Hundreds of tourists throng the canals of Xochimilco every weekend for a flamboyant display of sombreros, food, music and art. Yet, as they cruise alongside the chinampas, or "floating gardens ...

Luis Zambrano, a biologist at UNAM who oversees the chinampas project with the farmers, arrived in Xochimilco in the early 2000s to research the axolotl, or Ambystoma mexicanum.

“This great system (chinampas) is all that’s left from the lake city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, so I always tell our visitors that Xochimilco is a living archeological zone,” Cruz said.

Luis Zambrano, a biologist at UNAM who oversees the chinampas project with the farmers, arrived in Xochimilco in the early 2000s to research the axolotl, or Ambystoma mexicanum.

Chinampas are floating gardens that once formed a backbone of agriculture in the valley of Mexico. Residents of Xochimilco created chinampas by building rafts from branches layered with mud.

The chinampas in use today go back about a thousand years, to when Aztec farmers began building rectangular fields on top of vast lakes and growing food for what was then the city of Tenochtitlan.

“This great system (chinampas) is all that’s left from the lake city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, so I always tell our visitors that Xochimilco is a living archeological zone,” Cruz said.

Before the Spaniards conquered Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the 16th century, ... Chinampas are not only where axolotl lay its eggs, but areas where pre-Hispanic communities grew maize, ...

“This great system (chinampas) is all that’s left from the lake city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, so I always tell our visitors that Xochimilco is a living archeological zone,” Cruz said.

"This great system [chinampas] is all that's left from the lake city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, so I always tell our visitors that Xochimilco is a living archaeological zone," Cruz said.