Sitting under a young oak tree in the garden outside the cultural center, I invited people to talk with me about water, and about their experience of the recent drought.
I had never been to Mexico, so when I received the invitation to teach a workshop and make a performance in Monterrey, I embarked on research. I read books about the history and culture of Mexico and in particular about Nuevo León, from the historical to the scientific to the esoteric. I read news coverage about the droughts that Monterrey has endured, including the most recent one of 2022. I also found the publication of a report commissioned by the Fondo de Agua Metropolitano de Monterrey, entitled Developing a Robust Water Strategy for Monterrey, Mexico, prepared by the Rand Corporation in collaboration with Tecnológico de Monterrey. I think what irked me was not just the overly confident tone that implied that solutions were simple, but the fact that it was written in English. However, that did allow me to read it, since I don’t know Spanish.
Meanwhile, Alejandro Zertuche (https://cargocollective.com/azertuche/Home, or https://www.instagram.com/alejandrozertuche__/ ), the artist who had organized the project, sent me images and video of possible spaces around the Centro Cultural Plaza Fátima for the performance. I chose an outdoor space, under an oak tree in the center of a plaza. And I chose the theme of water. I realized that the scheduled date of the performance was the night of the full moon, so I decided to start my six-hour performance in the late afternoon, in order to see the moon rise.
Water.
Just a few days before I arrived in Monterrey, Hurricane Beryl swept through the region. The Santa Catarina River that flows through the middle of the city and has more recently been a dry riverbed, swelled with water in the hurricane and overflowed. The roads that ran along its banks were washed out, and the traffic was completely snarled as crews worked to make repairs.
Drought.
I take care of a well at a summer cottage on the coast of Maine, and I worry about it running dry. Access to potable water is a critical issue throughout the world, and the drought in Monterrey and other parts of Mexico is evidence of the crisis on our own continent. Though many areas of Western USA are facing drought conditions, it seems as if no one is taking it seriously. Even where I live, in the Northeast, we have been experiencing increased levels of drought, but still there are no restrictions on water use.
I recognized that the collapse of Monterrey’s water supply in 2022 is a harbinger of more to come. I wanted to learn from the people who lived there about how it was handled by the authorities, and how it impacted and changed their lives. So I did a performance where I invited people to sit with me, one person at a time, for a conversation. I offered them a glass of water to drink, and then I asked if they would tell me about their experience of the drought, and whether they thought about water differently as a result. The conversations unfolded in many different directions.
People talked with me about the politics of the control of water resources in Monterrey, and the differences in the impact the drought had on the citizens versus the industries, as well as the different degrees of access to potable water that the wealthier people in the suburbs had compared to poorer people living in older sections of the city. Our conversations ranged from discussions of environmental issues and the climate crisis to the practical solutions that they adopted for saving and conserving water in their homes, to more poetic ruminations on water and the sea that is in us and surrounds us.
At the end of each conversation, I suggested that we give some of our water to the oak tree providing shade from the sun. As a final gesture together we poured water from our glasses into the grass and roots and left our glasses under the tree.
The performance was 6 hours long, starting at 4:30 pm. Halfway through, the full moon rose. During the performance it also rained briefly, and a rainbow appeared. At the end there were 50 glasses under the tree.
