Nature's Machines: The Flood Control Devices of Adrian Boot

In 1614, the Dutch engineer Adrian Boot arrived at Mexico City to assist Enrico Martínez with the desagüe—a project that was to drain the lakes surrounding Mexico City into the Gulf of Mexico to prevent flooding.  Soon after, Boot rejected the desagüe as a possible solution, claiming that Martínez failed to understand the importance of the lakes to the city’s economy, food supply, and canoe transportation, or to comprehend the concept of subsidence.  Instead, Boot proposed to regulate the lakes by fortifying existing dikes and causeways, and adding another dike: a protective ring around the western edge of the city.  The water level was also to be regulated by sluices, windmill-driven drainage pumps, and scoop dredging; cranes would lift canoes over dikes when conditions prevented opening the sluice gates.  Many, especially Martínez, criticized Boot’s plan because it resembled Aztec flood control, but its method was purely European.  Boot’s dependence on machines—chiefly dredges, cranes, and pumps—differs strikingly from any of the pre-Columbian undertakings.  Ironically, these devices, and others, were used in land reclamation projects in the Low Countries, France, and Germany.  At Mexico City, however, European technology was to be applied in a previously unimagined manner to a new set of environmental conditions.  This paper examines how Boot’s machines would have been able to maintain the environmental conditions upon which Mexico City and many of its social systems were founded.