axes in The ciTy • 179city where political and religious powers were in conflict.
For their part, the indigenous governors operating out of
San Juan Moyotlan were allied with the Franciscans in
wanting to assert their power over the four parts of the city,
at the same time that neither was assured of their hold. The
contest over spiritual authority in the city overlapped with
control of its spaces, a long-simmering feud that boiled
over into the streets in August of 1569.
After the successful capture of San Pablo Teopan from
the Franciscans, Montúfar turned his sights to Santa
María Cuepopan. It was a strategic move: from the view-
point of the indigenous city, Santa María was somewhat
of an outlier. It was the smallest of the city’s four indig-
enous neighborhoods and was not as central in the lives
of the city’s reigning elite. While the other parcialidades
were solidly populated by Nahua, Cuepopan was home
to the city’s Otomí neighborhoods, an ethnic group with
their own language; that the city’s Zapotec community was
ministered to by the church of Santo Domingo, which lay
adjacent to Cuepopan, may speak to their presence in this
parcialidad as well. 48 The church of Santa María, the only
one of the four parcialidades to be named after a female
figure, was architecturally distinct: the eighteenth-century
(reconstructed 1731–1735) building that survives as a parish
church today has an unusual circular apse, and its appear-
ance in the Map of Santa Cruz of ca. 1537–1555 suggests
that it followed a similar circular floor plan as far back as
the sixteenth century. 49
Cuepopan’s liminality has pre-Hispanic roots. Its femi-
nine associations may derive from its position in the west,
as the Nahuatl word for “west” is cihuatlampa, or “woman
l a n d .” 50 But even more vivid to city residents was its location
on the border between Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Santiago
Tlatelolco, polities that had been distinct, with separate
ruling houses, until 1473, when Tenochtitlan conquered
its northern neighbor and executed its ruler, a humiliation
not forgotten through the sixteenth century. And after the
Conquest, when Tlatelolco reasserted its independence
from Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the canal of Tezontlale on Tla-
telolco’s southern border marked the division and ran close
by the chapel of Santa María; skirmishes along this canal
continued into the eighteenth century, giving one of bridges
that crossed it the name “Bridge of the Wars.” 51 While it
is difficult to fully judge a fragmentary manuscript, in the
Genaro García 30, discussed in the last chapter, many of
the complaints against indigenous rulers seated in the
Moyotlan tecpan come from Santa María Cuepopan.
The liminality of Santa María Cuepopan allows us
greater insight into the political and religious importance
of the procession that happened every year on its feast
day, August 15. The route linked San Francisco to Santa
María, and when the Franciscans, the indigenous cabildo,
and the cofradías headed north along this axis, the indig-
enous hierarchy made itself visible once again to all the
residents of the city. Starting at the tecpan in San Juan, the
path of cabildo members would rope in the liminal Santa
María. The reassertion of this indigenous and Franciscan
axis, which ran north–south, was also important within
the pattern of the larger festival life of the city. Just two days
earlier, the city’s residents would have marched along the
perpendicular (east–west) axis of the Tacuba causeway to
celebrate indigenous defeat in the feast of San Hipólito. 52
But August 15, 1569, unfolded differently. From his seat
in the Archbishop’s Palace on the Plaza Mayor, Montúfar
dispatched secular priests to hold Mass at Santa María,
thereby occupying it on the most important day of that
parcialidad’s ritual year. He was hardly naïve about what he
was doing, and in anticipation of a confrontation, he sent
the priests with two heavies: a constable of the court (alcalde
de corte) and a diocesan judge (provisor de arzobispado).
Coming from the plaza, they would have traveled down
the Tacuba causeway, taking the same path that was taken
in celebration of the indigenous defeat two days earlier.
At the same time Montúfar’s men were mustering at the
Cathedral, native leaders, brilliantly dressed in fine mantles
and feather ornaments, were congregating in the city’s
southwest. They likely first came together at the tecpan,
the seat of the government, where the wide plaza in front
of the building was typically used for mustering. Passing
through its arcaded portal, they made their way the short
distance to San Francisco, which Montúfar described in a
violent metaphor as lying only “a harquebus shot” away. 53
Upon reaching San Francisco, they entered to join sober,
brown-clad Franciscans in the great chapel of San José,
and waiting for them may have been a cult statue of the
Virgin herself on her golden platform, as well as dozens
if not hundreds of the sacred images that represented this
faithful body politic. The procession emerged from San
Francisco and turned right onto the north–south causeway
toward Santa María, likely displaying an internal struc-
ture that mirrored that of the social fabric, as during Holy
Week. This route also meant that they moved along one of
the city’s main canals. Normally the pacific movement of
people would have mirrored that of the contained current