202 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
when the dike was pushed out into the flooded expanse of
the eastern part of the city. Below the dike and the water, a
Spanish official—almost certainly Viceroy Luis de Velasco,
who spearheaded the project—is seated in a curule chair,
his hand pointing in a gesture of command, and a red and
blue speech scroll appears in front of his mouth. The texts,
written in both Nahuatl and Spanish, amplify the mean-
ing of the image, giving voice to the complaint of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan’s indigenous community. They read thus (my
translations from Nahuatl are in italics and from Spanish
are in roman):
Although the dike was built, they have not yet paid, his over-
seers [of ] our lord the Viceroy, the treasurer, the accountant,
the lawyer. This is how they built the wall that protected
this city from the laguna, that was ordered to be built
by the viceroy, and although they were promised that
they would be fed and other things paid for, for all they
worked for three months, all those from Mexico and San-
tiago [Tlatelolco] and its surrounding area. When they
[witnesses] were asked what number of Indians would
have worked on the aforementioned project, they said that
they weren’t certain, but by their estimations six thousand
Indians had normally worked, sometimes more, some-
times less. 51Such an undertaking was a massive one—for six thousand
laborers to work effectively and create the dike within
three months would have required an operating hierarchy
and would have gone well beyond what indigenous com-
moners in the city were normally expected to contribute
to infrastructure projects headed by the native governors.
And it would have required a know-how of dike building,
certainly not as complicated as the construction of a new
waterworks, but technological knowledge nonetheless.
Almost a decade after the rebuilding of the San Lázaro
dike in 1555, indigenous engineering knowledge of a
higher level was brought to bear on the more complicated
attempted revival of the Acuecuexco-Churubusco aque-
duct, which would have entailed building a cistern high and
strong enough to propel water forcefully into an aqueduct
and installing that aqueduct at a sufficient slope to allow
the water to keep its momentum as it moved northward
to the city. The Actas de cabildo reveal indigenous roles in
this revival of the project. Within the halls of the Spanish
cabildo, one of the key arguments in favor of the Churu-
busco aqueduct was that it had once worked, as originally
built by the pre-Hispanic Mexica. And in the initial forays
to see if the quantity and force of the water was sufficient,
indigenous experts were included in the measuring pro-
cess. Viceroy Enríquez’s opposition to the project followed
the results of a measurement carried out in May of 1570,
when three members of the cabildo went out, along with
a notary and an interpreter, with three indios oficiales que
entiendan de pesar, that is, skilled indigenous men with the
greatest expertise in measuring the force of water and the
grade of a waterworks; it was they who delivered an expert
opinion on the feasibility of the aqueduct. And a decade
later, when floods once again threatened the city in 1580, it
was indios antiguos (very old Indians) who were called in to
help figure out a solution to the problem. 52
As in other forums, the projects of the city’s indigenous
peoples were entwined with those of the Franciscans, who
were also deeply interested in questions of water and water
engineering, for both practical and symbolic reasons. 53 The
knowledge of the two parties was exchanged and enriched
within places like San José de los Naturales and Santiago
Tlatelolco. Fray Francisco de las Navas (d. 1578), who was
guardian of the monastery of Santiago Tlatelolco and a flu-
ent Nahuatl speaker, was called on by the Spanish cabildo
to offer his expert opinion on the Acuecuexco-Churubusco
waterworks in 1566, along with another Franciscan consul-
tant, Fray Francisco de Tembleque. Both were described
by the Spanish cabildo as “people of much professional
experience and with similar waterworks serving to carry
water in the manner of this one.” 54 Tembleque was also
the engineer of the great aqueduct of 156 arches that car-
ried water from Zempoala some twenty-eight miles to
the town of Otumba, north of Mexico City, perhaps the
most important hydraulic work of sixteenth-century New
Spain, finished ca. 1557. 55The chaPuLTePec aqueducT
and The PLague
Antonio de Valeriano’s ambitious 1575 project to build an
aqueduct from Chapultepec would do nothing to stem
the overall environmental degradation of the valley, but it
would be a lifeline to the traditionally indigenous neigh-
borhoods of San Juan Moyotlan and San Pablo Teopan.
We have little idea of what this second Chapultepec aque-
duct cost the indigenous community in labor, tools, and
support; our scant record of its costs comes from the Actas
de cabildo’s grudging payments for the necessary lime. And