On November 5th, 1955, the rainwater had built up in the ancient, salty basin of Lake Texcoco, delivering it for a while from its apparently irreversible desiccation. The lake appears in the photos of the time as a mirror of silvery water fading in the distance, making us momentarily forget that in the dry season, this body of water disappeared completely from the map, leaving a several-hectare-wide wasteland in its place. During the months previous to the arrival of winter, this concave and hollow terrain temporarily received the water from the gushing mid-year storms, tainted by the residues the stream carried from the metropolis’s center. The silvery mirror the pictures depict is more precisely a gray surface of dirty water, stored to prevent its spillage in the city streets. The odor of the waste water probably traveled through air according to the wind’s direction, arriving to the city of Texcoco if the currents blew east, or to the northeastern neighborhoods of Mexico City if the air blew west, just like it happens today with the gases released by the West Landfill. [...]
Accident
in ENCYCLOPEDIA