Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

8 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

cessation of an indigenous ruling line. The gloss in Span-
ish seems to offer a definitive answer to the question, the
words “y  conquista” blocking the count from proceeding
any further; the placement of the text suggests that the end
of the political regime is also the end of the history of the
city that begins on folio 2r. But if this is the history of an
empire as embodied by its principal city, irrespective of the
political class, then the scribes themselves seem to be grap-
pling with a version of our ontological question: if the his-
tory of the city is not simply the history of its political elites,
contingent upon their being seated in power, but instead
is something else, perhaps the history of the Mexica as a
people, then can it so neatly end?
In considering another history of Tenochtitlan pro-
duced, like the Codex Mendoza, in Mexico City by indig-
enous scribes, the death of the city seems, as in the humor-
ist’s quip, exaggerated. The Codex Aubin, named after a
nineteenth-century owner of the manuscript, offers an
annals history of Tenochtitlan and Mexico City. Like the
Codex Mendoza, the backbone of this history is a count
of the years, but its text is written in Nahuatl, rather than
in Spanish. 12 This native-language text that was written
between 1576 and 1608 does not insist that the history
of the city is absolutely coincident with that of its rulers;

instead, its writers were keenly attuned to the experiences

of the urban populace: its images and text chronicle the

famines, the plagues, the consecration of new buildings,

the building of new waterworks. Opening the book to

pages 44v–45r reveals 2 Flint and 3 House, the same years

that Codex Mendoza folio 15v shows us ambiguously as

the years of the death of Moteuczoma (figure 1.6). In the

Codex Aubin, however, the even count of the years has

not been ruptured by the Conquest. Instead, these years

are followed by 4 Rabbit, 5 Reed, 6 Flint, 7 House, and

so on in the following folios. While the dense text on folio

44v registers an indelible remembrance of the Conquest

year, the Codex Aubin refuses to break the temporal count

into the periodization of pre- and post-Conquest; more-

over, its writers link the city with the experiences of its

populace, not just its rulers. The writer (or writers) of the

Codex Aubin has unwittingly pointed us to the origin of

our ontological error. While Mexica rulers tried to forge

an unbreakable relation between their presence as a politi-

cal class and the city of Tenochtitlan, city dwellers after

figuRe 1.6. Unknown creator, the death of Cuitlahua and the

Conquest’s aftermath, Codex Aubin, fols. 44v–45r, ca. 1576–1608.

© Trustees of the British Museum.