Urban Globalization and its Historicity: The Case of the Global Sanitary City in Mexico in the Nineteenth Century

Medicine and sanitary engineering were applied gradually during the nineteenth century as solutions to the terrible conditions of life and habitat that prevailed in the cities of the capitalist world—but also with the purpose of regenerating the human work force necessary to reproduce wealth. This essay shows how this global sanitarian effort was applied in Mexico City during the government of President Porfirio Díaz (1876– 1880, 1884– 1910), exemplifying the conceptions and prejudices about health, disease, environment and urban government shared by Mexican elites and their international peers, and with which they justified reforms aimed at controlling and disciplining nature and the social environment. During the inaugural ceremony of the Mexico Valley drainage system on March 17, 1900, Mexico’s president General Porfirio Díaz—on his fifth term in office—declared it “such an important and transcendent occasion for our future that it has to be registered in the annals of the Mexican people beside and at the same level of our independence day” (“Una de las más grandes fiestas del progreso. Inauguración de las obras del Desagüe”, El Popular, México City, 19/3/1900). The Drainage Project, set out in 1886, consisted of a main conduit 47.58 km long and between 5 and 21 meters in depth, which spanned from the San Lázaro gate through the Guadalupe range towards Lake Texcoco, where it twisted towards the west, traversing diagonally Lake San Cristóbal and a portion of Lakes Xaltocan and Zumpango, to finally connect to the ovoid (10,021 meters long, 4.28 meters high and 27–98 meters deep) Tequisquiac tunnel, through which the waters flowed through the Tequisquiac river and finally to Atilalaquia, to be used to generate power and irrigate land in Actopan, in Hidalgo state. Residual waters went to the Tula River, a branch of the Pánuco River, from which it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, south of Tampico. Its main goal was apparently to get Mexico City’s water and sewage out of the valley, while preserving the valley’s drinkable water. Sergio Miranda Pacheco, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) OpenAccess. © 2018 Sergio Miranda Pacheco, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492415-017 In the mindset of the Mexican president, the significance of such a gigantic hydraulic infrastructure being tantamount to that of Mexico’s independence, doubtless stemmed from the fact that both enterprises had liberated the Mexican people from, on the one hand, oppression from the Spanish Empire and, on the other hand, from material harm to its health and prized possessions from the constant flooding that for centuries ravaged Mexico City and other nearby valley communities. Consequently, from this standpoint, at the onset of the twentieth century, Mexicans faced a very promising future: they belonged to a sovereign and independent nation, and under Díaz’s leadership, they had vanquished the dictatorship of the environment, thus placing themselves in the sphere of progress and modernity, just like the United States and any nation in Europe. Henceforth, Mexico would have the modern water supply and disposal systems required to improve the material state of public health in the capital. Yet, from another standpoint, the conception and completion of the Mexico Valley drainage works may be interpreted as an updating and modernization of a material, technical and environmental scheme supported by an absolute political power (such as Díaz’s), through which the elites had since colonial times enforced and tried to control the social, political and environmental milieu, so as to reproduce and increase the own wealth along with the income of their firms, situated in Mexico City and allied to the regional, national and global markets. By then, urbanization had become capitalism’s main force for economic, social, political and environmental change, and cities were not just stages of capitalist modernization, but means and gears of the new globalization of wealth making. Nevertheless, driven by the recent industrial development of production systems and the dramatic impoverishment of workers and peasants upon which it stood, throughout the nineteenth century cruel realities dwelt within cities, constituting severe conflicts and threats to the reproduction of capitalist wealth. Along with class conflicts, political struggles and revolutionary outbreaks, nineteenth-century elites agonizingly lived and faced the conflict between health and wealth existing in most countries, as the world raced toward an urban civilization during the nineteenth century. As Bruno Latour says, by the middle of the century the battle between health and wealth had reached a breaking point: The consumption of human life as fuel for wealth production led, firstly on English cities and henceforth on other European cities, to an actual energy crisis. Men, as it was often and widely stated, were of bad quality. That could not go on. Cities could no longer be death chambers and sewers, neither do the poor go on being miserable, ignorant, surrounded by vermin and infectious vagrants. The reactivation and broadening of exploitation (or prosperity, for that matter) demanded a better educated and cleaner population, well ven226 Sergio Miranda Pacheco

tilated, as wellasrebuilt cities,with drains, fountains,schools,parks,gymnasiums,clinics, nurseries. ( followingL atour 1988, p.18) Medicine and sanitation engineering weret hus the gradual solution to end the dire habitat and living conditions in cities across the capitalistw orld; but likewise to revive the human workforce vital for reproducing wealth, as health and urban policies helpedt oc onsolidatet he social and spatial segregation that existed in cities since the ancien regime.
