Land and Water in the Shadow of the Imperial City's Drainage, 1607–1900

The Desagüe de Huehuetoca, the drainage project by which the city of Mexico’s well-heeled denizens hoped to eliminate their exposure to the floods endemic to the basin where the capital sat, has always been studied from an urban perspective.  However, between 1607, when it was begun, and 1900, when Porfirio Díaz inaugurated the latest expansion on drainage infrastructure, the Desagüe’s principal devices sat amidst indigenous and non-indigenous rural communities and haciendas.  The presence of the drainage’s canals, dams, tunnel, trenches and other structures among them projected the city’s own values of what land and water were onto rural populations.  Deliberately or not, the Desagüe became a mechanism that reinforced both the city of Mexico’s imperial ambition towards adjoining regions and the antagonism of the many in the countryside towards it into the modern era. The city thus changed environments as well as people’s relationships with them well beyond its boundaries.