everyday Forms of State Formation

in Nineteenth-Century Mexico.” Everyday Forms of State Formation:
Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert M.
Joseph and Daniel Nugent. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

Mansilla, Elizabeth. Como Porfirio Díaz dominó las aguas. Mexico City, 1994.

Maria Alonzo, Ana. Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on

Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

Marroquín y Rivera, Manuel. Memoria descriptiva de las obras de provision de

agua potable para la ciudad de México. Mexico City: Müller Hermanos,
1914.

Martínez, Roque. “Cooperativas Ejidales. Determinación de Zonas Forestales y

342
 Agrícolas. Reglamentación del pastoreo.” México Forestal 8, no. 4 (April,
1930).

Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The Marx-Engels

Reader. 2nd ed. ed. Robert C. Tucker. Norton, 1978.

McCook, Stuart. States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the

Spanish Caribbean, 1760-1940. Austin: University of Texas, 2002.

Meade, Teresa. “Living Worse and Costing More: Resistance and Riot in Rio de
Janeiro, 1890-1917.” Journal of Latin American Studies 21 (1989), 241-
266.

------.“Civilizing Rio”: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889-1930.

University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997.

Medina, Carlos. Exposición que hace el ingeniero a todos los habitantes de la

ciudad de México. Mexico City: Dublán y cia, 1884.

Melosi, Martin. Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment.
College Station:Texas A&M Press, 1981.

------. The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from the

Colony to the Present. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Mexico, Legislación sobre Fraccionamientos y construcciones urbanas. Mexico

City, 1942.

Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Miranda Pacheco, Sergio. Historia de la Desaparición del municipio en el Distrito

343
 Federal. Mexico City: Unidad Obrera y Socialista, 1998.

Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, and Modernity.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Moreno Toscano, Alejandra and Carlos Aguirre ed. Ciudad de México: Ensayo de
Construcción de una historia. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación
Pública, 1978.

Morse, Richard M and Jorge E. Hardoy ed. Rethinking the Latin American City.
Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992.

Murrillo, Luis. El pato silvestre: Notas arregladas para los maestros principaintes
Mexico City: A Carranza, 1910.

Musset, Alain. El agua en el Valle de Mexico, siglos XVI-XVIII. Mexico City:

Portico de la ciudad, 1992.

Needham, Andrew. “Power Lines: Urban Space, Energy Development and the
Making of the Modern Southwest.” PhD diss., University of Michigan,
2006.

Neumann, Roderick P. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and

Nature Preservation in Africa. Berkeley: Unhhggiversity of California
Press, 1998.

Niblo, Stephen. Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption.

Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999.

Olcott, Jocelyn. Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Durham:

Duke University Press, 2005.

344
Olsen, Patrice. Artifacts of Revolution: Architecture, Society and Politics in
Mexico City, 1920-1940. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.

Palafox, Silvano. “El reglamento de construcciones de la Ciudad de México”

Obras Públicas (February, 1930).

Palerm, Ángel. Obras hidráulicas prehispánicas en el sistema lacustre del Valle

de México. Mexico City: INAH, 1973.

Pani, Alberto J. Hygiene in Mexico: A Study of Sanitary and Educational

Problems. New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1917.

Peñafiel, Antonio. “Aprovechamiento de Los Manantiales de Xochimilco para

Abastecer de Agua Suficiente a la Ciudad de México.” Memorias de la
Sociedad Científica Antonio Alzate 11 (1897).

-----. Memoria sobre las agua potables de la capital de México. Mexico City,
1884.

Pérez Espinosa, José Genovevo. “Xochimilco y su region lacustre: de las

chinampas a los asfaltos.” Ciudad de México: A debate, ed. Jorge
Legorreta. Azcapotzalco: UAM, 2008.

Pérez Zevallos, Juan Manuel. Xochimilco Ayer. 3 vols. Mexico City: Instituto
Mora, 2002.

Perló Cohen, Manuel. “De como perdió el ayuntamiento su autonomía sin obtener
a cambio una democracia de manzana.” Suplemento Cultural de la Revista
Siempre (July, 1980).

------. El paradigma porfiriano: historia del desague del valle de México. Mexico
City: Porrua, 1999.