In this context we can interpret the completion of the Mexico Valley drainage works implemented by the Díaz government as part of the expansion of the health-oriented urban model of capitalism. As we will try to demonstrate in the following pages, Mexican elites shared with theirp airs from other countries certain concepts about health, disease, the environment and urban government by which they justified reformsthat imposed control and discipline on both nature and the social milieu.

Sanitaryu rbanization
During the nineteenth century, certain technological advances made possible the wild urbanization of the planet, or,i no ther terms,the wild colonization of nature. One of these technological developments was the removal of the wastewater produced by workshops, industries and homes in cities, which could be collected and later expelled from the urban milieu, as demanded by the principles of urban hygiene then in vogue. Such principles, along with their technological groundwork, were also supported by social,c ultural and historical perceptions about human waste. In certain Asian countries and in Medieval Europe, at least until the eighteenth century,h uman feces and urine wereu sed advantageouslyi nc rops and workshops, until people became prejudiced against their look and scent.I nt hose times, as statedb yV erena Winivarter,h uman litter was regarded as au seful (albeit foul-smelling and ugly)r esource for farming and industry,a nd not dreadful trash or waste that had to be hidden from sight and evicted from the city,inaccordance with the morals of nineteenth-century industrialized societies in which an ew social and urban order was institutionalized, bound to publich ealthm edical and sanitary policies. Drainageb ecame thus the technological vehicle for promotingt he healthy, but also comfortable, urban life demanded by the new capitalist bourgeoisie (Winiwarter 2010).
Vienna,P aris, London and Venice, as Alexander Cowan and Jill Steward posit,w erec apital cities thati nt he nineteenth century instilled their spaces Urban Globalizationa nd its Historicity and population with as trongt rade and management activity,a sw ell as with public rituals, and thus with an intense and spectacular cultural dynamismu nseen in lesser cities. Likewise, capital cities enticedh ugec rowds of immigrants, hence nourishing the culturaland social inequalities cast upon the social layout of their spaces.I nt ime, their growth brought about major changes in the urban environment,and physical and demographic expansion furthermore affected the sensorial experience significantly. The stresses on spacecame from the development of industrial activity that made towns denser,intensified assorted olfactory experiencesa nd forced authorities to intervene by controlling foul smells and fecal waste (Cowan and Stewart 2007,p p. 9 -10).
