52 53 The immortality of the paradigm. Aztec chinampas, custodians of biodiversity 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 �uetzalcoatl 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 it2. 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. 2 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».
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