The Sociogenesis of Water Stress

Abstract

This chapter examines the intertwining between environmental and social processes in the transformation of the Basin of Mexico’s hydro-geology and in shaping socio-economic, cultural, and political structures and patterns. It shows how human intervention in the aquatic ecosystems, punctuated by protracted social confrontations, has burdened successive generations of Mexicans with an ever-spiralling mortgage to repay in relation to the material and social investments needed to sustain human control over water and make life possible in the basin. From pre-Columbian times, access to water became a key factor of social differentiation and segregation, establishing patterns of social inequality that were deepened and exacerbated by colonial water policies and, particularly, by the modern urbanization process since the late nineteenth century. Also, although the encounter between Indians and Spaniards took largely the form of a syncretistic process, it happened in the context of a colonial system of domination, which was not substantially transformed by the Mexican Independence or even by the Mexican Revolution. Drastic transformations took place not only in the forms of human control over the physical environment but also, and more importantly, in the economic, socio-political and cultural aspects of the relation between humans and water, thus also transforming the forms of social control over inter-human processes.

‘There is where water is dammed and stored by order of Hutzilopochtli ... who then told the Mexicans: “water has been dammed; sow willow, ahuehuete, reed, tulle, flower of atlacuezonalli, and let the fish, frogs, ajolotes, shrimps, and ducks breed there”. Then, the god sang and danced.’—Crónica Mexicáyotl [1609] (1975)

‘In all [colonial] water works in the Valley of Mexico water has been considered as an enemy which it is necessary to defend against.’—Alexander von Humboldt, Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne (1811)