When modern drainages ystems werei ntroducedi nE urope'sc apitals and main cities by mid-nineteenthc entury,the thinkingonp ublich ealth was dominated by the miasma theory,a ccordingt ow hich wastes and foul stenches were the main cause of disease (Schott 2004). Forc enturies,t he 'pestilence' was regarded as an illness that fouled the air,soil, water, animalsand men. Itscauses, symptoms and treatment wereidentified by fifteenth century physician and philosopher Marsilio Ficino, foundero fF lorence'sP latonic Academy.A ccordingt o him: [Whenever visible and tangible] the air of that placel eavesi ts nature,d ecliningf romh ot and humid, when therea re manyd ense clouds,d ustc louds,d ense and hot wind […]; when fields and water turn into steama nd emit af oul smell, fish do not taste or smell good; thereisanabundance of animals breeding in corruption, foul funguses and pastures, fruits of the land and insipid animals,and stored for very little time; wines tend to become muddy, animals escape and birds flya way; disease ensues with continuous,h idden, furious,d eceitful, unusuallyh ot fevers, with sufferingo ft he chest,e xhaustion of the pulse, agitation, darkened urine, skinningo ft he palatea nd the intestines,s tingingi nt he eyes, worms,s mallpoxa nd measles,m iscarriagesa nd stillborn babies, rages, wild laughter, cruel wars and quiten ew miracles of natureo rG od. (Ficino 1564,p .5 0) Therefore, it was hight ime to run away-and for al ong time-from places and spaces wherein the hints of 'pestilence' wereo bvious. Moreover,i tw as best to do so at the first warning,b ecause if one should linger further,t here was a risk of contagion by 'someone injured' or "that the quality of that air would become familiar and almost natural." The suitable place to escape to was wherever no person or thing infected by the pestilence was present and, if possible, "wheret here is neither sound, listened or felt,n or news from the spoiled place, and therea re highm ountainst of orestall the fumes from cominge ither through the incomingw ind or air to spread the poison." How feasible were Marsilio'srecommendations?Inearlymoderncities, families from the nascent bourgeoisie could perhaps follow them.Getting away from the sources of pestilence meant having resourcestotraveland sustain oneself at the chosen place, either temporallyo rd efinitely, besides covering the expenses entailed in gettingacure. Formany, the onlyoption was staying put,hoping that luck or God'swill ('the onlysafe and true health,' accordingtoFicino) would free them from the pestilence'so nslaught.
Nonetheless,cities grew in size and population, and so their authorities and inhabitants had to take measures to prevent diseases and fight their probable causes-mainlyc orruption of the air brought by emissions from foul stagnant water,i na ddition to animal and human feces.E vent hough physicians who faced the sixteenth and seventeenth century plagues in the western Mediterranean citiesbelieved thatanimals(besides the poor)werethe sourceofinfection, the circulation of water and air was the guideline for medicalp ractice both in European and in Americancities since the sixteenth century (Villar 2005;Valderrama 2005). The city was then regarded as an organism, whose healthlargely depended on the flow and expulsion of filthywater and air from graveyards,landfills, canals and sewer mains, filled with mud, feces,c arcasses,a nd generally, with refuse from hospitals, convents, churches, slaughterhouses, farmyards, tailor shops, taverns and inns.
Although bacteriologyd isproved the miasma theory by the 1880s, belief in the adverse effects of bad odors on health remained dominant across Europe and the rest of the world well into the twentieth century, as could be seen in the importance bestowed upon scrubbing streets and introducing tap water and water closetsi nh ouseholds. Technical advances in sanitation engineering -like thosed evised by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in mid nineteenth-century London (Halliday1999), or those made in Paris (Barnes 2006) in the latter part of the century-to expel refuse and waste out of the urban environment enticed other cities into adopting water and sewer systems, which eventuallyw ereintegratedi nto a comprehensive waters upplya nd disposal system, which was in turn quites uccessful in improvingurban cleanliness and reducing water-transmitted diseases (Schott 2004;M elosi 2008).
So, Ficino'sr ecommendation of leaving the city to escape from the plague and preserveh ealthb ecame moot by the earlyt wentieth century.C onversely, bacteriology and its ally, sanitary engineering, foughtagainst popular beliefs regarding the origin of diseases and the ways to treat them, and sponsored anew reordering of the urban space, therebyr enderingo ld and traditionalw aste disposal and recycling systems in garden and farmlandso bsolete.
However,t he battle against rubbish that cities werew inning did not take into consideration the negative offshoots on the environment the expulsion of refuse would have,botho nt he cities themselvesa nd on thosel ands and rivers that would collect and storet he garbage.Worse still, changes in the urbanites' mindset,h abits and culturew ould finally cause am ajor unanticipated environmental impact.E nergy and resource consumption (and depletion) for every city dweller grew dramatically. To satisfy such demand, it became necessary to increase spending on infrastructure and maintenance, as well as taxes, besides rises in the prices of houses, rents and urban land. All of this would strengthen, in the end, the very longstanding social inequalities that the modernization of the water supplya nd sewer system wass upposedt oe radicate.

