Sanitation practices in Mexico City cannot be dissociated from the history of urban land. The miasmic theories on health of the eighteenth century and the public hygiene theories of the nineteenth century, raised controversies around the lakes on which the city was built since its foundation;1herein lies the origin of the drainage projects that were chronically initiated and terminated since the seventeenth century.2 Marked by its geography, the city was accompanied by a discourse that identified humidity as the irrefutable cause of illness and decay. Drawing from the latest scientific knowledge, nineteenth century politicians and scholars deliberated on methods aimed at improving health issues. It was then that they engaged in a dialog with the modernization and sanitation practices in use at the time in Paris, even beforethe Haussmanian ones.3
The objective of the public hygiene-aligned government—which in 1900 completed the largest-scale civil engineering endeavor in the city's history: the Gran Desagüe (or "great drainage project")—supported or rejected alternative proposals that aimed to transfer the city's public health issues to engineers. It was then that several private parties submitted projects that imported and adapted methods implemented in Paris, revealing the way in which the interests of incipient businessmen intersected with local and federal government disputes. More importantly, the proposals point to a general consensus: the need to consolidate an urban hygiene system based on scientific advances and their technical application.After the meaning of public and social order came together, people seized the idea that politics transformed their everyday spaces -through security, prevention, comfort, individuality, and so on.4 It was after this process, which took over a hundred years to crystallize, when in Mexico City was possible to associate the community with scientific knowledge, technology and profit.
Public Health and Hygiene: The Circulation of Knowledge and Technology in the Sanitation System of Mexico City
The objective of the public hygiene-aligned government—which in 1900 completed the largest-scale civil engineering endeavor in the city's history: the Gran Desagüe (or "great drainage project")—supported or rejected alternative proposals that aimed to transfer the city's public health issues to engineers. It was then that several private parties submitted projects that imported and adapted methods implemented in Paris, revealing the way in which the interests of incipient businessmen intersected with local and federal government disputes. More importantly, the proposals point to a general consensus: the need to consolidate an urban hygiene system based on scientific advances and their technical application.After the meaning of public and social order came together, people seized the idea that politics transformed their everyday spaces -through security, prevention, comfort, individuality, and so on.4 It was after this process, which took over a hundred years to crystallize, when in Mexico City was possible to associate the community with scientific knowledge, technology and profit.
Public Health and Hygiene: The Circulation of Knowledge and Technology in the Sanitation System of Mexico City
