Entanglements in Atlixco: A 1622 Water Distribution Contract and the 1628 Lawsuit That Threatened to Destroy It

On 22 January 1628, Gerónimo de Sedano y Mendoza, the Spanish governor of the province of Izúcar, received a petition from the Indigenous town council of Izúcar complaining of a severe water shortage. They claimed that the crisis had already led to the deaths of some four hundred of their people and threatened to spread more disease and death if not quickly rectified. The culprits, they claimed, were a coterie of rural stakeholders upstream of the town who all benefited from three irrigation ditches fed by dams that partially diverted water away from the Atoyac River. This group, who had signed a written agreement dividing their shares of the diverted water in 1622, included at least ten Indigenous peasant villages, one Indigenous nobleman, two enterprises belonging to Catholic religious orders, three sugar mills, and eight Hispanic small-hold farmers. Sedano y Mendoza ordered that their diversion dams be broken open to allow water to flow freely to Izúcar, which kicked off a years-long flurry of litigation. This presentation explores how this diverse group of rural stakeholders built an enduring network of shared interests over this natural resource that was critical to them in different ways. It recounts the conflicts and compromises that led to the creation of their founding document, and the conflict that threatened to nullify it. This story reveals that Spanish colonial hegemony was built not through top-down imposition, but through contestation and negotiation from below. The relationships forged over the protection of these water sources proved to be enduring and resistant to outside threats, and Indigenous peasants were equal parties in its creation and defense. The presenter hopes to open a dialogue complicating the functioning of Spanish rule in Latin America, but also about how consensus can be built around shared desires to protect natural resources.