Voluminous territorialisation: Historical contestations over the Yucatan Peninsula’s subterranean waterscape

Abstract

Over the past few years there has been a vertical-turn in human geographical scholarship with research, especially in the sub-fields of geopolitics and urban geography, increasingly focused in trying to understand space volumetrically: how subterranean and atmospheric spaces are entangled with surface socio-political dynamics. In this paper, we build on this work with a focus on the role of subterranean aquifers in volumetric geographies. We use the geopolitics of the northern Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico during the 1800s, as a case study to explore geographies of subterranean waterscapes and their implications for social-ecological processes. Specifically, we recast the Yucatan Peninsula’s relatively well-known history of henequen (an agave plant) production through a three-dimensional lens. Henequen in the Yucatan Peninsula became the key crop in producing rope and twine for international markets during the late 1800s and early 1900s, transforming the north of the Peninsula into one of the wealthiest regions in the world. We argue, that to fully appreciate the political economy dynamics of this boom, there is a need to rethink how the role of different technologies, economic regimes, and land control were affected by the interactions with the Peninsula’s subterranean aquifer. We conclude that the production of the henequen in the region of the Yucatan Peninsula was a three-dimensional form of control, and ultimately prosperity of the Spanish and their descendants in the region was heavily reliant on their ability to access, manage and shape human uses of the subterranean waterscape.