Urban sprawl begins to swamp old canals

Floating idly down the tranquil canals of Xochimilco, it's easy to forget you are still within the limits of one of the world's most overcrowded and polluted cities.

White herons soar past lines of trees that waft gently in the breeze. Insects buzz. Flowers bloom. Farmers in flatbed canoes pole silently along the waterways, ferrying flowers and crops their ancestors have cultivated on man-made islands since the Aztec era.

What's now Mexico City, a sprawling megalopolis home to some 20 million inhabitants, was described as the Venice of the New World when awed Spanish conquistadors first arrived here in 1519.

But for all its superficial beauty, Xochimilco is a place in peril.

Changing farming methods have led to widespread erosion. A plague is infesting the trees. Nonnative plant and animal species are wiping out indigenous flora and fauna.

The biggest threat by far, however, is the exploding human population, and what Mexicans refer to as the "mancha urbana," or urban stain.

"The statistics are clear," says Juan González Romero, who heads the district government. "In the early 1980s we were fewer than 180,000 inhabitants in Xochimilco. Now we have around 360,000 residents – about a 100 percent increase in only 20 years."

Illegal development in Xochimilco, which was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO 15 years ago, has destroyed hundreds of hectares of protected land.

Low-income housing developments blot lands that used to be chinampas, or floating gardens. Cars and trucks rumble down pollution-choked streets that used to be canals.

Many of the development projects were built as a bid to win votes when Xochimilco, like most of Mexico, was controlled by the notoriously corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

In one famous case, a former PRI official brought in tons of rubble from construction sites around Mexico City to fill in a 10-acre lake bed. The ex-official is now in jail, according to Mr. González, and the building project he planned has been abandoned. The lake bed he filled in will probably never be fully recovered.

Aztecs had built the splendid Tenochtitlán – which at the time was far larger than European cities like Madrid, Rome, and Paris – atop a vast network of chinampas that spanned much of the Valley of Mexico.

Firsthand accounts from arriving Spaniards gush over the colorful pyramids, the lush gardens, and the flotilla of silent boats. Nonetheless, conquistador Hernan Cortes sacked the city, ousted his Aztec adversary, Montezuma II (known as Moctezuma in Spanish), and drained the canals to build roads.

Five hundred years later, Xochimilco remains the last living testimony to Mexico's Aztec past. It's a popular weekend spot for families and tourists alike, who drift down canals in colorful barges, sipping cool drinks and listening to the floating mariachi bands who sing songs about the canals for handfuls of pesos.

But the race is on to launch a rescue plan for what's left of the protected zone.

"The biggest challenge will be to stop the growth and constant building," says González. "We have succeeded in slowing down development in recent years ... but to make a total change will require a profound and integrated plan."

It's a plan that won't come cheaply.

District leaders in Xochimilco are asking for more than 3 billion pesos (about $300 million) to clean up and protect the 1,250-acre reserve, located about 14 miles south of Mexico City's center.

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