Reimaginando la ciudad lacustre
Description
The mythical foundation of Tenochtitlan on an islet in Lake Texcoco, together with the radical colonial and modern transformation of the lake environment, turned the flow of water into a vortex of Mexico City’s stories. Through a lens informed by ecocriticism, this research explores the literary and cultural history of the Mexican capital in relation to its environment. To this end, I study works of various genres (drama, poetry, fiction and chronicles) published since the end of the 1960s, a time when the city became a megalopolis and modern environmentalism emerged. The first chapter delineates a brief history of the relationship between humanity and the aquatic landscape of central Mexico. The second chapter studies literary works that textualize the degradation of aquatic landscape from their former flow through free waterways, following their transformation into one of the largest sewage systems in the world, until the arrival of Day Zero, the dreaded moment when the city’s taps run completely dry. The third chapter focuses on works that also observe the history of radical transformation of the environment, but that transcend the commonplace apocalypse by conceiving in the concretion of the water cycles a promise of ecosocial regeneration. The last chapter maps Mexico City’s eco-utopias analyzing urban plans, ideals, and novels that imagine a future in which humanity finally reconciles itself with its landscape. In this way, this study reveals how the wetlands origins of the city haunts art and literature, prompting us not only to reimagine the city on the lake, but also to reconsider our relationship with the environment and to rebuild the oikos, the community that is our home in the Basin of Mexico.