WALSH | VIRTUOUS WATERS VIRTUOUS VIRTUOUS WATERS Mineral Springs. Bathing, and Infrastructure in Mexico CASEY WALSH Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org Virtuous Waters Virtuous Waters Mineral Springs, Bathing, and Infrastructure in Mexico Casey Walsh UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2018 by Casey Walsh Suggested citation: Walsh, C. Virtuous Waters: Mineral Springs, Bathing, and Infrastructure in Mexico. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.48 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Walsh, Casey, author. Title: Virtuous waters : mineral springs, bathing, and infrastructure in Mexico / Casey Walsh. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017054276| ISBN 9780520291737 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780520965393 (e-edition) Subjects: LCSH: Mineral waters—Mexico—Mexico City. | Baths—Mexico—Mexico City—History. | Groundwater—Mexico—Mexico City. | Water—Mexico—Mexico City—History. | Water resources development—Mexico—Mexico City—21st century. | Water-supply—Mexico—Mexico City—21st century. Classification: LCC RM674 .W35 2018 | DDC 615.8/53—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054276 For Naomi, my little fish Table of Contents Illustrations ix Preface xi 1 Waters/Cultures 1 2 Bathing and Domination in the Early Modern Atlantic World 15 3 Policing Waters and Baths in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City 34 4 Enlightenment Science of Mineral Springs 50 5 Groundwater and Hydraulic Opulence in the Late Nineteenth Century 67 6 Chemistry, Biology, and the Heterogeneity of Modern Waters 91 7 Dispossession and Bottling after the Revolution 118 8 Spa Tourism in Twentieth-Century Mexico 137 9 Virtuous Waters in the Twenty-First Century 155 Notes 163 Bibliography 181 Index 201 Illustrations MAP 1. Mexico, with locations of hot springs discussed in this book. xiv FIGURES 1. Individual bathing room with placer, Peñón de los Baños, 2017. 2 2. An Aztec man taking a bath. Drawing from the Florentine Codex, compiled by Bernardo de Sahagún, c.1540. 27 3. A temazcal. Drawing from the Codice Magliabechanio (sixteenth century). 30 4. Alberca Pane. Rivera Cambas 1880–1883. 81 5. Baños. De Cuéllar 1889. 82 6. Baños de Chapultepec. Michaud 1874. 87 7. El Pozo “Pimentel,” La “Colonia de la Condesa.” El Mundo Ilustrado 2, no. 12 (1906). 89 8. “Shower, Fleury Design.” Lugo 1875. 100 9. El Pocito, Villa de Guadalupe. Michaud 1874. 104 10. “Misting apparatus for pulverizing mineral waters in the inhalation departments of the baths.” Lobato 1884. 106 11. Departamento de Baños, Peñón de los Baños bathhouse. El Mundo Ilustrado 2, no. 12 (1906). 110 12. “Edificios de ‘El Peñón.’” El Mundo Ilustrado 2, no. 12 (1906). 111 13. “Salón de embotellado de las Aguas.” El Mundo Ilustrado 2, no. 12 (1906). 120 ix x Illustrations 14. “Empacadora—Aguilar Cacho.” Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Salud, Mexico City. 123 15. Topo Chico bathhouse, c. 1890. DeGolyer Library, SMU, Dallas, Texas. 125 16. “Manantial Agua Caliente,” c. 1930. Archivo Histórico del Agua, Mexico City. 130 17. “Manantial del Agua Caliente sobre la Margen Izquierda y dentro del Cauce del Río de Tijuana,” c. 1920. Archivo Histórico del Agua, Mexico City. 140 18. “El Bañito: Al Fondo el Campo de Aviación, Ixtapan de la Sal, Mex.” Luis René Arizmendi, Ixtapan de la Sal, México. 143 19. “El Bañito: Una Pileta Circular.” Archivo Histórico del Agua, Mexico City. 143 20. View of the Nueva Ixtapan, S.A. housing development, c. 1955. Archivo Histórico del Agua, Mexico City. 151 21. Municipal bathhouse, Ixtapan de la Sal, c. 1965. Luis René Arizmendi, Ixtapan de la Sal, Mexico. 152 22. A weekend afternoon in the Municipal Bathhouse, Ixtapan de la Sal, 2009. Author. 156 23. Hydrotherapy room, Municipal Bathhouse, Ixtapan de la Sal, 2009. Author. 157 24. El Pocito, Villa de Guadalupe, 2017. Author. 