The Government's Projects

Accident

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On November 5th, 1955, the rainwater had built up in the ancient, salty basin of Lake Texcoco, delivering it for a while from its apparently irreversible desiccation. The lake appears in the photos of the time as a mirror of silvery water fading in the distance, making us momentarily forget that in the dry season, this body of water disappeared completely from the map, leaving a several-hectare-wide wasteland in its place. During the months previous to the arrival of winter, this concave and hollow terrain temporarily received the water from the gushing mid-year storms, tainted by the residues the stream carried from the metropolis’s center. The silvery mirror the pictures depict is more precisely a gray surface of dirty water, stored to prevent its spillage in the city streets. The odor of the waste water probably traveled through air according to the wind’s direction, arriving to the city of Texcoco if the currents blew east, or to the northeastern neighborhoods of Mexico City if the air blew west, just like it happens today with the gases released by the West Landfill. [...]

Agency

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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. [...]

Airport

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Upon stepping out of the airplane, the travelers who’ve flown thousands of miles enter an intermediate realm, symbolically located halfway between the land they left behind and the one that will take them in. Glimpsed from a huge, recently landed aircraft, the international airport—this “non-place”—opens like an empty box at the end of a tunnel: it connects the plane with the ground in a labyrinthine succession of corridors and carpeted white gates, assorted with slightly-quilted black vinyl seats. The hallways are endowed with conveyors that work as treadmills, moving passengers who drag their luggage up to the immigration queues. Such queues, made of a series of tired bodies and overloaded backs, slither and condense up to the booths where the officers grant or deny access to the new territory. Then the other conveyors appear, like black rubber ellipses, which display bags of all sizes and shapes. The awaiting passengers congregate around them: several ellipses in a row let out a buzz that fills the entire space. Before getting out to breathe the air in the destination country, the customs officers guard the last frontier. [...]

Anima

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Walt Disney created a series of short animated films in the 1930s called Silly Symphonies: in them, different things from the “inert” world move, interact, behave, and gesticulate. They experience situations and even face moral dramas. Things as diverse as watches, bones, houses, chandeliers, mushrooms, and toys, are endowed with a pair of eyes, opposable thumbs, and human faces. They smile, cry, or sing; they feel emotions such as jealousy, envy, or pity. One of these clips, Flowers and Trees, takes place in a corner of the woods, at dawn. The trees wake up and greet the sun stretching their branches like arms, yawning with a face located right under the green leafy hair of the foliage. Stunningly standing on legs, the flowers do gymnastic feats while the mushrooms smile with their gleaming heads. All things sing in unison and dance, encircled by birds depicted as little chirping children. In the middle of this crowd celebrating the daybreak, the trees socialize, they take up roles and postures, facing the dilemmas of amorous courtship, rivalry, and reconciliation. In the feud for the love of a slender and think-leafed kapok, a story unfolds were good and evil wage war, as if such story took place in a realm more human than vegetal. [...]

Animism

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The word animism was coined at the outset of anthropology, to describe certain practices of human groups called “primitive cultures.” Primitive cultures were often observed from a critical distance. Thus, they were different from other cultures, the civilized. Under scrutiny by anthropologists, the former were measured according to the historical progression of human development whose culmination was embodied by the way of life of Western Europe’s peoples towards the end of the 19th century. Following this progression, the primitive peoples lagged behind in respect to the Europeans, living in their present time the past of the latter: while in Europe, great cities and steam engines were built, the primitive were in their cognitive and productive infancy. In this sense, the primitive weren’t as human as the observers: they were subaltern, incomplete, marginal humans, deprived from the tools of modern technology. These “lesser” humans were typically defined with characteristics antithetical to those of their observer: unmodern, unscholarly, deprived of civilizational gadgets, non-metropolitan residents. They typically weren’t aware of the ontological distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the living and the inanimate, and therefore had no devices to account for the “world.” They couldn’t tell feeling from thinking either. [...]

Archaeology

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On the report written by Parsons and Morett about their archaeological expeditions in Lake Texcoco during the 1980s and 90s, there is a mention of a landfill site made from debris from the Federal District. Such debris lay beside the road recently opened by the National Water Commission (Conagua). Among the rubble, there were archaeological tepalcates (ancient Mexican ceramic objects), carved stones, and other objects belonging to the ancient indigenous communities, mixed up with modern urban materials. Archaeologists tell how part of their fieldwork took place within such rubble accumulations, learning to distinguish the more valuable materials from the more recent. They found millenary pieces mixed with today’s objects; in this mix, the mundane collided with the archaeologically valuable.  [...]

