T
OD last July They celebrated with various ceremonies the 700 years of the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The main one was on the 26th in the capital Zócalo, chaired by the president of the Republic and the head of government of the city. In her speech, the president described Tenochtitlan as a symbol of organization, power, science, art and vision that represented the center of an indigenous world. There was a historical staging in charge of members of the Armed Forces. It should be noted that the former president also celebrated in 2021 the 700 years of that foundation, and that the absence of a good part of the academy that studies that past was notable.
One of the most prominent themes of what was said in July about Tenochtitlan was the wise form as its inhabitants knew how to organize it. With ceremonial temples, vast and well -assorted markets. In addition, on the arrival of Spanish conquerors it was an empire with laws, language, writing, medicine, engineering, culture and astronomical knowledge. And something fundamental: the rational use of water. How this indispensable resource used it to move through channels and lagoons, to irrigate very sustainable crop systems and/or obtain aquatic fauna.
That great metropolis was, as Mexico City and the other populations that make up the greatest human, industrial, commercial, bureaucratic, educational and services of the country, in a closed basin, whose high parts descend 45 rivers with whose water the Lakes of Texcoco, San Cristóbal, Xaltocan, Chalco, Zumpango and Xochimilco. Today they only remain, and not with splendor, the last three. In addition, three lagoons: Tochac, Apan and Tecocomulco.
On a part of the water of Lake Texcoco, Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded and flourished; The one that conquerors and chroniclers who accompanied them, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo, defined as a great metropolis for their urban line, their large population, their clean water supply network and their roads and navigation channels to mobilize people and merchandise. His magnificent temples and palaces, their houses and their cultivation systems, highly the Chinampa, which still subsists. And the enormous amount of products that were sold in the main market-city: Tlatelolco, which came to have up to 60 thousand visitors and to which products from other parts of the basin reached. Even from the Gulf of Mexico.
If with so much destructive fury the conquerors razed temples, ceremonial centers, culture and killed thousands, it was not less that they exercised to alter the wise water system of the city. Water was the natural enemy to overcome, to eliminate. The reason: the damages that caused their overflows and originated in the destruction of the hydraulic system so wisely constructed. And with another purpose: to make land to erect the new city, with palace, convents, churches and streets for the circulation of a modern but heavy means of transport: carriages.
In the sixteenth century the city grew on what was a lake medium. But that increased floods. Also the epidemics originated in contaminated waters and for whose cause they died especially indigenous. Then there was to control the floods and dry out the lake zone of the new city and grew on the mainland. And little by little the colonial authorities were achieved.
One of the key works of that time was the Tajo de Nochistongo. It began to be built in the seventeenth century at the initiative of the Spanish engineer Enrico Martínez. Together with others, such as the Grand Canal, they were key to almost completely erase the specimen lake ecosystem of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Some of these works serve to evict sewage.
Now that the heavy rains collapse the capital and neighboring cities, there is no lack of those that blame what happens to the colonial regime for destroying Mexico-Tenochtitlan. But especially since the last century, the definitive alteration of the lake ecosystem is the work of the public sector, which has never developed a sustainable urban growth program. To this are added corruption and speculation, especially since the last century, as I will show next Monday.
