Mexican chinampas survive surrounded by threats

By Emilio Godoy
SAN GREGORIO ATLAPULCO, Mexico , Sep 18 2024 – Mexican Crescencio Hernández orders radishes, herbs and lettuce for shipment to an alternative market in west-central Mexico City.

The vegetables have been harvested from his chinampa, a pre-Hispanic wetland farming system that survives in three boroughs in the south of the Mexican capital, albeit surrounded by multiple threats.

Hernández, 44, married without children, attributed the success of the traditional technique to good practices. “We take care that there is no sewage in the canals, no construction in this area, we don’t use agrochemicals and reforest every year,” the owner of the Crescen de la Chinampa brand explained during a tour of his chinampa with IPS.

With three workers, Hernández harvests about 500 kilograms of vegetables each week, including tomatoes, peppers, chilli peppers and spinach, from a chinampa he owns and another he borrows in the town of San Gregorio Atlapulco, home to some 24,000 people and part of the borough of Xochimilco, known as ‘the land of flowers’.“We take care that there is no sewage in the canals, that there is no construction in this area, we don’t use agrochemicals, we reforest every year”: Crescencio Hernández.

Originally from the municipality of Acambay, in the state of Mexico (neighbouring Mexico City), Hernández has been a chinampa farmer (chinampero) for 28 years, an activity he shares with his brother, who rents another of these plots of land for agricultural production.

In 2017, he abandoned the use of agrochemicals and now uses compost from the organic matter produced by the farm. In June, he installed a greenhouse inside the chinampa to plant tomato, lettuce and cucumber.

“The basis of the system is water, it sustains it. I diversify production to meet the demand, as I am asked for several products, and also to take care of the soil,” he said.

But what he and other chinampa farmers protect, is destroyed in nearby areas, with the complicity of the authorities, who are responsible for protecting these unique sites.

Irregular urbanisation, the use of pesticides, the effects of the climate crisis, over-exploitation of the aquifer and neglect have dug their daggers into the bowels of the chinampa, according to a study by the World Cultural and Natural Heritage Zone Authority (AZP) in Xochimilco, Tláhuac and Milpa Alta.

The AZP, established in 2014, manages the preservation of the wetland’s special ecosystem in order to maintain the World Heritage designation.

Chinampa farmers in the municipality of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Fundación Tortilla

Ambiguity

The original peoples used chinampas, , a term that comes from chinampi, which in the indigenous Nahuatl language means ‘in the fence of reeds’, long before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 15th century.

The technique creates small, rectangular gardens in the wetlands of the micro-region, by means of fences made of ahuejote (willow) stakes, a tree typical of this ecosystem with the virtue of tolerating excess water.

The bottom of the chinampa is rich in mud and organic waste, which provide nutrients for the growth of plants, irrigated with water from the canals, in one of the most studied areas in the centre of the country.

The chinampas are the vegetable garden that partially feeds the 22 million people of Mexico City and its metropolitan area.

The chinampas system retains water, produces fish, vegetables, flowers and medicinal plants, and saves water compared to traditional irrigation, with a network of navigable canals of some 135 kilometres.

Luis Zambrano, doctor in basic ecology at the Institute of Biology de of the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, believes chinampas have had their ups and downs.

“There are chinamperos who… want to work the way they used to work, and that helps resilience and local food production. But it’s getting worse, because urbanisation, such as houses, football pitches and night clubs, is gaining ground,” he told IPS.

This, he said, because “Xochimilco is very threatened by local public policies that promote these activities, when the land’s vocation is to be productive”.

San Gregorio Atlapulco, part of the municipality of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City, lost conservation land between 2012 and 2024, victim of urbanization and the installation of greenhouses, as shown in the two satellite images from each of those years. Credit: Google Earth

In 1992, the Priority Zone for the Preservation and Conservation of Ecological Balance y was established as a Natural Protected Area (NPA), which covers the ejidos (community farms on public land under concession) of Xochimilco and San Gregorio Atlapulco, with a total of 2,507 hectares.

The chinampera area has 1,723 hectares, equivalent to 68 % of the NPA.

The borough hosts three zones in the ejidos Xochimilco, San Gregorio Atlapulco and San Luis Tlaxialtemalco, which still have canals and host 2,824 active chinampas out of the 18,524 existing ones.

Of the active points, 60% apply the chinampero system, 12.5% host greenhouses, recreational sites and football fields, 9.4% are dedicated to pastures and 16% were converted into residential areas.

In Xochimilco there are 864 active chinampas out of 15,864 registered over 1,059 hectares, corresponding to 47% of the total surface of the traditional system. This area preserves the largest number of chinampas that have potential for restoration.

San Gregorio Atlapulco has 1,530 operational chinampas out of 2,060 registered, over an area of 484 hectares (22% of the total), which makes it the locality with the greatest presence of these active sites.

San Luis Tlaxialtemalco is the smallest, with 103 hectares (5% of the territory), and 430 active chinampas out of 600 registered.

Xochimilco, with just over 442,000 people in an area of about 125 square kilometres, has been a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Natural and Cultural Heritage site since 1987.

In addition, its lake system has been part of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, known as the Ramsar Convention, since 2004, especially as a habitat for waterfowl.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) classifies the chinampas as part of the Ingenious Systems of World Agricultural Heritage, as they conserve agrobiodiversity, adapt farmers to climate change, guarantee food security and combat poverty.

But these recognitions have not prevented the destruction, and restoration has been an ever-present promise, always unfulfilled.

The protected natural area has lost at least 173 hectares in recent years due to urbanisation, construction of greenhouses and spaces for mass events, such as festivals, according to calculations by Zambrano and his scientific team. The ANP’s 2018 management plan bans those activities.

Compounding the despair, in 2021 the capital’s government built a vehicular bridge over a wetland, which increases the threats to the ecosystem and has led to several complaints to Unesco, which have yet to be resolved.

The canals between the chinampas provide sediment, the base for planting, and water for irrigating vegetable crops, in a wetland located in three localities in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

A possible future

In this adverse context, the chinamperos also sow optimism that flows through the canals of the area.

Biologist Zambrano leads a project that includes research, maintenance of the sites and protection of the axolotl, working with 25 farmers and 40 chinampas that distribute their produce to shops and restaurants with the ‘chinampera label’.

In 2024, the restoration project has a budget of around USD 250,000 from private donations.

The amphibian axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is endemic to the area and is at risk of extinction due to habitat loss.

At the moment, they are analysing profitability and increased production, in order to encourage more farmers to join.

Farmer Hernández highlighted collective work and government support as hopeful elements.

“I see solutions, but it depends on the government giving money. We need farmers to be aware of water use,” he said.

Zambrano called for a ‘social force’ to compel the regional and national governments to restore Xochimilco.

“Today they need subsidies, the value is very low and competition is high. This is a race against the dynamics we have brought in the last decades,” he argued.

He predicted a future with possibilities. “There are going to be places crowded with tourists, a lot of urbanisation and deterioration. But if we manage to change the balance and increase production, if the government supports it, we could have a very profitable area,” he concluded.