Case Study

More Than Fields: The Spirit of Xochimilco’s Chinampas

The canals of Xochimilco shimmer in the morning light, yet beneath the reflection lies a slow unraveling. Once, these waterways fed an empire. The chinampas — rectangular plots of fertile soil anchored by willow roots — produced maize, beans, and squash in abundance, sustaining the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan. Today, less than a quarter remain in use and only a fraction, about 2.5 percent, are still actively cultivated. Many have been abandoned or converted into soccer fields and event spaces. Others are clogged with invasive plants as water levels fall. What endures feels fragile, at risk of becoming a display for tourists rather than a living system.

San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco. A small shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe stands near the canals, framed by two men seated on its steps. A man removes his sweater beside a mural depicting a great egret, the “garza blanca,” a bird intimately tied to Xochimilco’s ecosystem. The white egret also appears in Mesoamerican mythology: in Nahua tradition, the term Aztlán — the ancestral homeland — is closely linked to the “home of the egrets,” suggesting that these birds were deeply symbolic to pre-Hispanic origins. (N. Rojo)

The problem is not only ecological. Generations have drifted from the land. “There is no interest anymore,” says Arturo Plata, a Xochimilco local who grew up farming the chinampas with his father. He remembers when canoes carried vegetables directly to the market in San Gregorio, when canals connected people as much as fields. Now graffiti scars communal markers, water runs shallow, and neighbors mark boundaries with suspicion. “The social fabric is breaking,” he says, pointing to an erosion deeper than soil alone.

Amid these challenges, Arca Tierra, an agroecological collective in Xochimilco, works to restore chinampas through food production, ecological repair, and education. They manage farmland, sell weekly harvests, and run Escuela Campesina — a school of farmers — where young people learn directly from elder chinamperos, the farmers who tend the floating plots.

Two women transport sacks of mud on a large lancha across the canals of Xochimilco. The mud will be used to nourish the soil of a nearby chinampa, now home to a small house. This work helps restore the land’s fertility and keeps alive a practice passed down for generations. (N. Rojo)

Efforts to restore the chinampas are often described in technical terms: dredging canals, replenishing soil, improving irrigation. Yet what once sustained them was not technique alone, but a worldview that treated the land as alive. Shrines still dot the waterways. A skeletal temazcal – a traditional Mexican steam bath – leans on a parcel managed by Arca Tierra, recalling ceremonies of healing. Even the birds carry meaning. Egrets, still common along the canals, were once tied to the Mexica homeland of Aztlán. Without the sense of reverence that bound people to soil and water, repair risks being too shallow for material, sustainable impact.

Joy Hernandez, who helps lead Arca Tierra, sees the issue as systemic. “Seventy percent of the chinampas are abandoned,” she explains. “Another twenty percent have been urbanized. Some are even turned into soccer fields because that brings faster money than farming.” She knows that ecological restoration cannot survive without people willing to return to the land. “The average age of farmers in Mexico is over forty-five. Young people do not see it as viable. Many are told by their families: do not do what I did, do not suffer in the fields.”

A white egret lifts from the edge of the canal and disappears into the trees. These birds are common in Xochimilco and often seen near chinampas. Their presence points to the continued role of wetlands in supporting native wildlife, even as the balance between land, water, and people becomes harder to maintain. (N. Rojo)

Climate change deepens the uncertainty. Rains no longer arrive on time, and floods and droughts strike unpredictably. “Farmers are scientists,” Joy says. “They know the winds, the rains, the soil. But now they cannot predict. They just wait and hope for the best.” This unpredictability makes farming more precarious and drives families away from the chinampas.

Still, signs of renewal emerge. At daybreak, workers from Arca Tierra paddle out with tools, pumps, and wheelbarrows. They lie on wooden boards to plant herbs such as cilantro, coriander, and parsley into grids of mud cut from the canal floor. Others guide flat bottom boats and kayaks piled with sacks of fertile soil, restoring plots row by row. “We can produce all year,” Joy explains. “If Xochimilco disappeared, the city could warm by two or three degrees.”

Workers from Arca Tierra prepare their Kayaks in the early morning. They load tools, pumps, and wheelbarrows before heading out to tend chinampas in Xochimilco. Their work supports ecological restoration and food production in one of the world’s oldest farming systems. (N. Rojo)

The challenge is not only to restore soil but to restore connection. This is the reason Arca Tierra created the Escuela Campesina. “The idea is that they (the youth) see this as a way of life, not nostalgia. We want them to know it is possible to make a living here, to carry forward ancestral knowledge while adapting to the present,” says Joy Hernández.

