Next Wednesday, January 21 the Mexican engineer Andrés Semo will give at 18 hours in the Instituto Cultural de México (Carrera de San Jerónimo, 46) the conference 700 years of Tenochtitlan. The journey of an amphibious city.
The conference proposes, with the support of images from the Tenochtitlan Portrait project, of which Andrés Semo is part, a rigorous and deep reading of Tenochtitlan as a lacustrine city and civilizational system, to explain how its desiccation was not an isolated technical fact, a long-term historical process that irreversibly transformed the territory, landscape and urban life of the Valley of Mexico.
Through historical, cartographic and territorial analysis, Andrés Semo exposes the transition from an amphibious capital (articulated by lakes, roads and canals) to a metropolis built on the negation of its original geography, revealing the political implications, economic and cultural change. The conference invites reflection on desiccation not only as an engineering work, but as a founding act of modern Mexico, whose environmental, social and urban consequences continue to define the present, and raises a critical dialogue between historical memory, shared heritage and the city’s contemporary challenges.
The conference is being held in collaboration with the Tourism Secretariat and the Mexico City Government’s Joint Tourism Promotion Fund.
Andrés Semo (Mexico City, 1989). Geomatics Engineer from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM): He has a diploma in Finance and in Geographic Information Systems at the same University. Since 2014, he has collaborated with various institutions in territorial analysis, measurement of pollutant emissions and aerial interpretation. Participated in the project of the books Ciudad Independencia (2021) and Unidad Integración Latinoamericana (2024). His research focuses on Mesoamerican urbanism, contemporary urban studies and historical reconstructions in the third dimension. Currently, he is a content creator and independent documentalist, advisor of the Mixed Tourism Promotion Fund of Mexico City. The most recent project, the recently published recreation of Tenochtitlan has been exhibited in different venues and museums.