ENCYCLOPEDIA

Concrete

in

I’m the new rock, the new solid, the new stratum of the earth. I’m a hybrid of dust and liquid, a chemical reaction swiftly turning the heat and the softness of a sandy mass to a hard, heavy, geometrical, cold block. For more than one hundred years I’ve spread on the surface of the planet like the symbol of a new world that doesn’t need mud or stone to grow. Now I fasten myself on them and sink them with the weight of buildings, bridges, streets, houses, and airports. They’re all extensions of me, pure synthesis of my elements, made with the gray flesh of my molecules. My soul is steel, a new and improved compound of millennial metals. I’m a miracle, a ghost, for I emerge out of almost nothing with the most flawless hardness and multiply and expand at the mere call of human will. I simply appear there, where requested, and rise into a tower higher than a mountain, or sprawl for miles as a bridge between two shores, uniting that which the Earth had insisted in keeping apart. My surfaces are flat and smooth.  [...]

Construction

in

A warehouse in ruins. Inside it, a heap of tools and gadgets on wooden, metal tables. Some spider webs in the corners, from wall to wall. Painted in blue and white, the walls are sprinkled with gray stains. On one of the walls, the inner framework is showing, after some layers of paint have cracked and come off. The chassis of a truck lies on the floor, bathing in dust. On the opposite side of this derelict space is a closet with its doors agape. In the closet, folders, binders, and documents in yellow paper pile up. They were made in typing machines which are now obsolete. Spider webs also bridge the binders. Some plants have found their way into it, growing in the cracks formed by the walls and the floor. The roof is covered by gray asbestos tiles, strewn with wooden beams. Rays of light slant between the tiles, hitting the dusty floor. The half-opened door moves with the gusts of wind. Outside, the grass grows by the walls, spreading all the way to the edge of a cobble-stoned road. Dogs bark nearby: theirs paws thud on the ground between pointy wicks of grass.  [...]

Coordinate

in

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. [...]

Deer

in

The first couple of deer arrived in New Zealand halfway through the 19th century, when a lord of Essex sent them as a gift for the Southern island. The female died without offspring, shot by a hunter, leaving only the male deer. The same English noble sent a couple of females. After their arrival, the deer began to reproduce quickly, populating the forests of this southern country, multiplying. Towards 1930, the deer were so many, rewards were set on their heads, causing the killing of more than a million specimens in the following decades.

Conagua engineers report in 2012 a pack of these animals arrived in Lake Texcoco from New Zealand, in a new migration far removed from that initial one departing from English soil more than a century ago. In some documents, these animals appear as belonging to a pack that in 2005 shared grasslands with cows and native horses, in some spot of the Federal Enclosure.  [...]

Demolition

in

April 26, 2012. Houses were scattered far and wide throughout the Hidalgo y Carrizo lot, along the bordering zones of Lake Texcoco, to the east of its basin, and west of the city that still bears the name of this ancient body of water. Every house occupied its space freely, without a grid, without structure. The houses held together in fragile balance, for they were a grounded assortment of materials and construction techniques: tin, cement, wood, brick, glass, and tarp. Every possible combination was set up in the middle of a vast plateau, lined with patchy, dry grass, dry like the seasonal air. Some had been recently demolished, for clouds of dust hovered over them. Now uninhabited and neglected, these torn huts left mountains of rubble behind them: shattered wooden beams, bricks devoured by the salt in the air, fragmented plaster planks, shreds of cloth, rusty metallic fragments, various kinds of foam, all dispersed yet together enough to be identified as remainders of one single ensemble.  [...]

Dereliction

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At the entrance of Lake Texcoco Ecological Park, there’s a map explaining the premises: a gym, playgrounds, cabins, historic monuments, soccer, baseball, and volleyball courts, lakes, bike routes. You can also see on the map a red dot stating “you are here,” and in a corner, the Conagua logo. The park, located further in, lies in the middle of an ecological reserve, like a hidden ghost amongst the trees. The park is a specter that weeds and brush have devoured with the passing of time. Snails have invaded it and stagnant puddles of rainwater turn it bleak. The sunlight, the air, and the salt coughed up from the ground all have taken their toll. Along the park’s roads, the light posts watch over the perimeter like guardians of a land no one has treaded in years. Each post is crowned by a solar cell, but, at night, the park needs no artificial light. A bluish-gray wooden cabin, standing on high stilts, completes now more than four years of solitary life.  [...]

Desert

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The movie Black Wind shows the building process for the railways connecting the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California in the middle of the desert, towards 1947. Between sandstorms, under a sizzling sun hitting the heads of workers, engineers, and supervisors, each character develops an untamable will to sow industry in this arid land. The absence of water and flora is total. The rails are fastened to the ground, segment by segments, while the men stay standing between the open sky and the soft, dry, volatile sand.

