Diego Rivera's mural in the National Palace, Mexico City, shows the raised agricultural fields of the ancient Mexican capital, Mexico Tenochtitlan, was founded on an island in the middle of a lake. Around the island and on the lakeshore, farmers piled mud from the lake bottom onto reinforced beds that sustained intensive agricultural production.

For further information on chinampas, visit the website of Professor Virginia Popper (UCLA), "Backdirt." Regarding the productivity of chinampas for feeding the urban population, see this article by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, "Aztec Cannibalism: An Ecological Necessity?"

Photo taken by Stephanie Wood, ©1994.