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Chinampa ( ) is a technique used in Mesoamerican agriculture which relies on small, rectangle areas of fertile arable land to grow agriculture on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico. The word chinampa has Nahuatl origins, chinampa meaning “in the fence of reeds”. They are built up on wetlands of a lake or freshwater swamp for agricultural purposes, and their proportions ensure optimal moisture retention. Oxford University Press, 2001. This method was also used and occupied most of Lake Xochimilco. The United Nations designated it a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2018.
Although different technologies existed during the Post-classic and Colonial periods in the basin, chinampas have raised many questions about agricultural production and political development. After the Aztec Empire formed, the conquest of southern basin city-states, such as Xochimilco, was one of the first strategies of imperial expansion. Before this time, farmers maintained small-scale chinampas adjacent to their households and communities in the freshwater lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. The Aztecs did not invent chinampas but rather were the first to develop it to a large scale cultivation. Sometimes referred to as "floating gardens," chinampas are artificial islands that were created by interweaving reeds with stakes beneath the lake's surface, creating underwater fences. A buildup of soil and aquatic vegetation would be piled into these "fences" until the top layer of soil was visible on the water's surface.
When creating chinampas, in addition to building up masses of land, a drainage system was developed. This drainage system was multi-purposed. A ditch was created to allow for the flow of water and (likely including night soil).Pedro Armillas, "Mesoamerica" in A History of Land Use in Arid Regions, L. Dudley Stamp, ed. Paris: UNESCO 1961, 266-67. Over time, the ditch would slowly accumulate piles of mud. This mud would then be dug up and placed on top of the chinampas, clearing the blockage. The soil from the bottom of the lake was also rich in nutrients, thus acting as an efficient and effective way of fertilizing the chinampas.Baquedano, E. (1993). Aztec Inca & Maya. A Dorling Kindersley Book: Singapore. Replenishing the topsoil with lost nutrients provided for bountiful harvests. Embarcadero-Jiménez and colleagues tested the correlation between environmental parameters and bacterial diversity in the soil. It is speculated that a diverse array of bacteria can affect the nutrients in the soil. The results found that bacterial diversity was more abundant in cultivated soils than non-cultivated soils. Also, "the structure of the bacterial communities showed that the chinampas are a transition system between sediment and soil and revealed an interesting association of the S-cycle and iron-oxidizing bacteria with the rhizosphere of plants grown in the chinampa soil".
Evidence from Nahuatl wills from late seventeenth-century Pueblo Culhuacán suggests chinampas were measured in matl (one matl = 1.67 meters), often listed in groups of seven.Cline, Colonial Culhuacan, pp. 134-35. One scholar has calculated the size of chinampas using Aztec codices as a source, finding that they usually measured roughly . In Tenochtitlan, the chinampas ranged from to Tompkins, P. (1976). Mysteries of the Mexican pyramids. Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited: Toronto. pp. 299 They were created by staking out the shallow lake bed and then fencing in the rectangle with wattle. The fenced-off area was then layered with mud, lake sediment, and decaying vegetation, eventually bringing it above the level of the lake. Often trees such as āhuexōtl ( Salix bonplandiana) (1995). 9789280808483, United Nations University Press. ISBN 9789280808483 (a willow) and āhuēhuētl ( Taxodium mucronatum) (a cypress) were planted at the corners to secure the chinampa. In some places, the long raised beds had ditches in between them, giving plants continuous access to water and making crops grown there independent of rainfall.Cline, Colonial Culhuacan p. 2. Chinampas were separated by channels wide enough for a canoe to pass. These raised, well-watered beds had very high crop yields with up to 7 harvests a year. Chinampas were commonly used in pre-colonial Mexico and Central America. There is evidence that the Nahua settlement of Culhuacan, on the south side of the Ixtapalapa peninsula that divided Lake Texcoco from Lake Xochimilco, constructed the first chinampas in C.E. 1100.Richard Blanton, "Prehispanic Settlement Patterns of the Ixtapalapa Peninsula Region, Mexico." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan 1970.
Chinampa farms also ringed Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, which was considerably enlarged over time. Smaller-scale farms have also been identified near the island-city of Xaltocan and on the east side of Lake Texcoco. With the destruction of the dams and during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, many chinampas fields were abandoned. However, many lakeshore towns retained their chinampas through the end of the colonial era since cultivation was highly labor-intensive and less attractive for Spaniards to acquire.Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1964.
