waTeR and aLTePeTL in The LaTe sixTeenTh-cenTuRy ciTy • 191Annals, the Nahua historian Chimalpahin would describe
him as “a sage and a scholar” (tlamatini momachtiani), using
a term, tlamatini, that was reserved for elders possessing
extraordinary wisdom and judgment who provided coun-
sel for following generations. 3 The historian of the Spanish
cabildo, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, would write in 1554
of how the indigenous students at the Franciscan school of
Santa Cruz “have a teacher of their own nationality, Anto-
nio Valeriano, who is in no respect inferior to our grammar-
ians. He is well trained in the observance of Christian law
and is an ardent student of oratory.” 4 In addition to Latin,
Valeriano spoke and wrote Spanish fluently. He had been
appointed to the governorship after a difficult interregnum
of some eight years; the death of his third cousin don Luis
de Santa María Cipactzin (r. 1563–1565) in December 1565
coincided with the crisis provoked when Martín Cortés,
the son of the conquistador, attempted to seize power as
king of New Spain. Arriving to a city in chaos, Viceroy
Gastón de Peralta (r. 1566–1568) had begun the practice
of appointing outsiders to rule in Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
Viceroy Enríquez, however, returned to the tradition first
established by Viceroy Mendoza of choosing members of
the highest Mexica elite, appointing Valeriano to the post
in 1573. Like Huanitzin, who had also been Mendoza’s
appointment, Valeriano had impeccable Mexica creden-
tials. His great-grandfather was Axayacatl, and Valeriano
was born in Azcapotzalco, where his family held power.
His wife, doña Isabel de Alvarado Moteuczoma, was
almost certainly born in Tenochtitlan and was the grand-
daughter of Moteuczoma II and daughter of Huanitzin
(see figure 4.7). 5 And in reaching almost to the end of the
sixteenth century, Valeriano’s reign would rival in its length
that of Moteuczoma II, who was seated at its dawn.
In the cabildo meeting that morning, Valeriano delivered a
request that the native community of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
be allowed to build an aqueduct from Chapultepec along
the causeway of San Juan, one that would reach the great
tianguis at the city’s southwestern corner and supply
Moyotlan and from there be carried on an east–west route
to reach San Pablo Teopan. The main reason that Valeriano
gave was a simple one: this area of the city was ill-supplied
with Chapultepec’s waters. This was true, given that the
one existing aqueduct, the same one that had served the
pre-Hispanic city, fed the city’s north and center, running
as it did along the Tacuba causeway to feed the fountain
in the Plaza Mayor. While a tianguis fountain to serve
the southwestern quadrant had been contemplated since
1558, it had never come to fruition. 6 To further convince
the cabildo, Valeriano put more chips on the table: all the
labor and stone would be provided by his government; they
would also pay half the salary of the Spanish maestro to
oversee this public work; and the water would benefit not
only the city’s indigenous, but also the numerous Spanish
residents who lived in these quadrants of the city. 7 The
catch was that the city would use monies from the sisa de
vino, a temporary tax on wine, to pay for the lime, a crucial
ingredient for masonry. Lime was expensive, costing about
4.5 pesos per cahiz (an amount measuring about 12 fanegas,
or 18 bushels; indigenous workers measured lime by cargas,
or the amount an individual could carry, which was half a
bushel), 8 and by the end of the work, 8,628 cahizes would
be required, with 44,122 pesos paid out by the Spanish
cabildo alone for the project—this at a time when a skilled
indigenous artisan might earn a peso a day. 9 The anticipated
expense for lime alone might normally have led the extraor-
dinary request from indigenous leaders to be shrugged off
by the Spanish cabildo, which would need to approve such
a large infrastructure project. This one, however, had the
powerful viceroy’s backing, so it would have been hard to
refuse. And approve it the cabildo did.
This event and the aqueduct that was built over the next
seven years to deliver water to the Tianguis of Mexico often
merit a small note in accounts of the city’s colonial water
supply, overshadowed by a much longer and eventually suc-
cessful project to bring water in from the distant springs
of Santa Fe. 10 But when set within the larger sweep of
indigenous governance in the city and its role in supplying
water to the city residents—a role that showed its sacred
dimensions in the creation of the Acuecuexco aqueduct
under Ahuitzotl in 1499—the building of the aqueduct
can be seen as having crucial importance to both the prac-
tical and ideological exercise of indigenous governance in
the city. Moreover, setting this aqueduct in relation to two
earlier (and failed) aqueduct projects is revealing. These are
the 1564–1570 revival of the Acuecuexco aqueduct and the
subsequent attempt, beginning in 1571, to build an aque-
duct from Santa Fe. In addition, when we see it within
the context of the ecological and social challenges that city
residents faced in the 1560s and 1570s, particularly the dev-
astating epidemics and food shortages that seized the city
beginning in the mid-1570s, we can better understand the
second aqueduct of Chapultepec as the signal monument
that it was.
To underscore the continuing importance of water to