The Aquatic Metropolis

For centuries, both the Aztec and the Spanish sought to control catastrophic flooding in Tenochtitlan and later Mexico City, but their responses were about more than just engineering. What might seem like straightforward hydraulic projects emerge, under rigorous examination, as complex intersections of visual cultures and philosophical worldviews about nature and cities.

Blending art history with the histories of cartography, science, technology, and the environment, this book offers a nuanced account of Mexico City’s urban development. At its core is the visual culture of water—maps, drawings, and paintings by both indigenous and European artists that expose the differing epistemologies shaping Aztec and Spanish approaches to urban planning. Unlike the Aztec, who used causeways to adapt the city to its aquatic environment, Spanish colonizers employed European methods of hydraulic engineering to overcome New World nature. In addition to being a technical solution, this drainage project served a philosophical purpose: to secure a new historical genesis for Mexico City by rooting it in the history of European antiquity and classical architecture, and by emancipating it from Tenochtitlan’s most iconic feature—water.

The Aquatic Metropolis is essential reading for scholars and students of environmental history, art history, urban studies, and Latin American studies. It shows that Mexico City’s modern flood crises are not just contemporary problems but the outcome of cultural attitudes and decisions that have deep roots in the colonial past. Understanding this history offers critical tools for addressing the city’s future amid climate change.

“John López's sharp-eyed art-historical chronicle tracks Mexico City’s current ecological crisis back to its source. The Spanish invasion of the Aztec city unleashed a centuries-long struggle over water, during which environmental ideologies clashed and technological fixes failed. Vanquish water like an enemy? Live with water as an ally? Drawing on Indigenous manuscripts, urban maps, oil paintings, and other images, The Aquatic Metropolis reveals how competing water epistemes shaped the historic city.”—Barbara E. Mundy, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City

“When did Tenochtitlán become Mexico City? According to John López, it was not when the Spanish conquered the city but much later, when they decided to drain the surrounding lakes and thereby flush away the Mexica cosmology that gave the city form and meaning. In this fascinating cultural history of the desagüe, the largest civil engineering project of its day becomes an instrument for redefining the essence of the city itself.”—Ricardo Padrón, author of The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West

John F. López is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Davis.

Art History & Architecture

           Early Modern

History

           Early Modern

           Latin American

Latin American Studies

           Art & Architecture

           History

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Early Modern Art and Architecture