We traveled by canoe, gliding across wide open waters until we reached what looked like a floating garden — a living farm built on the lake itself. There, the farmers greeted us with meals grown directly from the land and stories that carried the soul of Xochimilco: a sacred, fragile ecology that’s the final remnant of an ancient lake system once sprawling across the valley. They told us about the floating gardens — 6,000 acres of them — built long before the Aztecs arrived, by the Xochimilca people, who learned how to grow food in harmony with the waters. The lake is home to species that exist nowhere else in the world.

Photo by Maria Guisa

After lunch, one of the UNAM biologists who accompanied us invited me to see their axolotl breeding program. I’d only ever encountered axolotls in fragments of pop culture — those otherworldly creatures with wide, grinning faces and feathery gills — but now they hovered before me, alive and flickering beneath the water’s surface. I learned their wild existence is inseparable from the health of the lake. They flourish in the protected canals near the chinampas, where the water remains clean and undisturbed by invasive species. But as urban sprawl expands and water continues to be extracted from the system, their population has plummeted — from thousands to single digits in under a decade.

Photo by Maria Guisa

Something sparked inside me. The axolotl felt like a portal — a living key to the lake’s story, the people who thrived on it, and an ecosystem fighting for survival. I’d just worked with an environmental documentary team, where I’d learned that soil is the root of everything. But here in Xochimilco, that truth wasn’t just scientific — it was sacred.

These floating gardens — chinampas — are living testaments to the brilliance of Indigenous ecological design. Far from being primitive or obsolete, chinampas represent one of the most sophisticated and sustainable agricultural systems ever created. First developed by the Nahua peoples, including the Mexica (Aztecs), more than a thousand years ago, chinampas are artificial islands constructed in shallow lakebeds using layers of mud, lake sediment, and organic matter interwoven with reeds and tree roots. Anchored by the ahuejote tree (Salix bonplandiana), which stabilizes the edges, each chinampa becomes its own micro-ecosystem.

But chinampas are more than just fertile ground; they are ancestral knowledge in action. Crafted from reverence and reciprocity, they hold a memory of how to live in right relationship with the Earth. Every canal, every hand-built bed of soil and reed, supports a system that is not just sustainable but soulful — a place where agriculture, biodiversity, and spirituality meet.

I began asking: Why is the lake vanishing? How can the axolotl survive? How can we protect these ancient farming systems? I went home, compelled to keep digging.

That’s when I found Sara Sandoval — founder of Chinampa Temachtiani and a descendant of the Xochimilca people. Like the farmers we met at Chinampa Humedalia, Sara’s work focuses on education — helping people understand Xochimilco’s cultural and ecological importance. It was through Sara that I met her aunt, Doña Susana — an 86-year-old chinampera, elder, floriculturist, and lifelong activist of farmworkers in Xochimilco. She remembers Xochimilco in all of its abundance, including when the lake waters were teeming with Axolotls.

“When I was a young girl, everything was abundant…the axolotl were abundant…I could pick them up in a basket”

“…And now they’re almost gone”

Doña Susana’s father helped design one of the first trajineras, the brightly painted boats still seen on the canals today. He also taught her how to grow food using traditional Xochimilca methods — farming entirely within the chinampa system. Since her father’s passing, many of their family chinampas were sold off or turned into urban developments, leaving Doña Susana with her greenhouse, where she continues to grow flowers, whilst renting out her remaining two plots of land for production.

Sara and I both knew: we had to document her story.

Photo by Maria Guisa

And so, I returned to Xochimilco — not just with a camera, but with a need to listen, to understand, and to witness what remains of one of the last living symbols of Mexico’s ecological and cultural heritage.

Meeting Doña Susana felt like stepping into a living archive. We had our first conversation on a canoe, slowly drifting through the protected areas of the lake. For the first half hour, I barely spoke — I just listened as she shared stories of her childhood: when axolotls filled the waters, when the flower fields were wild and abundant, and when some of the species she remembered were still alive.

Photo by Maria Guisa

Later, we visited her greenhouse — a vibrant sanctuary of flowers and medicinal plants she’d nurtured by hand. On the way, we walked past a former canal that had been cemented over. She pointed to the homes built on what used to be chinampas. One of them, she told me, was part of her father’s land — sold off more than ten years ago.

