Presentation short abstract

Historical–environmental analysis of how Valsequillo became a contaminated hydrosocial territory throughout the 20th century, highlighting the impacts of hydraulic modernization, territorial reconfiguration, and inequalities in access to and control of water.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation outlines the progress of a doctoral research project focused on the historical configuration of a contaminated hydrosocial territory: Valsequillo, Puebla, throughout the twentieth century. The study reconstructs the area’s Environmental History through a Political Ecology lens, allowing for an examination of how hydraulic infrastructure, modernizing discourses, and power relations reshaped the territory and its relationships with water.

The research combines historical methods, analysis of local and national archives, QGIS-based cartography, ethnography, and oral history in auxiliary towns directly connected to the lake. The theoretical framework is built around the concept of the hydrosocial territory, understood as a multiscalar network of actors, infrastructures, knowledges, and water flows traversed by power. Four analytical axes structure the approach: hydrosocial networks and territorialization, scalar reconfiguration, governmentalization of territory, and territorial pluralism.

The period-based analysis shows that, beginning with the construction of the Manuel Ávila Camacho Dam in the 1940s, a model of large-scale hydraulic modernization reorganized the Atoyac Basin and subordinated local water uses to agricultural, industrial, and urban projects. In subsequent decades, industrial expansion, urban growth, and institutional neglect transformed the reservoir into a receptacle for wastewater, normalizing contamination and deepening socio-environmental inequalities.

The case of Valsequillo reveals how modernizing projects, framed as symbols of progress, produced fragmented, hierarchical, and environmentally degraded territories whose effects persist today. This research seeks to contribute a critical historical perspective that speaks to contemporary water-management challenges in Mexico.