Lina López holds a beetroot freshly pulled from the soil. Her fingers are caked with earth, but her nails still sparkle in the sunlight. She says this place offers more than food. “Here, you breathe clean air.” The chinampa gives back in ways that are harder to measure. Amy, another worker, once remarked that if Xochimilco were to vanish, the city could heat up by two or three degrees. What grows here cools the land. What grows here returns you to something essential. (N. Rojo)

For those who remain, the work is more than survival. “Here, you breathe clean air,” says Lina López, holding a beetroot pulled fresh from the soil.

Fernanda Alvarado poses for a portrait in her favorite chinampa. The sun filters through her hat, casting a pattern across her face. She says it is beautiful, but working under the sun is hard. (N. Rojo)

Fernanda Alvarado, 27 years old and a fourth-generation chinampera, describes her bond with the land in even more intimate terms. “I first started working for money, but then I fell in love with them. This chinampa is my favorite,” she says, pointing at the plot that has only recently been restored, where traces of salitre — the salty crust that rises through the soil — still mark the surface. For her, the field is not just a workplace but a refuge. “The chinampa does not let me feel alone. It takes care of me and tells me, forget everything, here you are safe.” She has also learned that the land responds to how one approaches it: “What you give to the earth matters. If you work with joy, if you work happily, then you may have results. But if you work while angry, you might get into an accident.”

Around her, polycultures of greens and fruit trees stretch across the chinampas, their branches laid along paths to hold moisture. A spider web glimmers in the corner of a dry toilet, fragile yet enduring. Arturo Plata, tracing circles in the dirt with his finger, puts it simply: “We are the same earth. Our grandparents said: you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

The work of renewal does not move quickly. It happens in gestures that look ordinary at first: branches spread across soil to hold in moisture, seedlings pressed into squares of mud, medicinal herbs planted alongside flowers. Each act carries more than technique, it carries a way of seeing. “Our strength is in combining ancestral knowledge with regenerative practices,” Joy explains. “It is about learning to live with the environment, not against it.”

A skeletal frame of a temazcal sits quietly on one of the chinampas managed by Arca Tierra. Traditionally, a temazcal is a pre-Hispanic steam bath used for purification, healing, and ceremony. Nearby, rows of medicinal plants grow — reminders that this land is not only cultivated for food, but also for care and renewal. (N. Rojo)

The remains of a temazcal lean at the edge of a parcel, recalling a time when purification and healing were woven into daily life. Around it, rows of herbs grow: chamomile, mint, epazote. These are not only crops, but remedies, echoes of rituals that once bound health, soil, and spirit together. Arturo believes this respect is essential. “The land breathes as we breathe,” he says. “When we cut into it carelessly, we cut into ourselves.”

Small altars dedicated to the Virgin Mary line the canals leading to Arca Tierra’s chinampas. They stand quietly among the trees, offering a gesture of protection and reverence along the water’s edge. (N. Rojo)

Altars built by those who live and work here still stand among the trees. Some carry candles, others painted birds or stars. They ask for protection, but they also signal something more: that farming is not carried out only with tools, but with reverence. Spirituality here does not arrive as doctrine. It arrives in gestures, in greetings to the earth, in the conviction that survival depends on balance.

A former Arca Tierra employee paddles through the canal and exchanges greetings with old colleagues. Behind him, a chinampero irrigates crops using a water pump that draws directly from the canal. (N. Rojo)

Xochimilco is not a relic of the past. It is a living negotiation between abandonment and renewal. The question is not whether the land can still produce — it can, and abundantly — but whether people will remember why it matters. Joy sees hope in Escuela Campesina, where students spend months alongside elder chinamperos. “It is not romantic,” she says. “It is hard work. But some realize it is already part of them. It was in their grandparents, and it returns through their hands.”

Close-up of gridded chinampa mud, shaped to hold seeds for germination. Each cell allows for individual transplanting, keeping roots and soil intact for fresher delivery. (N. Rojo)

The grids of mud speak of this continuity. Each square holds a seed, each seed holds a possibility. When transplanted into the soil, the roots stay intact, the earth travels with them. It is a method both efficient and symbolic: renewal carried forward, soil and all.

The future of Xochimilco will not depend only on pumps or markets. It will depend on whether people can recover the sense that these waters are more than infrastructure. To farm a chinampa is to enter into relationship with something older, larger, and alive. It is to accept reciprocity, to give back as much as is taken, to treat land as kin rather than resource. The shrines, the temazcal, the stories of the egret, all remind us that without a thread to the sacred, even the most fertile soil can turn barren.

Nopales still grow along the banks of some chinampas, like this one in Xochimilco. For the Mexica, the cactus was a sacred symbol. Their origin story speaks of an eagle perched on a cactus, marking the place to build Tenochtitlan. (N. Rojo)

The canals keep flowing, carrying both memory and possibility. Women haul mud, men steer kayaks, birds rise into the sky. Along the water’s edge, candles burn in small shrines. The chinampas endure not as relics but as living testaments: survival here requires more than survival. It requires care and reciprocity.

By Noel Rojo