John F. Lopez is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Davis.

Description
"John Lopez's sharp-eyed art-historical chronicle tracks Mexico City's current ecological crisis back to its source. The Spanish invasion of the Aztec city unleashed a centuries-long struggle over water, during which environmental ideologies clashed and technological fixes failed. Vanquish water like an enemy? Live with water as an ally? Drawing on Indigenous manuscripts, urban maps, oil paintings, and other images, The Aquatic Metropolis reveals how competing water epistemes shaped the historic city." -Barbara E. Mundy, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City "When did Tenochtitlan become Mexico City? According to John Lopez, it was not when the Spanish conquered the city but much later, when they decided to drain the surrounding lakes and thereby flush away the Mexica cosmology that gave the city form and meaning. In this fascinating cultural history of the desaguee, the largest civil engineering project of its day becomes an instrument for redefining the essence of the city itself." -Ricardo Padron, author of The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West