San Andrés Mixquic was founded on a small island in which former lake?

San Andrés Mixquic was founded on a small island in the former Lake Chalco.

Mixquic developed in the pre-Hispanic period in the southeastern part of the Valley of Mexico, where its island setting supported agriculture and water-based travel. Residents built chinampas—intensively cultivated raised plots often described as floating gardens—around the island. The community’s name is generally connected with the Nahuatl word mizquitl, meaning mesquite.

Lake Chalco was one of the interconnected lakes that once occupied the Valley of Mexico. Drainage projects, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transformed the landscape and eventually destroyed most of Mixquic’s lake environment. The settlement remains in Tláhuac, Mexico City, and is especially famous for its Día de Muertos observances. Visitors gather around the church and cemetery for the Alumbrada on November 2, when candles and incense illuminate the graves. Lake Texcoco is a common mix-up because it was the best-known lake in the basin, but Mixquic specifically stood in Lake Chalco.