The Ninth Rain Epub

[Etienne Levic]

Inthe past, between the sixth century BCE and the ninth century CE, the Zapotec people managed rainwater in Monte Albn, in the state of Oaxaca, south of Mexico, through terraces, canals, dams, and wells. Water was a keystone of their worldview and ritual practice. Today, this knowledge is in oblivion. Rapid but irregular urbanization threatens the remnants of these water control systems, still hidden on this archaeological hill site. Our ongoing interdisciplinary project, Parque Monte Albn, has centered on the water that flows down the hill and offers new strategies to increase the value and quality of water by revitalizing and redesigning ancient hydraulic technology. In the short and long term, our solutions can restore the natural environment, improve the quality of urban living, and help protect archaeological heritage.

Monte Albn is an archaeological site in the south of Mexico, posed at the top of one of the three hills in the vicinity of Oaxaca City (shown in Fig. 1). The three-hundred- meter-long ceremonial plaza; dozens of temples, palaces, and residential areas; hundreds of tombs and artificial terraces visible on the slopes below; splendid ceramic effigy vessels; fine engraved stelae; and masterly worked jewelry have earned its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the last few decades, after twelve hundred years of decline, Monte Albn has faced a second round of rapid and uncontrolled urbanization, marked by a new informal city springing up primarily on its southern and eastern sides. Fences have been installed to protect the archaeological heritage of Monte Albn, but they have not stopped people from building houses and reaching the top. Lamentably, this unplanned urbanization has been unable to guarantee even basic necessities to the new settlers.

The natural environment is also under serious threat. Deforestation is causing unstoppable erosion. Without trees, rainwater is not held in their root systems, and instead runoff on the hill is exponentially increased, raising the number of flood events. New houses, streets, and infrastructure obstruct the runoff water that could otherwise flow into streams or come out of springs as it moves to reach Ro Atoyac, the main river at the base of the valley. Moreover, the new inhabitants contaminate the water with their waste. Furthermore, climate change has caused this area to suffer ever heavier storms and harsher droughts. Residents who have settled at the very top of the hill are more vulnerable than others, since urban services cannot reach them or are simply unavailable because of the greater concentration of archaeological remains.

In 2014, we conducted a brief non-intrusive survey of Monte Albn (Rojas 2015). The aim was twofold: to locate water and to seek out ancient water management technology. We first mapped some of the streams from their origin and traced them into the city, inspecting conditions (we gauged level of pollution, the presence of obstruction, and, where redirection had taken place, whether water still ran) along with potential for being included in the improvement project. We targeted densely urban areas including Mexicapam, Chapultepec, and Montoya on the eastern side of Monte Albn, since financial support for this project came from Oaxaca City, of which these areas were a part. To identify the ancient technology that had managed the watercourse downhill, we surveyed several streams for evidence of human intervention.

Using satellite imagery and geographic information systems (GIS), we verified the existence of four streams on the eastern side (streams A, B, C, and D) which we had previously identified as originating at the top of Monte Albn, continuing down into the city (where they are obstructed by garbage, houses, and streets), and eventually flowing into concrete outfall structures (shown in Fig. 2). Stream C originates at the top of the hill, where it is fed by rainwater. Water then percolates into the ground, surfacing farther down, beneath the main road (at the Carretera Monte Albn), in the form of a spring. Here, neighbors have built a well, sheltering it from inclement weather with a cage; water comes through a hose out of the well to flow freely along the street (shown in Fig. 3). This spring, located only 1.5 km from the main plaza, confirms that the hill provides freshwater.

We documented canals and small reservoirs nearby of approximately thirty centimeters width in another stream (in Stream D), excavated from the bedrock. These bodies of water are similar to those found at another Zapotec site, Hierve el Agua (Doolittle 1989; Kirby 1973). Both sites prove that the surface has been modified by human hand to control and obtain water (shown in Fig. 4).

