PLace-names in mexico-TenochTiTLan • 135existed around the Spanish center, was both city and bar-
rio. The naming acknowledges the political reality unfold-
ing on the city streets: that the Spanish cabildo controlled
the center of the island (although they never described the
traza as a “barrio”), whereas indigenous nobility controlled
only a portion, that is, their barrio named “ Tenochtitlan
Mexico.” But the inclusion of “ciudad” also insists on the
status of this barrio. In addition, “su comarca” expands its
political reach. The city’s nobility and its corporate bodies
held extensive amounts of property off the island that was
worked for their benefit, and the inclusion of “su comarca”
in the appellative used by these indigenous elites is wielded
like a boundary marker to stake out their continuing
domain over this larger realm, a domain under constant
erosion by Spanish appropriation. 14
Another factor in the shifting terms had to do with
Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco rivalries. The rulers in post-
Conquest Tenochtitlan still thought of Tlatelolco as within
their domain, and we pick up signals as late as the sev-
enteenth century that they wanted their sovereignty to
continue. In the history of the city attributed to Fernando
Alvarado Tezozomoc, Huanitzin’s son, he uses the term
“Mexico” to describe a people, the “tlacamexitin” (Mexi-
people), or “yn mexica tepilhuan in tenochca tepilhuan”
(the children of the Mexica, the children of the Teno-
chca). 15 Since one of his points, as a member of the ruling
lineage of Tenochtitlan, is to argue against the indepen-
dence of Tlatelolco, his use of “Mexica” is a strategic one
meant to encompass the Tlatelolca. The conflation of the
term “Mexico,” meaning the larger tributary empire, with
“ Tenochtitlan” is also seen on the Codex Osuna, folio 34r
(figure 7.2). While we have looked at pages from this book
dealing with internal events in Mexico-Tenochtitlan in
earlier chapters, this page is part of a document of sepa-
rate origin included in the composite book, and shows the
colonial-era status of the towns that were once part of the
Triple Alliance. On its first page, the alphabetic text, writ-
ten by a Nahuatl-speaking scribe, names these altepeme as
“ Tetzcuco [Tetzcoco],” “Mexico,” and “ Tlacuban [Tlaco-
pan].” Each is flanked by a xiuhhuitzolli, the royal miter of
indigenous rulership, but it is not used to show the high
rank of these three altepeme, instead being included to sig-
nal that they are tributaries of the Spanish Crown (rather
than held in encomienda), substituting the native “crown” for
the more conventional rendering of a European one. The
altepetl of Tetzcoco is topped by a bent arm and a water
glyph to denote “Acolhua,” the constituent ethnic group;
the altepetl of Tlacopan is depicted with three blooming
stems, perhaps related to tlacotl, meaning “staff.” Here as
on other pictorial documents, “Mexico” is represented with
the familiar glyph for “ Tenochtitlan,” there being no stan-
dard pictograph to represent the name “Mexico.”
In fully alphabetic documents from the 1560s, a period
from which more documentation survives, the formal doc-
uments issued by the native cabildo use “Mexico Tenochti-
tlan” along with “Ciudad.” Although this term seems merely
a version of the official “ Tenochtitlan Mexico” used by the
king in his missives to the Spanish cabildo, reading it next
to documents produced in Tlatelolco, which refers to itself
as “Ciudad [de] Mexico Santiago Tlatilolco,” 16 shows it to
be a self-consciously limited term. In both cases the sec-
ond term modifies and limits the first; that is, it refers to a
political jurisdiction that extended only within the portion
of “the Ciudad de Mexico” under the control of the cabildo
seated in Tenochtitlan, versus the northern portion, under
the domain of the cabildo seated in Santiago Tlatelolco.
So in the Spanish realm, “Ciudad de Mexico” coalesced
because “Mexico” was from its first use by Cortés a more
expansive territorial term than “ Tenochtitlan”; the gradual
adoption of “Mexico” within the Spanish cabildo reflects its
grand (or even grandiose) territorial ambitions. But within
the indigenous realm, different terms evolved to reflect the
recasting of the political terrain. Facing the newly gained
autonomy of Tlatelolco in the 1540s, the city’s Mexica rul-
ers, who once controlled the entire indigenous city, found
themselves in control of only a part of the island, a politi-
cal diminishment reflected in the name that they used,
“Me xico-Tenochtitlan.” And by the end of the 1530s, when
the Spanish cabildo no longer favored its use, “ Tenochtit-
lan” began to designate only that part of the island under
indigenous control. This territory was even more limited by
the recognition of Tlatelolco as a separate and largely equal
indigenous territory within the island with its own govern-
ment. So while “ Tenochtitlan” and “ Tlatelolco,” within the
indigenous context, were coming to have a more concretely
identified spatial referent, the referent of “Mexico” is never
completely spatial.TLaxiLacaLLi in
mexico-TenochTiTLan
As we saw in our discussion of the pre-Hispanic city in
chapter 3, Tenochtitlan was divided into four altepeme,
which in turn had subdivisions called tlaxilacalli, and each