159 Preface I spent my childhood summers in a swimming pool in my best friend’s backyard in suburban Los Angeles. Usually it was just the two of us and we would spend hours going down the slide, inventing new kinds of dives, or perfecting our splashing techniques. After lunch and maybe a monster movie on TV, we would head back for another few hours in the water. My family would also spend a week at beach at the end of every summer, and my sister and I would dedicate much of that to boogie boarding. I would fall asleep each night exhausted, feeling the swell of the waves as if I were still floating in the ocean. Southern California is dry, and maybe it was because the encounters I had with rivers and lakes were few and far between that the cold, clear freshwaters of the mountains filled my body and mind with a special kind of exuberant energy when I got a chance to swim in them. As I grew older, backpacking trips to the mountains became more frequent, and I had my first contacts with the strange, chthonic, social waters of hot springs. Throughout my college years and during a brief career as an archaeologist I was outdoors a lot, swimming and soaking when the opportunity arose. I learned to love water, and associate it with fun, freedom, adventure, and the beauty of nature. Graduate school in New York City was followed by a long period in Mexico City, during which I conducted PhD research and then worked at the Universidad Iberoamericana. The dissertation I wrote during that period, later a book, was about the political economy and culture of irrigated cotton agriculture in northern Mexico, which provided me with a different, more cerebral engagement with water. The topic was fascinating, and I loved piecing the story together, but the water in that research never felt like all those waters I felt earlier in my life: hot, cool, surg- ing with the waves, salty, invigorating, quenching, sulfurous. The water I read and xi xii Preface wrote about wasn’t really felt at all. It was a resource measured in cubic meters and liters per second; it belonged to cities, states, and nations and was the subject of treaties; it formed political boundaries, was delivered to farmers, moved by capil- lary action and evapotranspiration, was treated to comply with health standards. After my daughters were born I began a slow return, something like a migra- tory fish, to the waters I knew during my youth. I moved from Mexico City back to Southern California, this time to UC Santa Barbara and its nearby beaches. Watching the faces of my kids as I bathed them as infants, or as I held them when they learned to swim in the pool and Jacuzzi at our apartment building, or jumped around with them in the waves at the beach, revived those registers of the human experience of water that I had forgotten, ironically, while I was becoming an expert on the topic. The somewhat utopian project of raising children pushed me toward less intellectual, more affective engagements with the environment and with other people, and I found myself back in the waters, playing, splashing, socializing. And thinking: How are these feelings and ideas about water shaped socially, culturally, historically? This book is about Mexico, a country I love, my other home. And without all the people in Mexico the book would never have happened. I married Emiko Saldivar in Tlayacapan, Morelos, and our girls, Amaya and Naomi, were born in Mexico City. These three amazing women make me a better person, and give me all the reasons I need to work for a better world. The support and love of my extended family in Mexico has never wavered, and I gain strength from them all. I learned from Michiko about onsen, ofuro, and the importance of the bath; Américo shared with me a love of water that comes from growing up in a dry place. Aida Maria, Laura, Claudia y Serguei, Atis y Dani, all the Tios, Tias, Primos y Primas: I hope I haven’t bored you with my stories of hot springs. Great friends in Mexico City always received me when I was turning pages in archives and libraries. Thanks to Margarita, Claudio and Ibó, Roger and Cris, Adriana and Bensi, Jorge and Catalina for the love and memories. Colleagues have generously engaged me across all those institutional, intel- lectual, linguistic, and cultural borders, never questioning too much how my interest in the economic history of irrigated agriculture morphed into a project about swimming and bathing. Special thanks to Mario Cerutti, Eva Rivas, Arturo Carrillo, Cirila Quintero, Araceli Almaraz, and everyone else in the Asociación de Historia Económica del Norte de México, for all the intellectual engagements, comments on papers, and camaraderie over the years. And to Luis Aboites, a special thanks for providing detailed comments, yet again, on a manuscript that shrinks before the example of his scholarship.