MexicoC ity and itsv alley: drainagea nd power in the nineteenth century
In nineteenth century Mexico City,s anitation works to preservea nd improve health conditions for its inhabitants had to be undertaken on several levels. Cleaning up streets,rivers,ditches,canals and water mains within the city,inaddition to rivers, land and lakes in the surrounding valley became paramount, since stagnant water and sewagew ered eemed the main cause of the infectious diseases that repeatedlys truck the population throughout the century.N atural conditions of soil and climate in the valley and city made that stagnation possible. On the one hand, accordingt oM anuel Orozco yB erra, the MexicoV alley spanned across av ast extension of land situated at the center of am ountain ranget hen called Anahuac.This rangel imited the valley to the north, wherein the terrain rose to form huge hillst hat mergedw ith those of the Pachuca and Atotonilco ranges.
The structure of the soil and the influenceofvolcanic activity created apond into which the northern mountains spilt their waters.H owever,t his natural draining was finallyclosed due to geologicalaction, thus forming alake system in the middle of which the Indian city of México Tenochtitlan would eventually be built.There weres everal lakes in the MexicoV alley (as opposed to the city) whose surface was unstable. In 1864,the southern lakes,Chalco and Xochilmilco, measured 5.98 and 2.68 leagues respectively; to the east was Texcoco(10,395 leagues);a nd to the north, San Cristóbal (0.63), Xaltocan (3.08) and Zumpango (0.98). Those lakes did not have fixed boundaries. During the rainys eason, the water level rose quickly and it spilledo verawide even plain that seemed like aw ide basin, but which was not so, since duringt he dry season water evaporated or was absorbed into the land, and consequentlyt he basin almost disappeared.
In particular, the TexcocoLake wasthe most unstable. Since the terrain that surrounded it to the west wasa lmostf lat and very shallow,d eposits, torrential rains and different water flows that spilled into it could flood the city;sometimes it was enough just for the wind to blow from the west to flood the basin. Afterwards,water leaked and flowed back into the center: "it wasn ot odd that the place now swamped tomorrow might be located at ad istance of three to four thousand meters from the lake shore." (Orozco yB erra1 864,p p. 108 -115) In times of torrential rains, the southern lakes of Chalco-Xochimilco also threatened to leak water into the city and engulfi t, which happened more thano nce.
Givent he purposes for which the Mexico Valley drainages ystem was planned in the seventeenth century, it could drain the water from these lakes out of the valley as well as sewagef rom the city out of the TexcocoL ake basin. However,t he works took too long,d ue to stoppages. It wasn'tu ntil the 1880s that they werer esumed and they weref inallyf inished in 1900.M eanwhile, flooding and the pestilence,ensuing from stagnant waterand putrid sewageinthe summer,b esides the dust storms thatc arried rotting particles, constantlyt hreatened the people'sh ealth.
Regarding Mexico City'sd rainage, it must be said that throughout the century,i ts uffered from severe flaws, as the canals werei nu tter disrepair and weren ot at the samel evel as the TexcocoL ake. Overall, small street canals at ground level performed the city'sd rainage; therew ereo riented from west to east,being the direction from which the terrain slanted more regularly, whereas from north to southt he pitch was more variable and less pronounced.
In the downtown streets, the canals were2.5 feet (c. 76 cm) wide and 5.5feet (c. 1.67 m) deep. At the upperp art they werec overed,but they also had several openingst hrough which garbageu sed to slip and from which rottingm atter oozed. The waters went to the Square Ditch( Zanja cuadrada), exiting to the canal crisscrossingt he city,t he Paseo de la Viga,w hich took them to the San Lázaro gate, and then towardthe TexcocoLake wherethey endedupafter accumulating all the refuse the population had littered into them. Beyond the downtown area, the canals werei rregular.T hey werem ostlyr ough,m akeshift,e xposed, uneven gullies-some so deep and wide they hindered traffic and floodeds treets with putrid fecalm atter.
