MEXICO CITY ? Somewhere underneath the hull of Armando Tovar's boat, the aquatic manifestation of the great god Xolotl was slithering along the muddy canal bottom, digesting bugs, laying eggs and trying to avoid extinction.
Even though he could not see the creature, Tovar knew it would be confronting its troubled environment with that weird fixed smile, the one that makes it appear to be in on some cosmic joke.
As a 9-inch salamander, of course, the ajolote (pronounced ah-ho-LO-tay) couldn't know its own cultural significance in Mexico. It couldn't know its role in the Aztec creation myth. Or its freak-show star status among biology nerds for its ability to regenerate lost limbs, heart cells and bits of brain. Or its allure, in the world of arts and letters, as both a cryptic literary symbol and a metaphor for the Mexican soul.
It couldn't know, on this placid Tuesday morning, that Armando Tovar was in this long, flat wooden boat, with his colleagues and their water-quality monitoring devices, hoping to save it from oblivion.
Tovar, 33, a biologist at Mexico's National Autonomous University, or UNAM, is one of a group of scholars seeking to solve the ecological puzzle of the ajolote and its sole habitat, the canal system of Xochimilco, the last watery remnant of the Aztec society built on the lakes and wetlands of the Valley of Mexico.
Today, Xochimilco is a heavily visited oasis of crops and canals hemmed by the teeming, concrete presence that some here call la mancha urbana, the urban stain. Its 110 miles of waterways are a place where tourists and locals fritter away Sunday afternoons, floating on brightly colored gondolas, drinking beer and taking in the area's remaining chinampas, small agricultural islands that were invented by Aztec farmers.
The precious green space scrubs carbon dioxide from Mexico City's famously polluted air, serves as a rest stop for 84 species of migratory birds and helps recharge a perilously overtaxed aquifer.
But it also is dealing with pollution issues of its own, and that has consequences for the salamander whose strangely childish looks have made waves as far as Japan, where it was the inspiration for a Pokemon character.
In 1998, Xochimilco was home to tens of thousands of ajolotes. Today, Tovar said, the number might be as low as 100.
The forces aligned against the ajolote are formidable, some as old as Mexico itself.
Luis Zambrano, the director of UNAM's Ecological Restoration Laboratory and leader of the rescue effort, said the problems started with the 16th century conquistadors who, hailing from arid Spain, saw the lake system as a problem to be solved. So they drained it, making way for a modern metropolis in which, he said, natural water systems are still often viewed as a hindrance to progress.
The researchers, despite years of restoration efforts, have struggled to undo the harm. The ajolote habitat has been degraded by water extraction, industrial fertilizers, the pressures of tourism, and untreated wastewater discharged by rogue developments inside Xochimilco's protected area.
The canals are also teeming with nonnative carp and tilapia, introduced in a misguided '70s-era aquaculture project. These heartier foreign species feast on ajolote eggs and compete for scarce resources. "I call it, 'A society's defeat, caused by society,'" Tovar said.
Last month, the director of the National Water Commission, Jose Luis Luege, said Xochimilco was in danger of deteriorating so severely that it could lose its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He recommended that the federal government immediately launch an ambitious, 20-year restoration plan, the newspaper Excelsior reported.
The city and federal governments already have spent millions over the years. But Zambrano said the funding for the ajolote project is wildly inconsistent from year to year, making it difficult to plan long term.
To Zambrano, Xochimilco's famous salamander is a slimy sentinel, a canary in Mexico City's ecological coal mine. Its disappearance from the wild, he argues, would be a warning that the megacity was no longer a sustainable proposition.
Protecting the ajolote, he wrote in a recent essay, "means protecting ourselves from ourselves."
***
The Aztecs believed that the creature formally known as the Ambystoma mexicanum was an iteration of Xolotl, the deformed god of lightning and Charon-like ferryman of the dead to the underworld. Xolotl, the legend goes, took the form of an ajolote to escape a death sentence imposed upon him as the current universe was being created. UCLA art history professor John Pohl notes that the Aztecs also saw in the amphibian's regenerative powers a metaphor for the bounty of the lake system that sustained them.
Until recent decades, when the creature began to disappear, ajolote-derived products were important components in local folk medicine. Its flesh also was valued as a particularly tasty tamale filling.
woodward keratosis pilaris rock and roll hall of fame 2012 brandon rios oklahoma news nascar news doppler radar
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.