The Aztecs built Tenochtitlan on an island around 1325. Issues arose when the cities' constant expansion eventually caused them to run out of room to build. As the empire grew, more sources of food were required. At times this meant conquering more land; at other times it meant expanding the chinampa system. With this expansion, chinampas' multiple crops per year became a large factor in the production and supply of food. Empirical records suggest that farmers had a relatively light tribute to pay compared to others because the annual tribute may have been only a fraction of the amount necessary for local needs.
The extent to which Tenochtitlan depended on chinampas for its fresh food supply has been the topic of a number of scholarly studies.Edward E. Calnek, "The Organization of Urban Food Supply Systems: The Case of Tenochtitlan" in Las ciudades de América Latina y sus áreas de influencia a través de la historia, Jorge Hardoy and Richard P. Schaedel, eds. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Interamericana de Planificación 1975.Edward E. Calnek, "El sistema de mercado de Tenochtitlan," in Política e ideología en el México prehispánico," Pedro Carrasco and Johanna Broda, eds. Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1978, pp. 97-114.Jeffrey R. Parsons, "The Role of Chinampa Agriculture in the Food Supply of Aztec Tenochtitlan," in Cultural Change and Continuity, Charles Clelland, editor. New York: Academic Press 1976, 242.
Among the crops grown on chinampas were maize, , squash, amaranth, , , and flowers.Van Tuerenhout, Dirk R. (2005). The Aztecs: New Perspectives, p. 106. ABC-CLIO, Inc. Maize was planted with digging stick huictli with a wooden blade on one end.Teresa Rabiela Rojas, "Agricultural Implements in Mesoamerica," in Explorations in Ethnohistory, H.R. Harvey and Hanns J. Prem, eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1984
The word chinampa comes from the Nahuatl word chināmitl, meaning "square made of canes" and the Nahuatl locative, "pan." In documentation by Spaniards, they used the word camellones, "ridges between the rows."Cline, Colonial Culhuacan, p. 132. However, Franciscan Fray Juan de Torquemada described them with the Nahua term, chinampa, saying "without much trouble the plant and harvest their maize and greens, for all over there are ridges called chinampas; these were strips built above water and surrounded by ditches, which obviates watering."Juan de Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, vol. 2, 483. Mexico: Editorial Porrúa 1975.
Chinampas are depicted in pictorial Aztec codices, including Codex Vergara, Codex Santa María Asunción, the so-called Uppsala Map,Sigvald Linné, El valle y la ciudad de México en 1550. Relación histórico fundada sobre un mapa geográfico, que se conserva en la biblioteca de la Universidad de Uppsala Sweden. Stockholm 1948. and the Maguey Plan (from Azcapotzalco). In alphabetic Nahuatl documentation, The Testaments of Culhuacan from the late sixteenth century have numerous references to chinampas as property that individuals bequeathed to their heirs in written wills.S.L. Cline and Miguel León-Portilla, The Testaments of Culhuacan UCLA Latin American Center, Nahuatl Studies Series, vol. 1 1984.Cline, Colonial Culhuacan
There are still remnants of the chinampa system in Xochimilco, the southern portion of greater Mexico City. Chinampas have been promoted as a model for modern sustainable agriculture, although some sources have disputed the applicability of this model. One anthropologist, for instance, reports that attempts by Mexico to develop chinampas among the Chontal Maya people in the 1970s failed until the technicians modified their goals in order to suit the Chontales' interests.
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Many of these chinampas have been allowed by present-day farmers to become overgrown. Some choose to use canoes to farm, but many are becoming increasingly dependent on wheelbarrows and bicycles for transportation. Other fields, such as some located in San Gregorio and San Luis areas, have been deliberately filled up. As the canals dry up, several of the fields are naturally joined. Although not used for their original purpose, they are commonly used for Cattle feeding.
Other fields, both dried and surrounded by canals, produce foods such as lettuce, cilantro, spinach, chard, squash, parsley, coriander, cauliflower, celery, mint, chives, rosemary, corn, and radishes. The young leaves of quelites and Amaranth, which are often mistaken for weeds, are grown and harvested as ingredients of sauces. Flowers also continue to be grown on these plots. Some chinampa fields are also used as tourist sites.
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