------. Estado, vivienda y estructura urbana en el cardenismo. Mexico City:

345
 UNAM, 1981.

------. “Política y vivienda en México, 1910-1952.” Revista Mexicana de

Sociología 41, no. 3 (July-September, 1979), 769-835.

Pezzoli, Keith. Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability:

The Case of Mexico City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.

Piccato, Pablo. City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2001.

Plan Lago de Texcoco. Mexico City: SRH, 1975.

Platt, Harold. Shock Cities: The Environmental Transformation and Reform of

Manchester and Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Pozo, Ignacio. Informe sobre el ramo de aguas presentado al ayuntamiento de

1887. México: Ireneo Paz, 1888.

Prakash, Gyan and Kevin M. Kruse ed. The Spaces of the Modern City. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2008.

Quevedo, Miguel Ángel de. Algunas consideraciones sobre nuestro problema

Agrario. Mexico City: Victoria, 1916.

------. “La ciudad de Mexico no se hunde por la falta de lagos en sus alrededores.”
Memorias de la Sociedad Científica Antonio Alzate 41 (1922).

------. “La Junta Central de Bosques.” Revista Forestal Mexicana 1 (July, 1909): 4-
5.

------. La cuestión forestal. Mexico City: Secretaría de Fomento, 1908.

------. “La necesaria orientación en los trabajos de la desecación del Lago de

Texcoco y problemas con que ella se ligan.” Memorias de la Sociedad
Científica Antonio Alzate 40 (1922).

346
------. “Las polvaredas de los terrneos tequezquitosos del antiguo Lago de Texcoco
y los procedimientos de enyerbe para remediarlas.” Memorias de la
Sociedad Científica Antonio Alzate 40 (1922).

------. Relato de mi vida. Mexico, 1943.

Ramirez Plancarte, Francisco. La ciudad de Mexico durante la revolución

constitutionalista. Mexico City: Botas, 1941.

Rangarajan, Mahesh. Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in

India’s Central Provinces, 1860-1914. Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1996.

Reese, Carol McMichael. “The Urban Development of Mexico City.” Planning

Latin American Capital Cities, 1850-1950, ed. Arturo Almondoz Marte
London: Routledge, 2002.

Reglamento para la explotación de los bosques y terrenos baldíos y nacionales.

Mexico City: Secretaría de Fomento, 1894.

Richmond, Douglas W. Venustiano Carranza’s Nationalist Struggle, 1893-1920.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

Rios Elizondo, Roberto. Memoria de las obras del sistema de drenaje profundo
Del Distrito Federal. Mexico City: DDF, 1975.

Rodgers, Daniel. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in the Progressive Era.

Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998.

Rodríguez Kuri, Ariel. “Desabasto de agua y violencia política. El motín del 30 de

noviembre de 1922 en la ciudad de México: economía moral y cultura
política.” Formas de descontento y movimientos sociales, siglos XIX y XX
ed, José Ronzón and Carmen Valdes. Mexico City: UAM-Azcapotzalco,
2000.

347
------. “Desabasto, hambre, y respuesta política, 1915.” Instituciones y ciudad:
Ocho estudios históricos sobre la ciudad de México, ed. Carlos Illades and
Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, 133-64. Mexico City: Sábado Distrito Federal, 2000.

------. “Gobierno local y empresas de servicios: La experiencia de la ciudad de

México durante el Porfiriato.” Ferrocarriles y obras públicas, ed. Priscilla
Conolly and Sandra Kuntz Ficker. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1999.

------. La experiencia olvidada: El ayuntamiento de México:

política y gobierno, 1876-1912. Mexico City: Colmex, 1996.

Rodríguez Kuri, Ariel and Sergio Tamayo Flores-Alatorre ed. Los últimos cien
años, los próximos cien…. Mexico City: UAM, 2000.

Rojas Loa O., José Antonio. “La transformación de la zona central, ciudad de
México, 1930-1970.” Ciudad de México: Ensayo de Construcción de una
historia, ed. Alejandra Moreno Toscano and Carlos Aguirre. Mexico City:
Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1978.

Rojas Rabiela, Teresa ed. La agricultura chinampera: Compilación histórica.

Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 1983.

------ed. Presente, pasado y futuro de las chinampas. Mexico City: CIESAS, 1995.