Many of these features were wells that inhabitants had excavated in the course of the stream, either using the natural banks of the stream as walls or building walls from stones or a wattle-and-daub mixture (shown in Fig. 5b, d).

Canals, which were probably constructed to bring in water, were connected to some wells at the upstream edge (shown in Fig. 5a). Other wells had walled, V-shaped steps (at the point facing upstream). Some of these were cut from the bedrock, while others were made from stones and slabs in order to spread water over the terraced fields next to the stream.

However, the area does have an abundance of water. And water is the principal axis of this project: Wherever there is water, there is also probably a suitable location for natural, urban, and heritage intervention. Our strategy for improvement focuses precisely on such sources of water, not only to defend them but also to use them as a trigger for improvements in domains like environmental recovery, heritage protection, and reconstruction of social bonds. Indeed, we propose to build parks featuring water.

Our proposal for the design of these parks has five parameters. Healthier water is the principal axis. Thoughtfully incorporating the technology of the ancient Zapotecs, improved by modern hydraulic expertise, the parks, as we envision them, will feature healthy and clean streams and will allow rainwater to infiltrate into the subsurface soil and aquifers. Local people will be able to collect water from streams or rainwater reservoirs. Greener areas will help make those streams healthy: The aim here is to generate more vegetation so as to stabilize the banks of the streams and enhance the absorption of rainwater. With the help of specialists, we will plant species appropriate for the type of soil and elevation on site. The parks will constitute living archaeology that incorporates Zapotec technologies of water management such as those we find in our survey and other researchers have reported. Wherever possible, we will revitalize the Monte Albn water management system that is in place and make it visible in the parks. We hope in this way to raise awareness of the cultural value of the site.

Along with these living connections to the past, the parks will have smart connections to the present. Sites will be well connected to roadways that make it easy to get to the archaeological site, the riverside of Ro Atoyac, or even the historical center of Oaxaca City. The goal here is to enhance paths so as to allow safe transit for walking, running, and cycling.

We believe that the only way to make this project succeed is to sustain it from the very bottom, that is, with the participation and social engagement of the people who day by day suffer from floods and scarcity of water, live next to or even on top of the archaeological heritage site, and experience urban, economic, and social exclusion. Their participation in finding solutions to the challenges of living on this hill: Developing concepts, making decisions, and even building will ensure that the projects not only materialized but also are maintained in the future. The parks themselves can help foster this engagement, as a new form of education: a new way of learning about the ecological, hydrological, and archaeological importance of this area. These green, hydrological, and public spaces can become a living solution for a variety of intertwined problems.

Social participation has been a key component of this research process. From the beginning, in this bottom-up project, we have invited the people who live along Ro Atoyac to share ideas, problems, and needs with us. To date, in three separate meetings, local people have participated in talks and workshops with experts on water, urbanism, and archaeology. Local people have worked with authorities from neighborhood, agency, municipal, and state entities, to voice their views on how to solve water issues and to map out new strategies. These workshops have been very fruitful in creating a connection between all stakeholders. However, our main concern has been to center the people living on Monte Albn and, particularly, on the site itself in all our discussions and decisions.

To date, we have proposed eight of our acupuncture projects. Each one imagines new green space, revitalizes some part of the Zapotec water control systems, and adds urban and recreational infrastructure. We describe two of the more advanced projects below.

The value of the La Crucecita site lies in its social use. It is a space that has already been appropriated by the residents of Chapultepec: Every May 3, they use it to celebrate the Holy Cross Festival, a Catholic festivity that probably has roots in the precolonial period. The proposal to modify this area into a green space for families and to meet social and communal needs was an idea that raised strong enthusiasm among inhabitants. In this case, as with the other acupuncture projects, there is no need to make massive changes. Although it can already be seen that some erosion challenges will have to be met, the main aim here will be to reforest the area and put in place urban infrastructure to improve the atmosphere for the recreational, cultural, and religious activities already being held. This acupuncture intervention is also a great opportunity to connect the city and the archaeological park.

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