Abstract

MADRIGAL CALLE, Beatriz Elena; ALBERTI MANZANARES, Pilar  and  MARTINEZ CORONA, Beatriz. La Apantla: el agradecimiento para que no falte el agua. Cuicuilco [online]. 2015, vol.22, n.63, pp.29-61. ISSN 0185-1659.

The Apantla Festival, celebrated in honor of water, is held in the town of Santa Catarina del Monte, Texcoco, State of Mexico. Among this population, of nahuatl origin, people translate the name as "the ditch is cleaned." According to oral tradition from pre-Hispanic times, Texcoco's inhabitants preserved this ancestral legacy from Netzahualcoyotl. The purpose of this paper is to show that this local method for valuing water among the members of this community has survived as part of a control system for the resource from the sacred practices, and has become an example for environmental education. A record was made of ethnographic testimonies from interviews with different local actors regarding the form in which the celebration of the Festival was carried out in both the past and the present. Early chroniclers were also consulted. It also discusses how this notion of the sacred practices applied in the control of this mountain-water resource is operated. We conclude that this ritual practice has contributed to the development of awareness, not only of the importance of this vital liquid, but also of its sacredness, embedded in tradition, identity, ritual and everyday life.

Keywords : water; rituality; clean channel; sacred; conservation.