The Women of Xochimilco: Market Power, Family Leadership, and Community Life, 1700–1850

From 1700 to 1850, Mexico City was the largest urban center in the Americas. Through that long era, the women of Xochimilco traveled waterways to bring canoes of fresh vegetables and flowers to urban markets. Their produce came from family chinampas, highly productive wetland plots built in the lakes south of the city. While men made and sold most maize, supplying women who labored endlessly to make tortillas, families raised and women marketed the fruits and vegetables that made urban diets nutritious and the flowers that adorned urban religious and community festivals. Ruling the links between chinampas and city markets, Xochimilco women earned the pesos that fund families and community life.

Ubiquitous in Mexico City markets during the 18th and 19th century, each woman operated on a small scale. Together, they formed a floating community of vendors moving on the water to deliver fresh food to urban plazas, streets, and markets. Balancing everyday demand for fruits and vegetables, the seasonality of flowers, and the annual religious calendar, they organized production, delivery, and sales. The women of Xochimilco were constantly creative, supplying city markets day after day, decade after decade.

City marketing gave women pivotal access to the income that sustained families and the Xochimilco community. Grounded in family production, women’s networks on the water and knowledge of city markets earned pesos for everyday needs and more. They gained and sustained leadership in the ritual kinship (compadrazgo) that integrated families and community life. And they took leading roles in community festivals of religious celebration, social integration, and petition for relief in trying times. Weathering the political, social, and ecological challenges that shaped their world for centuries, the women of Xochimilco sustained life and religious culture at home while delivering key nutrients and celebratory flowers to the people of Mexico City.