Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

1

In 1518, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was one of the
world’s largest cities. Built on an island in the middle of a
shallow lake, its population numbered perhaps 150,000. 1
It was the hub of an urban network clustered around the
lake whose total population was perhaps half a million,
as well as the cynosure of an indigenous empire that held
power over much of central Mexico (figure 1.1). The col-
lective size of these lakeshore cities exceeded European
contemporaries: in the early sixteenth century, Paris had
about 260,000 residents, Naples about 150,000, Seville
and Rome, 55,000 each, and that of the latter would ebb
to about 25,000 following the Sack of 1527. 2
In 1521, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan died. In 1521,
Mexico City was born, and it lives today.
The death of Tenochtitlan is documented in the Third
Letter of the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés to
Charles V of Spain, where it is equated with the city’s phy-
sical destruction. The letter was written after the siege and
the surrender of the city’s rulers, and Cortés, in describ-
ing his own victory, recounts how even distant indigenous
rulers in Mexico had heard that Tenochtitlan had been
“destroyed and razed to the ground,” and later in his
account, he claims “it was completely destroyed.” 3 Cortés’s
letter gives eyewitness evidence of the demolishment of
Tenochtitlan, the reduction of this city to a field of rubble
in the wake of his siege and the sack of vengeful armies in

1521. He is echoed by Bartolomé de las Casas, the Domini-
      can firebrand, who decries the physical destruction of this
      city and the execution of its political leaders in 1521 in his
      widely read Brevísima relación of 1552: “There followed the

battle for the city, the Christians having returned in full

strength and they created great havoc. In this strange and

admirable kingdom of the Indies, they slew a countless

number of people and burned alive many great chiefs.

Later when the Spaniards had inflicted extraordinary

abominations on the city of Mexico [i.e., Tenochtitlan]

and the other cities and towns, over a surface of fifteen

or twenty leagues, killing countless Indians, they pressed

forward to spread terror and waste the province of Pánuco,

where an amazing number of people were slain.” 4 Such

representations would have profound implications for the

shape of later historical narratives.

If the death of Tenochtitlan can be metered via physi-

cal destruction and political decapitation, its death as an

indigenous city can also be traced in the disappearance

of its name, not an imprecise index given how loaded the

name was to early residents, who more commonly called

themselves the “Mexica,” a term preferred here, comparable

to the more recognizable moniker “Aztecs.” 5 In Nahuatl,

the indigenous language of central Mexico spoken by the

Mexica, “ Tenochtitlan” roughly means “next to the nopal

cactus fruit of the rock,” from the Nahuatl nochtli, for

“nopal cactus fruit,” and tetl, for “rock.” Residents of the

city held that their great migrations of the eleventh and

twelfth centuries were brought to a close by their tribal

deity, Huitzilopochtli (hummingbird of the south), in 1325,

when he sent the Mexica tribal leaders a potent sign. Tak-

ing on the form of an eagle, he flew to a perch on top of

a nopal cactus where the exhausted and harried tribe was

resting, on a rocky outcrop in the center of the great lake

chaPTeR 1

Introduction

Todo ella en llamas de belleza se arde,
y se va como fénix renovando . . .
(All of it blazes in flames of beauty,
and renews itself like a phoenix... )

beRnaRdo de baLbuena, La Grandeza Mexicana