Water Diversion in the Valley of Mexico Basin: An Environmental Transformation That Caused the Desiccation of Lake Texcoco

Carolina Montero-Rosado, Enrique Ojeda-Trejo, Vicente Espinosa-Hernández, Demetrio Fernández-Reynoso, Miguel Caballero Deloya and Gerardo Sergio Benedicto Valdés
Additional contact information
Carolina Montero-Rosado: Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo, Estado de México, Texcoco 56230, Mexico
Enrique Ojeda-Trejo: Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo, Estado de México, Texcoco 56230, Mexico
Vicente Espinosa-Hernández: Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo, Estado de México, Texcoco 56230, Mexico
Demetrio Fernández-Reynoso: Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo, Estado de México, Texcoco 56230, Mexico
Miguel Caballero Deloya: Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo, Estado de México, Texcoco 56230, Mexico
Gerardo Sergio Benedicto Valdés: Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo, Estado de México, Texcoco 56230, Mexico

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-23

Abstract: Mexico’s basin is one of the most altered in the country, owing to the presence of the megalopolis of Mexico City. Lake Texcoco, which had the basin’s biggest extension, dried up almost completely. The basin’s evolution over time led in the formation of a megabasin in which water is transported from one source to another to serve the urban region and subsequently drained to prevent flooding. The major hydrotechnical works in Mexico Basin have been interpreted as a solution to the problem of flooding in Mexico City, but they were actually part of a much larger strategy of territorial appropriation by the Spanish colonists. The ecological imbalance that has resulted has sparked a variety of social issues. For the purpose of analyzing the environmental transformation of Lake Texcoco over the last 500 years, actors and processes that influenced specific moments in the country’s history were identified; these elements showed the inexorable relationship between the lake and Mexico City. Subsequently, they were grouped by periods with similar trends in terms of the way in which society relates to and appropriates the natural environment of the lake. It was found that the critical moment for the desiccation of Lake Texcoco occurred during the Spanish colonial historical period as part of the redesign of the city; from then on, the same environmental imaginary prevailed century after century, shaped by social and economic factors. This study contributes to the literature on how urbanization affects natural resources by making an original theoretical contribution through an analysis based on political ecology, and it adds to the literature on how people use the prevailing federal area of the lake.

Keywords: Mexico City; historical political ecology; urban ecology; water spatial policy; environmental change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:4:p:542-:d:789213

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