Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

inTRoducTion • 7

is marked by the cessation of the year symbols. Once all a
ruler’s conquests have been registered, a new page begins
with the newly inaugurated tlatoani and the temporal count
picks up again. It hardly needs saying how much the narra-
tive structure and scale chosen by the historian determine
our understanding of past events, what moment is chosen
as a beginning and what is chosen as its close. 11 This part
of the Codex Mendoza, which begins with the founding of
Tenochtitlan by Tenoch in 1325 and ends with the death of
Moteuczoma, offers a neat historical package of 16 folios
and 196 years, and fuses the history of the city with the
lifespans of it rulers. Given the close alliance the Codex
Mendoza forges between Tenochtitlan and its Mexica rul-
ers, it would appear, from a Mexica perspective, that with
the death of a monarch and the shutting down of the ruling
line, the city and empire of which he was the embodiment
would die with him. Or so it would seem. Because if we
turn to the bottom of the neat band of turquoise years on
this page, we see a prevarication, an uncertainty on the part
of its artists about this tidy narrative linkage between city
and political leadership promoted by the official history
(figure 1.5). The artist painting the dates in black ink ended
the count with the date 1 Reed, which is 1519, to show
that Moteuczoma’s reign ended with the arrival of the
Spaniards. But the artist coloring the pages subsequently
must have disagreed, considering only the years before the

Spanish arrived as part of Moteuczoma’s reign, for he or

she extended the precious turquoise pigment only to 13

Rabbit (1518). And then another of the manuscript’s scribes

countermanded these as end dates; one can see how the

count has been extended to the right as an uncertain hand

has added two more years: 2 Flint (1520) and 3 House

(1521). The presence of the year 2 Flint is explained with

a gloss in Spanish that reasserts the connection between

the city and the living ruler: “Fin y muerte de Motecçuma”

(End and death of Moteuczoma), and wrapping around

the final glyph of 2 House (the year in which Tenochtitlan

fell to the Spanish) is a line of text that reads: “paçificaçion

y conquista de la nueva españa” (pacification and conquest

of New Spain).

While we could dismiss these added year dates as sim-

ply the by-product of the rushed circumstances of this

manuscript’s creation, from my view, the ambiguous pre-

sentation of these dates is highly significant. The scribes

creating this manuscript were living in Mexico City, the

city whose history the book laid out, around 1542. They

well knew of the death of Moteuczoma in 1520. But they

also knew, firsthand, that the city it purported to chronicle

had not ended, given that they had (likely) been born in it

and walked its streets daily. This tiny moment of irregu-

larity on the page registers the scribes’ crucial uncertainty

about the actual subject of this historical section, and

brings us back to the ontological question. If indeed this

history of the city and its empire was fully embodied by

rulers, then there should have been no uncertainty about

its end with the death of Moteuczoma in 1520, and with the

figuRe 1.5. Unknown creator, the reign and conquests of Moteuczoma
II, detail, Codex Mendoza, fol. 15v, ca. 1542. Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford, Ms. Arch. Selden A1.