Desagüe

The Desagüe was the hydraulic engineering project to drain Mexico's the central lake system in order to protect the capital from persistent and destructive flooding. Begun in the sixteenth century and completed in the late nineteenth century, it has been deemed “the greatest engineering project of colonial Spanish America."[1] Historian Charles Gibson goes further and considers it “one of the largest engineering enterprises of pre-industrial society anywhere in the world.”[2]  There had been periodic flooding of the prehispanic Aztec capital of Tenochitlan, the site which became the Spanish capital of Mexico City. Flooding continued to be a threat to the viceregal capital, so at the start of the seventeenth century, the crown ordered a solution to the problem that entailed the employment of massive numbers of indigenous laborers who were compelled to work on the drainage project. The crown also devoted significant funding.  A tunnel and later a surface drainage system diverted flood waters outside the closed basin of Mexico.  Not until the late nineteenth century under Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911) was the project completed by British entrepreneur and engineer, Weetman Pearson, using machinery imported from Great Britain and other technology at a cost of 16 million pesos, a vast sum at the time.  The ecological impact was long lasting, with desiccation permanently changing the ecology of the Basin of Mexico.