Washerwomen, World Heritage, and Water: Spaces of Modernity and Tradition in Xochimilco and Mexico City

• In Event: Spatial practices and their visual representation in colonial and modern Mexico

Abstract

This paper stems from an interdisciplinary research project on The Visual Culture of Modern Water in Mexico City. Here we examine the spatial re-organization of Xochimilco as a response both to Mexico City’s heavy demand for potable water, and, relatedly, its need for designated tourist sites. Starting around 1900, Mexico City annexed the (evidently) abundant and certifiably healthful waters of the Xochimilco springs, about 30 kilometers from the city center. In both text and image, we see how Xochimilco -- its water and spaces -- were pictured and poised for consumption by the capital. We consider how modern natural resource engineering and cultural engineering have together maintained an image/space of Xochimilco as touristically traditional and appealing, while creating vulnerabilities in and contamination of its resources. We can see this in a range of examples, from the popular image of the washerwoman in lithographs and photographs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the effects of the 1987 UNESCO designation of Mexico City and Xochimilco as a combined World Heritage Site. As the potable water system built between 1900 and 1915 mapped their futures together and forever altered Xochimilco’s people and environment, so too did that cultural arrangement. The legacy of mapping Xochimilco’s water and its reputation into Mexico City is the current situation in which Xochimilco finds itself. In order to maintain enough water in its famous canal and spring system to allow passage of the popular trajineras carrying tourists, effluent is pumped in to keep the water level sufficiently high.

Authors

• Stacie G Widdifield, University of Arizona

• Jeffrey Banister, University of Arizona-Southwest Center; School of Geography and Development