Archive

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By the Forest of San Juan de Aragón, on the northeast edge of Mexico City, stands an architectural complex of one-story buildings, framed by a white fence, always closed and guarded by a watchman in a black uniform. This complex and the neighboring forest are only a few blocks away from the Benito Juárez Airport. The airplanes that take off and land every few minutes feel very near, flying at such low altitudes. Inside one of these buildings there’s an archive containing the documented history of the now desiccated Lake Texcoco: a small, low-ceiling hall, with a few wooden shelves holding binders lined in burgundy leather, along with a few thin-paged, softcover books. The wooden furniture is covered by a thin layer of dust, and a smell of old paper and humidity. The National Water Commission (Conagua), the government entity in charge of every matter regarding the (former) lake, occasionally publishes an illustrated journal that describes the developments of certain infrastructural projects which have been completed in some areas of the desertified lacustrine land: the planting of fruit trees; the details of a new water well; the innovations of the landfill site and how it transforms garbage into fertilizer for a fertile land in the future. [...]

Artifice

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In 2012 an earthquake reaching a magnitude of nearly 8 points on the Richter scale took place in Mexico City. Due to the earth’s movement, small cracks opened in a number of buildings, objects fell from tables, and the offices located in skyscrapers along Paseo de la Reforma sent their employees home.  

Over in the south, in the Tláhuac Forest, a recently built lake ceased to exist on that day. It was a place where boats sailed, and around which families and lovers would gather on weekends. The earthquake shook the base of this lake, cracking it open like an old shell, opening holes in the earth which caused the water to be absorbed immediately, making the lake disappear in a matter of hours. From one day to the next, the lake had vanished: on the dry ground a few anchored vessels remained, as if dragged onto and abandoned in a vacant lot.  [...]

Birdstrike

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Many airports around the world are located by the sea, where seagulls and other sea birds are regular inhabitants. In these habitats, birds are forced to retreat when airplanes approach, rendering untenable the coexistence between animal and machine. Both avian and aeronautic creatures may travel within an open, clear, and apparently limitless space, unconstrained by the same severe limitations land movement is bound to. Nevertheless, there needs to be a (unilateral) demarcation of the skies. The technical name given to the possible chaos generated by an encounter between an airplane and, for instance, a flock of migrating ducks, is “birdstrike.” In said “strikes,” a group of birds flying at 100 km/h may crash against a plane flying at 900 km/h. If, as a result of such crash, a bird as large as a seagull, pelican, or duck happens to accidentally become stuck inside a turbine, the plane can break down and fall, crashing into land or sea.  [...]

Bond

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The Nabor Carrillo Reservoir is outlined and contained by a levee made of red tezontle rocks. Product of volcanic emanations, these rocks were once cast out of the earth’s center to cool down on the surface and break into small chunks. Today, they guard a body of water that was also cast out. The Nabor Carrillo receives a shiny-blue, clean-smelling, salty water, as if from the sea. It has made a long trip, just like the stones. Black and dense, the sewage water of northeastern Mexico City is dumped in Lake Churubusco, on the western edge of Lake Texcoco. There, it is treated by refined methods and invisibly pumped into the Nabor Carrillo. The heat evaporates the water into the air breathable from the shore, while millions of gallons of processed water arrive to the opposite shore. Flocks of ducks, migrating every winter in a long journey from Canada, make a stop on this water.  [...]

Building

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On Insurgentes Avenue, in southern Mexico City, a twenty-story tower stands and halves the horizon, made of concrete and metal sheets. This building is guarded like a fortress: to get in it is necessary to go through several security checkpoints, followed by a pair of heavy elevators. Upon stepping out of the elevator, each floor, identical to the previous one, spreads like a labyrinth of cubicles and non-descript desks, framed by a corridor that crosses the space on one side. There’s a row of offices with closed doors, all identical. Each floor in this building resembles a mirror device where a single piece of furniture is reflected and multiplied infinitely. The employees occupying each cubicle are mesmerized in their computer screens, and only look up to see me walking by, to lower their gaze towards the screens again. Their fleeting gestures signal a disturbance in the order of a place dominated by silence, the phones’ ringtone, and the sound of dozens of keyboards typed on in unison.  [...]

