The immortality of the paradigm. Aztec chinampas, custodians of biodiversity
There are some founding myths that, though distant from us in time and latitude, are still able to point the way. The model of the chinampas descends from Mexica-Aztecan mythology, generating soil from water and, through the work of associations such as Arca Tierra, connecting the biblical narrative of the Promised Land to the rhizomatic reality of the urban jungle.
Stefano Santangelo
In a brand new world, as immobile as it was, floating upon the waters of the Ocean laid the great Tlaltecuhtli, monstrous creature of Chaos. Discontent with the stillness and incompleteness of creation, the gods Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl decided to transform themselves into serpents, pulling Tlaltecuhtli’s body in opposite directions, tearing it apart. One part fell below, becoming the land, and another ascended, becoming the sky. From Tlaltecuhtli’s hair, plants were born; from its eyes, springs emerged; from its skin, herbs and flowers sprouted, serving since then as sustenance for humankind.
Several generations after the creation of humankind, echoing the creative act of primordial deities (for what is a human being, if not a faded echo of the divine?), the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico created the chinampas, generating land from water. These new microcosms emerged from the placement of willow stakes around a rectangular perimeter, filled with organic materials of various kinds, in multiple layers. The act of planting trees along the perimeter created a natural reinforcing network, along with the illusion of floating rafts propelled by sails, like small fleets ready to depart, anchored along the shores of the lakes.
Therefore, walking on the ground of myth, it was from various parts of Tlaltecuhtli’s body that the Mesoamerican populations preceding the Aztec people in the land of the five lakes derived these fertile islands, which nourished themselves from marshy matter to, in turn, nourish also the human being. Then, the Mexica-Aztecs came. They arrived after a long journey, an exodus in search of a Promised Land more liquid than solid indicated to them by Tlaloc, the god of water and earth. There, they settled in a realm in decline and which they did not belong to, on the island in the middle of Lake Texcoco then become Tenochtitlan, the capital of a vast and flourishing empire that metaphorically anchored its foundations in the chinampa cultivation system. At the arrival of the Spaniards, these were located on the Xochimilco and Chalco lakes, surrounding the island where Tenochtitlan stood and, to a lesser extent, in the Zumpango, Xaltocan and Texcoco lakes, where the main food crops of the Empire were produced. In a predominantly liquid world, consisting of the five lakes that made up the Valley of Mexico, the creation and multiplication of chinampas allowed for the sustenance of a city with two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.
If the Promised Land was essentially liquid, as children of a deluge, the Mexica-Aztecs revered the soil of their chinampas with the respect due to a mother and a deity, whose appellations compose a pagan rosary: Monantzin (Your Mother), Tonan (Our Mother), Teteoinnan (the Mother of the Gods), Toci (Your Grandmother), Tlalli Yiollo (Heart of the Earth), Mother of Corn, Earth Princess. The Tratado de los dioses y ritos de la gentilidad reports that, at the time of working the land, farmers were used to first and foremost offer their prayer to it, recognizing it as their mother, revealing their intention to unfold it in order to insert the plow in it.
Thus, the respect and care for the soil brought sustenance and allowed the Aztec Empire to expand and prosper, reaching its evolutionary zenith in the 16th century when, as the prophecies foretold, the god �uetzalcoatl returned from the East, incarnated in the person of Hernán Cortés. With his army, he would have then annihilated the Mexica people, sealing the fate of Tenochtitlan and the chinampas. The five lakes were gradually drained, and the floating gardens were paved over to build Mexico City. Before the death of the Aztec civilization and the near-total extinction of both their productive methods and their profound knowledge of the land’s nature, the first anthropologist in history, the missionary Bernardino de Sahagún, managed to save the rich vocabulary employed by the locals to describe the soil. Tlalli, used to denote the earth, became the suffix from which the descriptions of forty-five soil varieties were derived – including tetlalli, unsuitable for cultivation due to its stony nature; xalalli, sandy and minimally productive soil; tollalli, fertile soil containing decomposed marsh cane remains; tlal-coztli, highly fertile, yellowish soil; toctli, naturally fertile soil; atoctli, soil flooded by water and therefore fertilized by it, becoming suitable for cultivation.
Today, only a fraction of the floating gardens survives in Xochimilco, surrounded by the dense and wild urbanization of Mexico City, the metropolis that stands as the reincarnation of Tenochtitlan. Some chinampas have been merged, disrupting the original design’s perfect balance and the system of major and minor canals. Nonetheless, in Xochimilco, cultivation continues as it did when the Europeans arrived and, before them, the Mexica.
Today, the brand new chinamperos have mixed blood in their veins, being descendants of both the creators and destroyers of the floating gardens. They nonetheless propose to export this model all around the world, to heal and save it from soil destruction and biodiversity loss. Specifically, Arca Tierra is the organization aiming to connect the chinampa farmers with the nearly nine million inhabitants of the metropolis, as it was in ancient Tenochtitlan, and to promote tourism in order to showcase it to the world as an anti-utopian and factually possible paradigm.
This paradigm is represented by a soil capable of achieving an eleven percent organic matter content, with minimal forced irrigation thanks to the use of foliage from trees, well-defined cultivation techniques and proximity to water. In contrast to modern Western models, this system, essentially combining agroforestry and permaculture as it involves cultivating multiple varieties simultaneously, can attract both avian and fish fauna to its canals, allowing hunting and fishing, therefore maintaining a perfect balance in which nature can regenerate without disruptive cycles in the eternal alternation of death and rebirth, introducing agriculture as a form of landscape renewal, social relationship rehabilitation, and as a challenge to the city’s water system recovery.
In the perspective of a near future, where the ancient deities may no longer rescue us for obvious reasons, only the secrets of land care coming from ancient realities like the Xochimilco gardens will be able to shoulder the heavy task of saving us from ourselves.
[1] Pedro Ponce, Breve relación de los dioses y ritos de la gentilidad, 1892 (orig. 1610?), Imprenta del Museo Nacional, México: «Primero hazen su oraçion a la tierra, diziendole que es su madre, y que la quieren abrir y ponerle el arado».