Exploration, Exploitation and Creation: The Hybrid Waterscape of Temacapulín, Mexico

• In Event: Local Histories, Regional Histories, Transnational Histories

Abstract

The town of Temacapulín, Mexico is situated near various water sources: the Verde river, streams, and hot springs. This paper examines the creation of a hybrid waterscape through the exploration and extraction of these water sources by the townsfolk and outside groups. In 1970, Plutarco Lomeli published a poem in a Guadalajara newspaper about the small town of Temacapulín. Lomeli romanticized the natural surroundings of Temacapulín, highlighting the Verde river, the sounds of water, and the absence of noise produced by “people and their machines.” Forty years later, the “people and their machines” arrived at Temacapulín. The town reappeared in the news when local women stopped trucks from passing through their town by lining up large rocks across the paved roads. These trucks carried sand from the Verde, which would be turned into cement. Every morning, the townsfolk endured the loud rumble of the trucks driving through their town, which disrupted the typical silence of their picturesque community. The physical and cultural productions engendered by poetry and industrialization centered around the town’s water sources. As such, these varying absorptions and manifestations of water played similar yet differing roles in shaping and creating a hybrid waterscape that altered both the physical and cultural landscape.

Author

• Fernando Amador II, PhD Student