The barren land that propels the movie’s plot was partly recorded in the Sonora desert. Some of the scenes were produced in a region similar in attributes to that of northern Mexico, just next to the Federal District. During the shooting, the ecological reserve and bulwark of the last lots belonging to Lake Texcoco was a wide plateau of salty soil where there was no water, flora, nor urban developments for miles around.  [...]

Desiccation

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Around the planet, from China to the Bolivian region that borders with Chile, lakes have turned  into a gauge of human incidence on the geography: as they dry up and shrink, the water and the basins’ surroundings change in shape and color until they transform into altogether different places. These sites acquire different colorings, some spots rise, some sink, erode or flood in unforeseeable configurations. The regions they ascribe to also change. Sometimes the previously warm color tones of a patch of land with a lake at the center become dotted with cold hues when the lake disappears. Sometimes an area where the blue reflection of water covered everything in green and violet, turns yellowish and red as the center of the lake dries up. The desiccation of a lake acts like a domino spreading its reach the way the pieces topple one another, until the most remote one falls: provinces, regions, districts, counties, and entire states are affected by the decrease in the water level of a lagoon.  [...]

Dispossession

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During a round-table discussion, César del Valle, one of the leaders of the People’s Front for the Defense of the Land (FPDT), asked the audience: “What is dispossession?” Some thirty people congregated in a small auditorium to talk about the possible consequences of the construction of the New Mexico City International Airport in the Texcoco basin. On the pine-wood surface of a table lay an open map, crisscrossed by folding lines. The map showed the northeastern region of the state of Mexico, strewn with partitions outlining different lands, one of top of the other. On the upper right side of the huge sheet, an area highlighted in red stood out, drawn over other lots marked by dotted lines. According to the measurements at the margins of the map, a triangle of some ninety hectares appeared under the legend: “Lots of the Atenco ejido under dispute with the NAICM.”  [...]

Ditch

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Mexico City residents have dug several ditches around and inside the area Lake Texcoco occupied for several centuries. In 1607, they dug a ditch north of the lakes of the Central Mexican basin to try to drain all of their water and dry up new stretches of land for urbanization. In 1629, a great flood caused its collapse. Its frail structure was erased as the water level rose in the rivers and lakes that took up great spreads of land in the Valley of Mexico. After the failure of the first ditch, a new canal was dug to drain the metropolitan area in the early 20th century. This subterranean Great Canal crossed the lake land south to north, directing the lacustrine water towards the Tula River, into the Mezquital Valley, in the state of Hidalgo.

As the city grew, a series of underground aquifers shrank in size. Their water was extracted through shallow wells: a well is a sort of vertical ditch that opens the land until it reaches down into one of the reservoirs. As the ground sank as a result of the vertical channels pumping water out, the Great Canal yielded, sloping the wrong way, causing the water’s return to the lakes. [...]

Duck

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Currently demarcated as an ecological reserve, the area surrounding the Nabor Carrillo Reservoir is inhabited by native birds year round and migrant birds during the winter. According to some avifauna experts who have studied the birds resting in the trees, this spot in the Valley of Mexico is the most important in the area for birds in migration. Thousands of these animals—mainly ducks like the greater scaup, the blue-winged teal, the brown teal, the ruddy duck, the pintail, the American wigeon, and the canvasback—rest on the water of this reservoir in groups of a couple hundreds, floating, making it their home for a few months.

Migrations are processes of long aerial journeys, implying sometimes flying over uninterrupted stretches of ocean and deserted land. The flight periods are long, and with short rest stops. Flocks of birds arrive each year to the same spot, certain that they will return the next, knowing somehow that the following generations will traverse exactly the same path: thousands of miles covered only to fly back. [...]

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.  [...]

Highway

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In the 16th century, Lake Texcoco was an uninterrupted body of water that stretched all the way to the edge of the Chapultepec Forest in the west and over to the limit of the Texcoco Kingdom in the east. In the maps from that era, it is depicted as a wide-reaching circle that contains a large blue surface dotted only by the small island of Tenochtitlan. As the desiccation initiated, the lake was displaced to the Texcoco region, in an attempt to drive it out of the city. In spite of this, it largely remained one body, one single patch, although parted by straight and diagonal lines that progressively adapted to the political divisions of the neighboring grounds. At the beginning of the 20th century, the borders of the lake where reduced to edges and lines drawn with the neatness and sovereignty of the fast-growing urban territories. These territories were spilling onto each other and set up barriers to contain each other’s encroachment. Rather than an edge that follows the curves of the water touching the land, the lake became a combination of polygons, isosceles triangles, and perfect circles, measurable by the devices of Euclidean geometry. Towards the 70s, once it was depleted, the lake became a great desert of white, uninterrupted soil, framed by the growing neighborhoods of the outskirts, tucked between the city and the ring formed by the state of Mexico around it: the fusion of a polygon, a circle and a rectangle.  [...]