... Envirotech Water conservation Mexican Revolution Lázaro Cárdenas Laguna ...

... The introduction briefly presents the Laguna’s envirotechnical transformation through the story of the modernization of its irrigation system during the twentieth century. It focuses on how this transformation affected, and was affected by, the advent, forging, and outcome of Mexico’s...

... on the Nazas River—a project President Díaz already supported. It then describes the longer-term historical ecology of the Laguna since the colonial period; how land tenure and water rights fit into and affected that ecology through irrigated cotton growing; and the emergence of agrarian reform as a broad...

...-deprived ejidos, many of whose members worked on the dam. Técnicos Ejidatarios Palmito Dam site National Irrigation Commission The chapter examines the postwar and post-dam transformation of the Laguna’s water regime, characterized by a sharp, rightward sociopolitical turn in Mexico; severe...

..., they reengineered the Laguna’s irrigation system to rely on an unbuilt dam and—to their growing alarm—on groundwater pumping they long knew depleted and contaminated the aquifer. The chapter demonstrates how the incompatibility of the two repartos compromised the long-term sustainability of Cardenista agrarian...

... The chapter tells the paradoxical story of the short-term envirotechnical success of the federal government’s grand rehabilitation plan for the Laguna’s economy in the 1960s and 1970s. Even while técnicos enthusiastically implemented the plan via land concentration, the concrete lining of canals...

.... It then describes the longer-term historical ecology of the Laguna since the colonial period; how land tenure and water rights fit into and affected that ecology through irrigated cotton growing; and the emergence of agrarian reform as a broad process of social, legal, environmental, and technological change during...

... The chapter examines the postwar and post-dam transformation of the Laguna’s water regime, characterized by a sharp, rightward sociopolitical turn in Mexico; severe drought; and profligate use of chemical pesticides and groundwater pumps in the late 1940s and 1950s. As a case study, it focuses...