Access to Water and Territorial Construction in Milpa Alta, México’s Federal District

Abstract

The construction of a territory is a complex activity that is necessary to understand. The case of Milpa Alta can enlighten us in this regard since such a space is constantly recreated as result of a territorial confrontation between two contending social forces: on the one hand, the Government tries to preserve it for ecological conservation purposes; and on the other hand, there is the legitimate demands of its inhabitants to improve their living conditions. The result of this confrontation generates a territorial and social stratification situation that involves substantial differences in the ways in which the population accesses water for human consumption, ranging from formal and informal mechanisms to legal and illegal ones. The objective of this essay is to bring to light the multiple water supply mechanisms found in a suburban area of study within Mexico’s Federal District (Milpa Alta), the processes, actors and strategies that are involved, and as well as to begin to understand how the physical  construction of the territory relates to the social construction of the disputed space.