Romero, José. Guía de la Ciudad de Mexico y demás municipalidades del Distrito

Federal con los datos más recientes de su regimen político como asiento
de los suprmemos poderes de la Federación. México: Librería de Porrúa
Hermanos, 1910.

Romero Lankao, Patricia. Obra hidraúlica de la ciudad de México y su impacto

socioambiental, 1880-1990. Mexico City: Mora, 1999.

Romero Lankao, Patricia and Eike Duffing. “Tres procesos contradictories:

348
 Desarrollo urbano, medio ambiente y políticas públicas durante el siglo
XX.” A la orilla del agua: Política, urbanización y medio ambiente,
historia de Xochimilco en el siglo XX, ed. María Eugenia Terrones López,
211-50. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2004.

Roseberry, William. “Hegemony and the Language of Contention.” Everyday

Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in
Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, 355-66.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

Ross, Paul. From Sanitary Police to Sanitary Dictatorship: Mexico’s Nineteenth

Century Public Health Movement. Ph.D Diss., University
of Chicago, 2005.

------. “Mexico’s Superior Health Council and the American Public Health
Association: The Transnational Archive of Porfirian Public Health, 1887-
1910.” Hispanic American Historical Review 89, no. 4 (2009), 573-602.

Rulfo, Juan. The Burning Plain and other Stories Translated by George T.
Schaude. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.

Sáenz, Aaron. Informe que rinde el jefe del departamento del distrito federal a la
Ciudad. Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría, 1934.

Salazar, Luis. On the Distribution of water in the City of Mexico. Trans. Alfred
Sears (International Engineering Congress of the Columbia Exposition,
1893.

Sánchez Ruíz, Gerardo G. Planificación y urbanismo de la revolución mexicana:

los sustentos de una nueva modernidad en la ciudad de México, 1917-
1940. México, DF: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2002.

Sanders, William. “El lago y el volcán: la chinampa (1957).” La agricultura

349
 Chinampera: Compilación histórica, ed. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, 115-57.
Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 1983.

Santamaría, Miguel. Las chinampas del Distrito Federal: informe rendido al

Director de Agricultura. Mexico City: Secretaría de Fomento, 1912.

Santiago, Myrna. Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican

Revolution, 1900-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Sarukha, José. “Mexico.” Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World

Ecology, ed. Edward J. Kormondy and J. Frank McCormick. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1981.

Sayer, Derek. “Everyday Forms of State Formation: Some Dissident Remarks on

‘Hegemony.’” Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the
Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel
Nugent, 367-78. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

Schilling, Elisabeth. “Los ‘jardines flotantes’ de Xochimilco (1938). Una

selección.” La agricultura chinampera: Compilación histórica, ed. Teresa
Rojas Rabiela, 71-98. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo,
1983.

Schteingart, Martha. “Expansión urbana, conflictos sociales y detorio ambiental en

la ciudad de México.” Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos 2, no. 3 (1987).

Schuzman, Mark D. “The City as Vision: The Development of Urban Cultures in

Latin America.” I Saw a City Invincible: Urban Portraits of Latin America,
ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Mark D. Schuzman, 1-32. Wilmington, DE: SR
Books, 1996.

Schwartz, Manuel. “La desecación del Lago de Texcoco.” Boletín Oficial del

350
 Consejo Superior del Gobierno del Distrito Federal 27, no. 2 (1913), 417-
20.

Scott, James. Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

------.“Foreward.” Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the

Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel
Nugent, vii-xii. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

------. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Simon, Joel. Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge. San Francisco:

Sierra Club Books, 1997.

Simonian, Lane. Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in

Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Sivaramakrishnan, K. Modern Forests: State Making and Environmental Change

in Colonial East India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Smith, Neil. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space.
New York: Blackwell, 1984.

Snodgrass, Michael. Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism

and Revolution in Mexico, 1890-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.

Soluri, John. Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental

Change in Honduras and the United States. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2005.

Steinberg, Ted. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in

America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

351
Suárez Cortez, Blanca Estela. Historia de los usos de agua en México.
Oligarquías, empresas y ayuntamientos (1840-1940). Mexico City: CNA,
1998.

Swyngedow, E. “Power, Nature, and the City: The Conquest of Water and the
Polítical Ecology of Urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador.” Environment &
Planning 2, no. 29 (1997).