AccordingtoM.L.Smith, an American engineer,in1848 the transit of liquid matter through the canals stalled, because the elevation of the city'sg round floor in relation to the surface of TexcocoL ake was quite short. The distance from the Main Square (now called Zócalo)t ot he point wheret he water was dumped in the lake was 6.5 feet (c. 1.98 m),b ut from the point wheret he city water drained into the Canal de la Viga, nearthe San Lázaro gate, the elevation was barely3feet (c. 0.91 m) in relation to the lake. Therefore, the bottom of the canals werebarelyone foot over the lake'slevel, hardlytwo feetbelow the canal water that drainedinto the lake. As aresult, the canals werealways filled with a semifluid muck thatreleased 'noxious miasmas,' harbingers of the city'sand the valley'su nhealthiness.
Because of its malfunction, throughout the century,the city and valley drainagew as regarded as the cause of the insalubrity and pestilence that the people suffered. However,despite the fact that there were other political,economic, institutional, educational, social and environmental realitiest hat deserved to be attended to in order to solve this very complex problem, neither citizens nor authorities had acomprehensive picture of the reasons for the unhealthiness of the city and valley,nor consequentlyanoutlook on along-lastingsolution. Every authority,e ither local or federal, and every social or professional sector had their own, oftenb iased, perceptions of the causes and the likelys olutions thatt he city'si nsalubrity demanded.
Even though the 1604 master plan contemplated draining the valley lakes, by the mid-nineteenth century new projects,b ased on studies and experiences from othercities, offered, on the otherhand, to restore and preservethe valley's hydrological balance, while avoiding flooding and further health hazards.H owever,acentralizedpolitical power structure-displayedinthe figures of Austrian Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg( who ruled Mexico from 1864 to 1867), and presidents Benito Juárez( 1858 -1872) and Porfirio Díaz (1876 -1880;1 884 -1910)-combined with urbanization projects underwritten by foreign investment and promotion of pasteurization, forced upon public opinion the idea that draining the valley was the solution thatt he government and society'se xpectations had to look forward to. Lack of resources, in addition to the indolence and discordo fa uthorities and the community,a lsoh elped to further this idea.
This was endorsed by the medical, engineering,g eographical and farming guilds gathered at the 1878 Medical Congress-even though one year earlier another physician, José María Lobato, reportingonthe positive results of 17 years of studying the problem, recommended the preservation of the city'sa nd the valley'sh ydrological balance in order to eradicate epidemics and favora griculture. In his studies, Lobatos tated thath er eplicatedH ans vonP ettenkoffer'se xperiments of years earlier in Munich, wheret he medicalc ommunity and municipal authorities had successfullya dopted them in their struggle against typhus. According to Lobato: In Mexicoa si nM unich, the quantity of rainwater fallen during the rainys eason and distributed proportionallyonamonthlybasis must be perfectlyrelated to what flows through the underground veins of the haulage terrains within the city'sg roundwork. If the hydrological balancew erel ookeda fter,t yphus would disappear sinceo rganic matter that cover the soil would not decompose or be uncovered; otherwise, typhus will appear. [ Pettenkoffer] infers that the miasmaticp rinciple causingt yphus is absorbed or fixed on the surfacep ermeable layers of the ground, and when the drop in the groundwater level un-covers these layers, typhus appears with the assorted pathological forms we know (José María Lobato, "Estudio higiénicos obree lt ifo exantemático", Gaceta Médica de México, 1/2/1877).
However,itwas too late to override the scientific consensus obtained by the Mexican government,w hich rather than sanction as cientific-environmental truth, actuallya uthorized the conclusion of the works to drain the Mexico Valley. The new Díaz government deemed crucial to pursue the urban, social, political and economic reforms needed to discipline and control not just the water from rivers, canals and lakes,a sw ell as waste waterf rom the city,but especiallyt he city'sdwellers,and bound theirfate to the same processes of modernization with which the major capital citiesinEurope and the United States were experimenting.L iberals and conservativesh ad ceaselessly criticized the city'su nhealthy conditions,a nd the regimes upported by both factions throughout the nineteenth century promoted urbanization and favored private urban business ventures;s of or them, continuingt he valley'sd rainagew orks wase ssential.
