The Central Mexican Hot Springs Site That’s Run Like a Local Co-Op

It takes four hours to get from Mexico City to Grutas Tolantongo, a drive that takes you past circus-style tents selling barbacoa, sprawling suburbs, fields of cabbage, and busy public markets. As Grutas Tolantongo nears, roadside stores appear, selling inflatable pool floaties and water shoes. The road pitches up toward the mountains, then down 18 steep switchbacks into a box canyon. At the entrance gate, a man hands out a map depicting pool structures, hotel complexes, restaurants, offices, the river, waterfalls, and grottoes.

Grutas Tolantongo is an intricately designed network of pools, pipes, and paths that nestled into a steep hillside. Warm blue water fills the highest pool, then spills over into a lower pool, cooling slightly as it descends. The curving structure is sophisticated, looping like lace. It’s a marvel of design. In total, there are over 80 pools here, depending on who you ask, with more being built. I lost count at 50.

The main water source is a large cave at the end of the canyon, set behind a lattice of waterfalls; the cavern drips with water like rain in a thunderstorm. At the bottom of the valley winds a warm, milky-blue river.

The hot springs, and the area beyond it—which contains acres and acres of farmland and the nearby town of San Cristóbal—are all part of an ejido, a form of collective landownership. The ejido system was established during the reform measures of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century, restoring land rights to farmers and dissolving private estates held by the powerful and wealthy. The right of Mexico’s Indigenous communities to own their own land was at the heart of the revolution, whose slogan was "Tierra y libertad": Land and Freedom. With landownership came the ability to grow food, to have self-determination and self-sufficiency. The land was returned to the descendants of the original inhabitants, with decisions, obstacles, and resources shared among them.

The Ejido of San Cristóbal is the cooperative that includes Grutas Tolantongo. It started like most ejidos: with land and agriculture. Working as a team, the members grew a small orchard, with avocados, lemons, oranges, and bananas, that thrived in the warmth of the springs. In the 1970s, they began constructing a road so that others might be able to experience the waterfall, the river, and the grottoes.

In the cooperative, there are roughly 130 ejidatarios, or decision-making members. The ejido provides employment to them, their families, and others in the community. The work is shared, too: everyone pitches in, and everyone takes on a role. But every year, that role changes. During an annual event, names and positions are selected at random using a tombola game, like in bingo. One year, someone could be cleaning bathrooms and the next, managing the souvenir shop or tending the fields. This way of working allows for a more educated and diverse life and better informs community members to make decisions for the whole. "In some Indigenous communities, people need to learn different aspects of the whole community," says researcher Jozelin María Soto Alarcón, who studies feminist political ecology and community economy. "If they do not have experience, they cannot become a leader; they need to learn and practice."

The ejido system is connected to buen vivir, or good living, a concept and practice based on a Latin American Indigenous philosophy that emphasizes communal well-being and harmony. Instead of centering on the individual, it values the whole. Instead of promoting only profit, it considers ecosystems, families, and the long-term future.

Not every ejido is as successful or efficient. Their ability to thrive can depend on available resources and the philosophies of the community members. At the time of agrarian redistribution in 1917, ejido land was protected and forbidden to be sold. But as Mexico prepared to enter the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1991, the land was permitted to be rented, sold, or privatized. Thus, the ejido system became vulnerable to outside investors, threatening the unity of existing collectives and eroding local employment systems, leading to an increase in emigration from Mexico. But the ejido remains an important method of land use and tenure in Mexico, and a reflection of local values. Today, about half of all land in Mexico is part of an ejido.

In the mornings, the Instagrammers show up first, when the pools are empty and the photo ops are at their best. They take turns posing on the edges of pools or looking over their shoulder as they walk. Eventually, light slants in through the mountains and finally touches the pools. It seeps into the valley in golden beams.

Later in the day, cars and buses come from the city and around Mexico, carrying groups of friends, sweethearts, and families. There are children with squirt guns, a man listening to meditative music on a small speaker, a couple holding hands, a family of four generations on vacation. In the evenings, travelers and soakers cook meals of tortillas, meat, and roasted cactus over open fires, just feet from the water.

The smell of woodsmoke settles in with dusk, and the lights of the settlement across the canyon flicker.

Every other day, a cleaning crew drains and scrubs one section of the pool network. Brigido Rebolledo Cruz even cleans the cliffs, walking nimbly onto its sheer sides in rubber boots. He’s been working here for 35 years. While we chatted at the entrance of the pools, a coati—an animal like a raccoon—ate a stack of leftover tortillas on top of a shrine of the Virgin Mary. In the evening, when the work was done, Brigido and the other workers reclined in the uppermost pool with a little boom box. He waved at me from the water.

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Excerpted from Hot Springs: Photos and Stories of How the World Soaks, Swims, and Slows Down by Greta Rybus, published by Ten Speed Press. Text and photographs copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.

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