Tamayo, Serge. “Espacios Ciudadanos.” Los Últimos cien años, los próximos
cien…, ed. Ariel Rodríguez Kuri and Sergio Tamayo Flores-Alatorre, 127-
55. Mexico City: UAM, 2004.

Tarr, Joel. “The Separate vs. Combined Sewer Problem: A Case Study in Urban
Technology Design Choice.” Journal of Urban History 5, no. 3 (1979),
308-339.

------. “Sewerage and the Development of the Networked City in the United States,
1850-1930.” Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and
America, ed. Joel Tarr and Gabriel Dupuy. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1988.

------. The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective.
Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1996.

Tarr, Joel and Gabriel Dupuy ed. Technology and the Rise of the Networked City
in Europe and America Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

Tenorio Trillo, Mauricio. Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

------. “1910 Mexico City: Space and Nation in the City of the Centenario.”
Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 1 (February, 1996), 75-104.

352
Terrones López, María Eugenia ed. A la orilla del agua: Política, urbanización y
medio ambiente, historia de Xochimilco en el siglo XX. Mexico City:
Instituto Mora, 2004.

Terry, T Philip. Terry’s Guide to Mexico. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911.

Tortolero Villaseñor, Alejandro. El agua y su historia: México y sus desafíos hacia

el siglo XXI (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2000.

------. “Entre las revoluciones y el desarrollo: El agua en México, siglos XIX y

XX.” México en tres momentos: 1810-1910-2010. Hacía la
conmemoración del Bicentenario de la Independencia y del Centenario de
la Revolución Mexicana. Retos y Perspectivas, ed. Alicia Mayer, 155-76.
Mexico City: UNAM, 2007.

------ ed. Tierra, agua y bosques: historia y medio ambiente en el México central.
Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1996.

Trujillo Bolio, Mario. Operarios fabriles en el Valle de México (1864-1884):

Espacio, trabajo, protesta y cultura obrera. Mexico City: colmex, 1997.

Vaughan, Mary Kay. Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and

Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.

Vaughan, Mary Kay and Stephen Lewis ed. The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and
Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2006.

Vázquez y Vázquez, Jesús. La legislación forestal desde el punto de vista social.

Mexico City: UNAM, 1936.

Vizcaíno, Fernando. “El Lago de Texcoco.” Ingeniería hidraúlica en México 3,

no. 3 (1949).

Vuelta a la ciudad lacustre: memorias del congreso, Octubre 1998. Mexico City:

353
 Instituto de la Cultura de la Ciudad de México, 1998.

Wakild, Emily. “Resources, Communities, and Conservation: The Creation of

National Parks in Revoluionary Mexico Under Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934-
1940.” PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2007.

Walker, Richard ed. “William Cronon’s Nature Metropolis: A Symposium.”

Antipode 26, no. 2 (April 1994).

Walsh, Casey. Building the Borderlands: A Transnational History of Irrigated

Cotton along the Mexico-Texas Border. College Station: Texas A&M
Press, 2008.

Wells, Alan and Gilbert M. Joseph. “Modernizing Visions, ‘Chilango’ Blueprints,

and Provincial Growing Pains: Mérida at the Turn of the Century.”
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 8, no. 2 (Summer, 1992), 167-215.

West, Robert C. and Pedro Armillas ed. “Las chinampas de México: Poesia y
realidad de los ‘jardines flotantes’ (1950).” La agricultura chinampera:
Compilación histórica, ed. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, 71-98. Mexico City:
Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 1983.

White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Wolfe, Mikael. “The Revolutionary Emblem of a Nation: Narrative, Ecology,

Technology, and Politics in the Making of ‘La Laguna,’ Mexico, 1850-
2008.” PhD Thesis, University of Chicago, 2008.

Womack, John. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1969.

Wood, Andrew. Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers and Urban Protest in
Veracruz, 1870-1927. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2001.

Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the

354
 American West. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.

Zárraga, Guillermo. La tragedia del Valle de México Mexico City: Stylo, 1958.

Zolov, Eric. “Notas sobre la capital en su contribución hegemónica.” Los

últimos cien años, los próximos cien…, ed. Ariel Rodríguez Kuri and
Sergio Tamayo Flores-Alatorre, 111-126. Mexico City: UAM, 2000.

355