The Chinampa: An Ancient Mexican Sub‐Irrigation System

Abstract

The Chinampa is an agro‐hydrological system practised for many generations, built over shallow lacustrine wetland areas near Mexico City. It was developed by the Aztecs, a pre‐Hispanic culture who settled around the lake in the old Tenochtitlan, ancient capital of the Mexican empire. The Chinampa design takes advantage of local environmental and soil conditions. Nowadays, some are still used by local producers and it is one of the few pre‐Hispanic irrigation structures that have been preserved and that operate as originally designed, with increasing value, because of its sustainability. The Chinampa consists of several layers of vegetation and sludge to produce an organic soil 50 cm above the water level for agricultural use in wetlands. These rectangular plots, surrounded by water, are 5–10 m wide by 50–100 m long. When a significant number of Chinampas are built, they make a network of canals among Chinampas, and broader canals provide navigation routes. The Chinampa is secured on the edges by trees whose roots hold the soil. These agricultural structures have provided many benefits for the inhabitants in the water system of the area, not only productive, but also economic, environmental, cultural and social. In December 1984, the Chinampa system in the Valley of Mexico was declared to be Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO; in 1992, the Mexican government declared the zone a ‘Natural Protected Area’; and in 2004, the wetlands that support the Chinampa were also declared a RAMSAR site. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Resilience and Digitalization in Short Food Supply Chains: A Case Study Approach

“…In 1984, chinampas were declared Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO for preserving pre-hispanic agricultural knowledge and technologies. In 1992, the Mexican government declared the zone a natural protected area [81].…”

The aquaponic principle—It is all about coupling

“…(5) Water is a definition element, not only because water is the meaning of both aqua (Latin) and hydro (Greek, hýdor), but especially since aquaculture and hydroponics are coupled by the multifunctional use of water (a) to transfer aquatic animals’ metabolic emissions as nutrients from aquaculture to plant cultivation and (b) to irrigate the plants with the nutrient water (fertigation). This also applies if the respective organisms are not spatially separated or the nutrient water is stationary, as is the case with the ancient Aztec Chinampas 56,57 . Without ‘water’, an aquaponic definition would include cases where aquaculture and hydroponics are far apart and nutrients are transported by other means, such as in a dry state.…”

Reassessing the LIS approach to traditional knowledge: learning from Xochimilco, Mexico city

“…Chinampas are made by building up mud scooped from the lakebed. They are typically 2.5–10 m wide by 100 m long (Torres-Lima et al , 1994; Robles et al , 2019). A good sense of the landscape can be gleaned from the photographs in Government of Mexico City (2017).…”