“Hay poca tierra porque ya está muy urbanizado, muy urbanizado,” she said, shaking her head. “Se está acabando Xochimilco… Todo este canal era un canal.”

There’s little land left because it’s all become so urbanized. Xochimilco is disappearing… this whole canal was a canal.

She pointed to an entryway she helped her father build when she was just 8 years old — once used by vendors who paddled in to unload their harvests of fresh produce and flowers. Now, it leads to a cement path, mostly unused. Her canoe lay half-submerged nearby, a quiet witness to change.

“Todo está vivo,” she said, “y cuando vemos eso, actuamos diferente.”
 Everything is alive. And when we recognize that, we act differently.

The chinampero way of life, she explained, is about being in relationship with the natural world — a tradition rooted in the cosmology of the Xochimilca people, whose brilliance shaped these sustainable floating farms, aligned with the stars and rhythms of water.

Colonization severed that connection. The Spanish drained lakes, imposed extractive systems, and disrupted the ecological wisdom that sustained this place. These impacts still echo through Xochimilco today, evident in the changing landscape and way of life. But sitting beside Doña Susana, the rupture didn’t feel final.

Her hands still tended the earth. Her words still carried the memory. She was the continuity.

At one point, she picked a flower and gently handed it to me.

“Yo cultivé esta flor,” she said. “Nadie más sabe cómo cultivarla, solo yo. Estas semillas ancestrales me las pasó mi papa.”

I grew this flower. No one else knows how to grow this but me. These ancient seeds were passed down to me by my father.

I watched as she moved through her greenhouse — untangling stems with care, coaxing blossoms into the light. The plants seemed to move with her, as if recognizing her presence.

What she carried wasn’t just agricultural knowledge — it was reverence. A worldview. A way of seeing the Earth as alive, communicative, and worthy of devotion.

Throughout our time together, I began to understand how women like Doña Susana are more than farmers and floriculturists — they’re keepers of memory & wisdom.

This wisdom, which has survived through lived experience is not static. It’s meant to be passed down and lived again through younger generations.

That’s why engaging youth is essential. Not just as future farmers or stewards, but as storytellers, scientists, artists, and leaders who understand that their roots are entangled with the roots of the land.

Programs like Chinampa Temachtiani that bring young people into the chinampas — to learn from elders like Doña Susana, to plant, to harvest, to listen — are acts of cultural regeneration.

“My hope is that the young people will want to take on this good work and continue our culture and our way of life. It’s about being aligned with Nature and working with her, not against her. Knowing that Nature is alive, we must do what we can to protect her.” – Doña Susana

Photo by Maria Guisa

We visited Chinampa Nantli, where young girls were helping tend the crops. Watching them, I saw the thread being passed in real time — one generation to the next. A quiet, powerful act of resistance.

Photo by Maria Guisa

Doña Susana reminded me that saving the axolotl and Xochimilco isn’t just about preserving a species and a place. It’s about saving a way of seeing the world — one that honors life, and knows how to listen.

The axolotl, in many ways, mirrors the lake itself — fragile yet resilient, mystical yet real. It’s not just a biological wonder, but a sacred being. In Mexica cosmology, the axolotl is said to be the transformation of Xólotl, the god of fire and lightning, who turned into a water creature to avoid death.

To fight for the axolotl and its precious habitat is to fight for more than just biodiversity. It’s to fight for memory, for meaning, for the original stories that teach us to respect the Earth.

Coming back to Xochimilco,I was stepping through a portal — into ancestral knowledge, into the living wisdom of women and water and soil. Into a story that’s been waiting to be remembered.

About the Director

Isabela Zawistowska is a documentary filmmaker and writer whose work delves into the intersection of ecological memory, ancestral wisdom, and feminine resilience. She is the director of Companion of the Setting Sun, a film deeply rooted in Xochimilco and the living legacy of chinamperas like Doña Susana. Isabela is currently crowdfunding to complete the film and return to capture the final chapters of this powerful story. Consider supporting today and help bring this important project to life!

→ Watch the Trailer for Companion of the Setting Sun
→ Support the Project on Film Independent

Photo by Maria Guisa

Film Credit: Companion of the Setting Sun is directed by Isabela Zawistowska and produced by Chamberlain Staub.