On 26 January 2024, residents in Mexico City placed empty buckets on the pavement and waited for a water truck. Reuters' video record shows people beside their containers, hoses filling them, and tanker trucks themselves queuing at a filling point. In June, residents of the Benito Juárez district were also photographed lining up to receive water from the Mexican army.
This queue is distinctive because both households and the city's delivery system had to wait. Families waited for tankers; tankers waited for water at wells and filling stations. As drought reduced storage in the Cutzamala system and losses from aging pipes persisted, one delay became two linked lines before reaching a neighborhood.
A tap normally hides where water comes from. When it stops, buckets, pavements, handwritten delivery lists and tanker trucks redraw the underground network on the street. The infrastructure becomes visible precisely when it can no longer provide an invisible service.