There are a lot of articles about earthquakes, soft soil, and Mexico City. Their common subtext is "dumb/silly Mexicans should know better!"
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The Aztec empire, like any empire, was not without its faults. But it was built to either benefit or cause little damage to the environment.
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When the Spanish colonized the Aztec, the genocide wasn't only against people, but also culture -- which is synonymous with the environment.
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Keep in mind that colonization is fundamentally about destruction. Part of what the Spanish destroyed was Lake Texcoco itself.
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Because they didn't respect Aztec knowledge about how to control flooding, the Spanish DRAINED THE ENTIRE LAKE. Think about that hubris.
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Even though they were repeatedly warned against doing so by the Aztec, the Spanish built their own capital on what used to be Lake Texcoco.
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The story of how we got Mexico City is relatively recent history. It's the result of violent/foolish colonization, based on racist hatred.
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Look at the buildings that were destroyed in Mexico City *and* the buildings that weren't: Catholic churches damaged. Aztec pyramids intact.
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So many white writers are pointing out that Mexico City was built on soft soil. But they fail to mention that colonization made it that way.
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"Mexico City is like building on Jello!" they write. How did it get that way? Bc Europeans destroyed a lake like they destroyed a people.
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Writing about earthquakes/soft soil/Mexico City without explicitly writing about colonization is a second erasure, a legacy of colonization.
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When your subtext is that Mexicans are dumb/silly for building in Mexico City, you're reifying the violence of colonization.
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*Fellow writers, and white ones especially: please don't steal my thread to write a new article as if you knew this all along. Thank you.
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End of conversation
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