Socialize Flooding: Creating Collective Sacrifice Zones in Mexico City
AI Now Institute (NYU) - Water Justice and Technology Report
In this short policy polemic, I argue for a radical reconfiguration of the operations of the Mexico City metropolitan drainage system, which would allow engineers to spread floodwaters far more equitably across the city when the drainage system’s capacity is surpassed. Creating such “collective sacrifice zones,” as I call them, is technologically possible with the drainage system as built, and yet the current practice is to routinely sacrifice the marginalized urban periphery to floodwaters to protect the urban core. This piece is part of a broader theme in my work of thinking about the ways existing urban technologies can be radically retrofitted for social and environmental justice.
La tragedia de la inundación en Tula fue una decisión política [The tragedy of the flood in tula was a political decision]
The Washington Post (Spanish edition), September 20, 2021
An op-ed in response to the devastating flood on September 6th and 7th, 2021 that killed fifteen and flooded over 31,000 just north of Mexico City in the municipality of Tula, Hidalgo, as well as a number of neighboring municipalities. In contrast to government proclamations that the flood was “natural" and “uncontrollable,” I argued that it was a deliberate effect of engineers operating the Mexico City metropolitan drainage system (which discharges into a river that passes through Tula) to protect Mexico City at all costs; in effect (as the title in Spanish states plainly), the flood was a political decision.
The piece has been widely cited by activists and journalists and led to numerous media requests. An excerpt follows:
El 6 de septiembre una inundación en Tula y buena parte del Valle de Mezquital, en el estado mexicano de Hidalgo, mató a 15 personas y afectó a más de 31,000 viviendas. No fue un “fenómeno natural”, como señalan las autoridades, ni un hecho aislado: fue un efecto predecible derivado de un manejo político del drenaje en el Valle de México, donde se ubica la Ciudad de México y su zona conurbada. Este manejo siempre ha privilegiado las zonas céntricas y de mayor plusvalía, mientras se han sacrificado las zonas periféricas y marginadas.
Sigue leyendo aquí.
self-devouring urbanism: Displacements of capital and water in mexico city
SSRC ITEMS, July 7, 2020
… Across the metropolitan region of Mexico City, governments at all levels are “devouring” the drainage infrastructures they depend on in pursuit of urban growth. They have allowed dams, canals, and regulation basins to be built over, buried, or otherwise obstructed by new transportation and logistics infrastructures….These new infrastructures reduce the capacity of the metropolis’ drainage system to handle floodwaters, with potentially disastrous consequences for the city’s residents, as the case of Ejidal San Isidro makes clear. With Julie Livingston’s work in mind, we can think of this tendency as a kind of “self-devouring urbanism,” in which governments enable urban growth by undermining the very survival of the city.
Read the full article online here.
Engineers Don’t Solve Problems
Logic Magazine, Issue 5, Fall 2018
The story of Mexico City’s battle against flooding offers a telling lesson for us as we face the slow-motion disaster of climate change. The danger today is that we will again fall for the promise of technological fixes peddled by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that seem to allow us to continue with business as usual. The problem with these solutions is precisely that they so often appear to work, at least for the groups whose voices count—for now.
We have been thinking about environmental engineering wrong. It does not “solve problems” as is popularly believed. It transforms problems, creating new and different challenges that burden other people—and future generations. The challenge we face as a society is to build the structures of popular power to decide collectively which burdens are worth their weight, and how to distribute them justly. These are not choices we should leave to politicians, or even engineers.
Read online here, or read the full feature (PDF).
Grass without roots
Real Change, February 16, 2011
When a windstorm blows, roots are strained and grass wilts. Most non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are caught between uplifting gusts of funding and the anchoring tug of their own ideals and those of the people they serve.
Few NGOs in poor countries rely on local member contributions. When foreign funding comes, do they lose their ties to the marginalized communities they serve, causing their vision of social change to wither and die out?
In 2009, I did field research in Nicaragua to find out. As a fellow for an aid efficacy organization, Beyond Good Intentions, I sought to find and profile innovative NGOs working for social change.
I was optimistic. After all, Nicaragua was the international symbol of grassroots mobilization after the Sandinista revolution in 1979. I interviewed almost 60 NGO staff, volunteers and recipients in 16 local NGOs.Unfortunately, I found that times have changed. Today, foreign-funded NGOs give their opinions on policy issues almost daily in the media. Membership organizations—sustained mainly by member contributions—are practically nonexistent and voiceless nationally.
Why does it matter whether NGOs or membership organizations take the national stage?
Read more on Real Change's website here.