Agency

On the shoreline of the Nabor Carrillo Reservoir there is a barrier made of red tezontle rocks, fitting into one another and forming a levee that rises one meter above the lake’s water level. This parapet is held together merely by the correspondence of the rocks’ concavities and convexities. A group of farmers from the Texcoco region built this levee to create a barrier preventing water overflow during rainy seasons. From a bird’s eye, airplane or satellite view, the stone parapet can be seen forming a perfect rectangle, a red line framing a mirror of dark waters. The rocks composing this line, broken by chisel into pieces of similar size, fit together by human hands, were torn from the earth to enter the domain of human agency. The rocks’ transportation from the quarry to the levee forces them out of a realm into another; they become an element fractionated by chisels, weighed, measured, and placed. They’re then bought by someone to become a mere item on an inventory of agricultural devices, part of the Mexican Federal Government’s accounting documents. The rocks have been dispatched and hauled on a truck, always in contact with the metal parts of the wagon’s container, as well as with the motor and its gasoline, moving a few meters above the asphalt until reaching their destination. They were taken from the Texcoco mountains, or from one of the hills rising east of this lake. Broken up by mining, the mountains, in turn, have become quarries. [...]

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