Preservation, Rehabilitation, and Management of Heritage Wetlands in Mexico - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 177

FIGURE 11.15 Interpretive sign explaining the role of the bioreserve park.

d estrUCtion
Soon after the Conquest at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards
drained the lake as a move to reduce flooding to their new, increasingly terrestrial
city (Wirth 1997; Schjetnan 1996). The flooding had increased no doubt as a con-
sequence of the widespread overgrazing by the Spaniards' cattle. The ludicrously
aggrandizing Ba'athist Party names for their massive drainage ditches in Iraq find
their Spanish equivalents here in the Grande Madre Canal, one of the largest to
be built outside of China up until that time. It was constructed by sixty thousand
Mexican slaves, of whom ten thousand died from “accidents” and another ten thou-
sand from sickness. Further drainage for cattle ranching took place in the nineteenth
century as Mexico City grew into the world's largest metropolis. Eventually this led
to the near complete destruction of one of the world's most historically significant
lake-wetland complexes and the death of a unique water culture.
Today Xochimilco provides 20 percent of the drinking water for Mexico City but
receives a raw deal in exchange, in that for about three decades it was the receptacle for
raw sewage discharged from the city. Due to eutrophication of the few remaining canals,
water hyacinths invaded and clogged them to such an extent that most waterways had
been abandoned by the early 1960s. And salinization of agricultural soils became wide-
spread due to overirrigation (see chapter 21), some with the use of contaminated water.

C UltUral s ignifiCanCe
Xochimilco's lake and wetlands are as important in Mexican history and cultural
identity as are the Mesopotamian marshlands in Iraq. Prosaic writing has described