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The mural was painted on the tunnel that brought the water to the sump, the four sides of the tank as well as its floor. Rivas invited Rivera to do the plastic integration of the building. According to the painter, his work would be “a synthetic and expressive sum of its human functions… an element of union and amalgamation between the machine that is the building and the human society that uses it”? and it was, in his words, the most fascinating commission of his painting career.
Rivera faced a technical challenge when deciding the materials he would use as it was an underwater mural. He was convinced to use an American-made BKS-92 polystyrene emulsion.
Rivera used a perspective for the mural to be observed from the top and consider the effects produced by the reflection of the water on the mural, which would be completely submerged.
The author thought of different readings with formal and symbolic interpretations, considering the external source within it. Its essential element is water and abiogenesis, expressing it in its scientific dimension, and in its social dimension as it is distributed to the population through the technical effort, essentially of the working class.
A central element can be observed in the center of the floor: the eyepiece of a microscope at the moment in which the primitive broth receives the first electrical discharges, in line with Aleksandr Oparin's hypotheses. The author had contact with Russian science since his visit to the USSR in 1929, and was always passionate about scientific studies, demonstrated with erudition in his interviews and in the constant references to it in his works. For example, Capturing microscopic elements is a resource that he had already related in the mural The controlling man of the universe at the Palace of Fine Arts. Countless microorganisms depart from this center, traveling on colorful stripes that end in stylized shapes like chalchihuites, imitating the representation of bodies of water in pre-Hispanic codices and continuing to the tunnel. The evolutionary sequence of these microorganisms gives rise to life, forming plant and animal species from which two anthropomorphic figures emerge to the left and right of the tank that emerge from the water: one is a black man on the south wall and one woman of oriental race in the north.
The man is black and the woman has Asian features (influenced by Olmec art), Rivera thus expressing the theses of the origin of man proposed by Soviet science in the 1950s.3? The woman is pregnant, and she is a batrachian with features similar to those of the painter.
At the top of the tunnel the social narrative of the mural begins. Two large worker hands give water to the city, symbolizing the workers' effort to bring it to the inhabitants of the capital of Mexico. On the left side, you can see the engineer Daniel Hernández, who gives a drink to an old pious woman who represents the aristocracy. Next to her, a boy in a harlequin costume and a monkey as a mascot waits for her turn, which represents the imitation of stereotypes. In the background, buildings from the International trend can be seen, with Mario Pani's Hotel Reforma being recognizable. To the right of the engineer, a worker drills rock with machinery to extract water, while on the right side of the hands, two workers drilling the rock with pickaxes offer water to a working family. A girl quenches her thirst and two more people wait. Behind them, in contrast to the modern buildings on the opposite wall, a temple (teocalli) is represented. The workers give water to both sides of their hands with their own helmets, symbolizing the workers' work for the common good.
To the right of the woman, in the northeast corner of the mural, a working family uses water to cultivate a plot of land. At the opposite extreme, the recreational use of water is represented with two people swimming. One has the face of the painter's daughter, Ruth Rivera.
On the west wall, and below the gates that regulated the passage of water to the sump, you can see the engineers who participated in the construction of the Lerma System, with the architect Rivas and the engineer Eduardo Molina in the center, who extends some plans of blue color explaining the operation of the system.
Below them were represented the molecules of chlorine and ammonia, as well as their combination to produce the disinfectant that makes it possible to make water drinkable. The gates, currently painted red, are attached to keys that still remain at the top of the tank.