| Caption | The island of Mexcaltitan. According to legend, the island city of Mexcaltitan was once Aztlan, the ancestral home of the Aztecs. From here, based on the vision of a priest, the Aztecs took off in search of a new homeland which they found years later in Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, when the symbols of the vision - an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake - appeared to them. Thus Mexcaltitan is often referred to as the 'Cradle of Aztec Civilisation' though the rather squalid township in its modern guise does little to inspire legend or kindle greatness. Annual flooding also lent it the lofty pseudonym 'Venice of Mexico', though any similarity between the two sodden cities quickly recedes with the outgoing tide in Mexcaltitan's case. Nevertheless, the vision of the snake, cactus and eagle is so accepted as the foundation of Tenochtitlan and the Mexican empire, that it appears on every coin still minted today. And Mexcaltitan remains the only real contender to the title of ancestral seed to that incipient empire which was to become much, much more than legend. The streets are laid out in grid fashion within the egg-shaped island. The extra high footpaths are a guard against floodwaters. The surrounding wetlands host a wonderful selection of aquatic birds and estuarine animals the abundance of which satisfy both the heron’s diet and the local’s subsistent harvests of fish, crab and shrimp. |