In the 1870's(in particularsince the beginning of the Díaz regime) the city's expansion and urbanization tended to accelerate at an even and sustained pace, being the outcome of the public and privateinterests and projects regarding real estate and urban land that began decades earlier,evenbefore independence. As soon as the American invasion ended in 1848, several urbanization projects were set forth on land west of the city-thoughtt he most suitable, as it wast he least exposed to flooding, being on higher ground-in order to build new urban neighborhoods and set railwayt racks between the city and other valley townships. Some werei ndeed built,b ut Maximillian'si mperial government,t hough it launched manifold urbanization projects plannedb yb oth the oligarchya nd the emperor himself, hesitated in adopting the draining of the valley.
As the valley dried out-aprocesssanctioned and legitimized as ascientific and urgent necessity by the 1878 MedicalCongress-urbanization projects multiplied duringt he Diaz regime, becoming aj uicyb usiness that the revolutionary government took over and sustained.L awyers and engineers,a rchitects and physicians,weret he professional groups leading the political,m aterial, health and environmental changes the valley and the city experiencedduring the nineteenth century, and their power and influencespannedacross the entire country, the twentieth century and the regimes established by the Mexican Revolution.
During the nineteenth century,these professionals,both as individuals and as ag roup, disparaged the municipalities' anachronism and inability to establish an orderlya nd healthyu rban regime, denounced the squalor and immoral habits of the poor in the press,demanded the draining of the valley and the city, and benefited politicallyoreconomically, through occupyingpositions of author-ity or being related to them, from the reforms to urban and rural property.They demanded and wrote projects for social,h ealthcare and penal control, and authorized and plannedh uger eal estate developments on the land west of the city,s oa st om ovet ow heret he city was least unhealthy. Meanwhile, the rest of the population, incapable of buyingaland plot on which to build their own houses, went to live in old houses and neighborhoods downtown, or on plots alreadyd ried out in the east,w heret he federal and local government and business interests allowed the construction of illegal, very unhealthyt enements. Therefore, by the end of the PorfirianA ge,a st he draining of the valley was over,s patial segregation was evident in manyo ft he capital'sq uarters.
The decision to drain the valley was purportedlym ade by the colonial regime to protect New Spain'sc apital from floods, but actuallyb ecame aw ay to exploitand expropriate natural resourcesaswellaspeasant land within the valley,w hose communities had preserved the necessary hydrological balancet o sustain themselvesfor generations. As proven by Eva Candiani (2015), the drainagew orks' purposes and usesp ut New Spain in the reproduction sphere of a worldwide capitalists ystem. Nineteenth century liberal and conservative regimes maintained the drainageworks' original purpose, as well as the reproduction of the capitalist interest of an ew national urban, liberal and conservative elite, solidlyr elated, politically,e conomically, urbanisticallya nd morallyt of oreign oligarchies,e speciallyt hoseo ft he United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany.
Even though the colonial drainagehad affected the valley'shydrologicaland social balance (and consequentlyt he health of the population) deeply, during the nineteenth century,s ome engineers (M. L. Smith, Gargollo, Orozco yB erra, Río de la Loza) and physicians (Lobato) scarcelyd iscussed the inconvenience and harmtothe environment and the people'shealth the full draining of the valley would cause. From their standpoint,the restoration, repair and expansion of the old draining system, both in the city and the valley,m ight have helped to reestablish the now-lost environmental balance, in addition to improvingt he housing and health of the city'si ncreasinglyi mpoverished population, which would have helped create al ess adverse urban environment.
However,M exico'sw ars and conflicts,a nd the interests the winning side forced upon the direction of national affairs, as well as the fears and prejudices regardingthe origin and effects of the diseases that secularlyravagedthe health of the inhabitants of the valley,wereinfavor of draining it.Certainly, as the century progressed, fear of flooding subsided as riverbeds and lakebeds dried offbut at the same time, healthh azards began to grow.T he correlation between both phenomena could barelyb eu nderstood, when at the close of the century an ew correlation emerged: as the city'sp opulation grew,s ocio-environmental