Coordinate

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On September 2nd, 2014, Enrique Peña Nieto announced the construction of the New Mexico City International Airport. Starting September 2015, the license holders have arrived in the land of northern Lake Texcoco to clean and prepare it. They also have rekindled a decade-long conflict with the Atenco community, and established a new demarcation vis-à-vis the National Water Commission (Conagua). In the weeks following the new occupation, the fertile and diverse vegetal layer of more than 8,000 hectares covering the land was razed to prepare the lot for the new constructions: the appearance of the soil quickly went back to what it was 40 years ago, when the lake was a huge salt desert. The Conagua SUVs trying to gain access to the northern area are now inspected (their access is restricted and sometimes denied), showing how the private sphere prevails ever more strongly over the public. [...]

Dust Cloud

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In the late 1960s, Lake Texcoco remained dry most of the year. During the rainy season, its basin would fill up and spill onto the city, flooding its main streets, although only for a couple of months. The remaining part of the year the ground would dry out. Its grains of dust and salt were exposed to sunlight and wind. This wind would lift the thicker grains and drag them along at ground level, baring the underlying layer. Blowing in all directions, the wind would lift the dust to then thrust it to the ground. Localized explosions of aeolic erosion fractured the soil. When coarser particles hit the ground, finer ones would then rise in huge veils of dust which thickened into veritable walls. The volatile particles of these “walls” rose further, in the shape of clouds. They were manipulated by the softer wind currents and driven back towards Mexico City at very high speeds. These tolvaneras (“dust clouds”) happened around 33 times a year and were as strong as the sandstorms in the Sahara Desert.  [...]

Ejido

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The ejido has been the indivisible unit of land ownership in Mexico ever since the approval of the 1917 Constitution. More than one-hundred million hectares of fertile ground were granted to groups of people under a very clear set of rules: the land would belong to the state, and by eliminating private ownership over it, conflict, division, and indiscriminate usufruct would be avoided. The specific use of the land would be decided upon by the beneficiary farmers of the ejido, provided that it remained agricultural; the land could not be sold nor divided. Ejidos are not “latifundiums” (large parcels of generally unused land) nor minifundios (smaller versions of latifundiums). It may not be given industrial use nor annexed to neighboring cities (which tend to grow horizontally). The people east of Lake Texcoco established themselves under this model of land ownership, thus consolidating themselves as communities dedicated to farming and raising livestock. They thus remain protected from being absorbed by Mexico City’s strong forces of urbanization, despite the proximity to its eastern outskirts. Ejidos, however, are not exempt from corruption within their local assemblies, nor from pressure from large-scale agricultural companies.  [...]

Erosion

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At the beginning of October you can still feel the intense summer heat. This heat evaporates water fairly fast: clouds of vapor rise from the ground to the atmosphere, while the ground tears into flakes divided by erosion cracks. The flake can be picked up with the hand as if it were part of a smashed ceramic plate: the edges of every flake reveal the cracking patterns of neighboring flakes, and at the same time show the fractured continuity of one single terrestrial surface. The course of moving water is seen in the porosity on one side of the flake, drawing notches in the cracks between them. On this floor made of sandy flakes, upon close observation, small circular holes mark the spot where some rain drops fell. The eroded ground of an immense plain stretches out up to Chiconautla Hill. In some spots of this great span of cracked ground, there are minuscule, murky ponds, where some birds dip their beaks to drink water. The birds might be storks, with gray feathers and long beak, standing on thin, supple legs. Mosquitoes swarm around these small ponds, landing on the water and on the birds’ bodies.  [...]

Fence

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The Peñón-Texcoco Highway stretches out like a straight line that turns the cars into rockets, propelling them down the pavement in a swift path from the metropolis into the ejidos of the state of Mexico, and from there back to the city on the opposite lane. In a car going at 100 km/h, things happening at either side of the road whizz past the eyes like a wake of abstract shapes, while the sound of traffic comes shooting the opposite way and wanes along, like a weep that resonates in the back of the head.

