Xochimilco — City and Kingdom
One of the central locales in the Lakeside Loves books and novellas is the Diarchy of Xochimilco and its capital, the city of Xochimilco. Even today, the latter — as a borough of Mexico City — is known for its canals and chinampas, artificial mangroves that once served as floating flower gardens. In Nahuatl, the name derives from xochimilli, field/s of flower/s, and the locative suffix -co, making “the place of flower fields.”
The Xochimilcah (as the inhabitants of the city were known) claimed that their ancestors were the first of several Nahua tribes to arrive in Anahuac (modern Valley of Mexico / Mexico City) after the fall of the Toltec Empire. By the 12th century, they had settled along the southern shore of what would come to be called Lake Xochimilco, among other ethnic groups that had occupied the area for hundreds of years. The Xochimilcah gradually spread under the rule of kings and at least one queen regnant, employing a novel technique for creating artificial islets throughout the marshy edges of the lake. Their influence flowed south and east, and soon they had absorbed villages and towns like Tepoztlan, Mixquic, and Zacualpan.
When its territory became too unwieldly for a single sovereign, the Kingdom of Xochimilco became a diarchy, with two co-rulers: one king for Tecpan, the lakeshore region, and another for Tepetentli, the moutainous region to the south. During the middle of the 14th century, Tecpan king Caxtoltzin moved the capital from the shore to the island of Tlilan, establishing a new temple for Quilaztli — the principal goddess of the Xochimilcah, source of fertility — as well as for the two water deities of the chinampas: Amimitl and Atlahuac.
Not long after this move, the Tepaneca Empire that controlled all of eastern Anahuac sent its mercenaries from the Isle of Mexico to conquer the diarchy. For roughly a quarter century, Xochimilco became a tributary vassal of the Empire, before a new Triple Alliance was formed among Texcoco, Tenochtitlan, and Tlacopan. Those three rising powers overthrew Tepanecapan, and Xochimilco enjoyed a half decade of self-rule. But the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, who controlled the Triple Alliance of Anahuac (what we now call the Aztec Empire), decided to once again conquer the diarchy.
By 1432, when my novel Among the Floating Gardens is set, Xochimilco had been controlled for two years by a Mexica military governor who reported directly to Emperor Itzcoatl. Eventually, because of the former diarchy’s loyalty, Xochimilco would be gifted semi-autonomy. But from 1430 until the Spanish invasion a century later, the kingdom was an integral part of the new empire.
And it was noted as one of the true cities of Anahuac, alongside Tenochtitlan. Some 20,000 people lived on the island of Tlilan at its height, making it a veritable metropolis, with a sprawling market and complex bureaucracy requiring rather brilliant scribes.
You can read about their lives and loves in my books.
