Legend has it the axolotl was not always an amphibian. Long before it became Mexico’s most beloved salamander and efforts to prevent its extinction flourished, it was a sneaky god.
Its exhibitions focus on axolotl and chinampas, the pre-Hispanic agricultural systems resembling floating gardens that still function in Xochimilco, a neighborhood on Mexico City's outskirts famed for its canals.
While there are no official estimates of the current axolotl population, the species Ambystoma mexicanum — endemic of central Mexico— has been catalogued as “critically endangered” by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species since 2019.
Axolotl attracted international attention after Minecraft added them to its game in 2021 and Mexicans went crazy about them that same year, following the Central Bank's initiative to print it on the 50-peso bill.
Before the Spaniards conquered Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the 16th century, axolotl may not have had archeological representations as did Tláloc — god of rain in the Aztec worldview — or Coyolxauhqui — its lunar goddess — but it did appear in ancient Mesoamerican documents.
In the Nahua myth of the Fifth Sun, pre-Hispanic god Nanahuatzin threw himself into a fire, reemerged as the sun and commanded fellow gods to replicate his sacrifice to bring movement to the world.
According to Montero, the myth implies that, after a god’s passing, its essence gets imprisoned in a mundane creature, subject to the cycles of life and death. Axolotl then carries within itself the Xolotl deity, and when the animal dies and its divine substance transits to the underworld, it later resurfaces to the earth and a new axolotl is born.
Through the glass of a fish tank, where academic institutions preserve them and hatcheries put them up for sale, axolotl are hard to spot. Their skin is usually dark to mimic stones — though an albino, pinkish variety can be bred — and they can stay still for hours, buried in the muddy ground of their natural habitats or barely moving at the bottom of their tanks in captivity.
Aside from their lungs, they breathe through their gills and skin, which allows them to adapt to its aquatic environment. And they can regenerate parts of its heart, spinal cord and brain.
Depending on the species, color and size, Axolotl’s prices at Ambystomania — where Vergara works — start at 200 pesos ($10 US). Specimens are available for sale when they reach four inches in length and are easy pets to look after, Vergara said.
Under ideal conditions, an axolotl could heal itself from snake or heron biting and survive the dry season buried in the mud. But a proper aquatic environment is needed for that to happen.
“Efforts to preserve axolotl go hand in hand with preserving the chinampas,” Cruz said at the museum, next to a display featuring salamander-shaped dolls. “We work closely with the community to convince them that this is an important space.”
For her, like for Vergara, preserving axolotl is not an end, but a means for saving the place where the amphibian came to be.
“This great system (chinampas) is all that’s left from the lake city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, so I always tell our visitors that Xochimilco is a living archeological zone,” Cruz said. “If we, as citizens, don’t take care of what’s ours, it will be lost.”