On January 2017, I drove past the lands of the colossal new airport—stretching north of the road—in the swift traffic returning from the state of Mexico into the capital. From the beginning of the highway, the perimeter fence now separating this new territory from the “outside” resembled a succession of gray and white slats to the right of the automobile. As the car moved ahead, the abstract image became a solid object: the slats went on for miles. When looking up north from the passenger’s seat, you could see the gray and white barrier encircling the entire perimeter of the airport area, rising on its edge like a new borderline.  [...]

Flight

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From the passenger’s seat you can’t feel the wind wobbling the aircraft. Fields, oceans, cities are flown over, rising until the ground vanishes, hidden under thick clouds. At moments, the notion of “up” and “down” is forgotten. From the heights, the great Mexico City becomes small, lost in a white stain made of millions of overlapping dots, as soon as the wider territory of the country engulfs it. Then, the continent appears and the earth is far away, far down, veiled by ever denser sheets of condensed vapor. The plane is alone in the heights, cruising among clouds, loaded with humans, bags, food trays and plastic cups holding still in their place. References to earthly matters vanish. Like a bird, the aircraft stays horizontal, swaying a bit every now and then, keeping its top upright. It reaches its stable cruising speed, crossing the air currents at 800 kilometers per hour. For long periods of time, the temperatures drop outside and stay stable inside. Within the airplane, like on the ground, everything stays relatively still.  [...]

Fractioning

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Encompassing a couple of square kilometers, the lot of El Salado is located east of Lake Texcoco territory. Towards 2002, this lot looked like those ejidos of Southern Lake Texcoco: an arid land storing the remainders of hastily built, and abruptly demolished houses. Here, it is impossible to find signs of infrastructure allowing the houses to function, communicate, or have demarcation. Not unlike the Hidalgo y Carrizo Lot in the southwestern area of Lake Texcoco, El Salado is a precariously urbanized land, seeming ambiguously available and restricted, derelict and plundered. This lot borders El Caracol in the west, a perfect circle in the soil, used by a now-defunct company as a water still for extracting salt and caustic soda. Bordering with Ecatepec to the north, El Caracol still looks like a round blue spot in the middle of a map full with irregular, interrupted lines. To the south, the immense plateau of ancient Lake Texcoco spreads. It was until recently a grassy prairie, some parts of which became desert in the dry season, and flooded during the rain season. The lot, a triangle in the middle of these three territories, sometimes merges with their shifting borders.  [...]

Grass

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The date of the definitive desiccation of Lake Texcoco is not filed in official documents. Some residents of Texcoco City I’ve interviewed state that in 1970, in the rainy season, it was still possible to row on a raft on the lake’s water and get to the center of the Federal District. However, there are evidences that show how the desertification was imminent by the mid-60s. The movie Black Wind, premiered in 1964, tells the story of the Sonora-Baja California Railroad. On the background of some scenes, a huge desert looms, which really was the northern area of Lake Texcoco, where the new airport is being built. Drastically and ironically, the lake became a desert similar to the Sonora Desert. The wind wafts up intense sand storms; temperature rises by day and drops by night.

An equally radical transformation of the site started in the 70s. The Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources instated the Lake Texcoco Commission, and started sowing one single vegetal species on the unlikely fertile soil. The Distichlis spicata grass grows like a rhizome, shooting out new stalks like radiuses in different directions.  [...]

Grave

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September 19th, 2015, was the 30th anniversary of the earthquake that shattered Mexico City. In a conversation with the most senior employee of the Dolores Cemetery, I found out that the night after the quake the bodies found under the rubble had been taken by the bulk to the graveyard lots which were still empty. Unidentified bodies formed massive heaps which overcrowded the cemetery and caused a crisis. If a similar tragedy occurred today, the graveyard wouldn’t have room to receive the same volume of corpses as in 1985.

The graves are laid out one next to the other in a dense lattice of tombstones, crosses, and statues stretching out in one section of the Chapultepec Forest. At the edge of the cemetery, some graves cramp as if about to spill out. The rubble of exhumed graves piles nearby—too old to seem fastened to the ground. In the rubble, we find fragments of tombstones belonging to people who passed away during the earthquake, mirroring the frailty of the constructions that crushed them. These shattered graves mark the inhumation of someone’s remains, whose house might have collapsed during the quake, killing them.  [...]