Spaniards and the Aquatic Gardens of Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco: Environment, Science, and the Law in Late Colonial Mexico

Disputes arose over competing conceptions of the environment in eighteenth-century central Mexico. The aquatic societies that Nahuas had fashioned from Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco had long been renowned for their chinampas, the raised fields famous for their bountiful harvests. Initially, Spaniards had found the area’s amphibious orientation unfamiliar. Settlers rarely sought to obtain chinampas. A distinctive historical geography developed in which Nahuas retained control over lacustrine resources and Spaniards established haciendas (landed estates) in the surrounding hills. This pattern began to break down during the eighteenth century when Spanish settlers who had become familiar with chinampa cultivation and haciendas expanded into the lake areas.  To counter opposition from Nahuas anxious about land alienation, hacienda owners argued that their properties were of critical importance to the region’s political economy, including the provisioning of the capital. Nahuas made the same claims for the chinampa districts. The disputes extended to questions about the very survival of the chinampas; haciendas had begun to disrupt irrigation systems, and the chinampa districts faced the threat of flooding. At the same time, enlightenment scientists turned their attention to aquatic garden agriculture. The resulting documentation—including scientific treatises and lawsuits containing Spanish and Nahuatl-language sources—reveals not only contrasting attitudes toward the environment across cultural lines but also among different constituencies of Spaniards, from settlers and estate owners to officials and creole patriots. This paper shows how different understandings of the environment, and knowledge of foreign farming techniques, could hold profound implications for changing human relationships with the environment.