waTeR and aLTePeTL in The LaTe sixTeenTh-cenTuRy ciTy • 205inaugurated. [The work on the aqueduct and fountain]
took six years to finish.” 66
This fountain and its flowing waters would have
been visible to Antonio de Valeriano as he stood on the
second-floor balcony of the tecpan and looked toward
the east, much the same way that the sacred pools, evok-
ing the primordial sites of foundation and fed from the
Chapultepec springs, were visible as his great-grandfather
Axayacatl looked eastward from his palace on the city’s
great sacred precinct. In Axayacatl’s epoch, the adjacency of
water source and sacred mountain (as the Templo Mayor
was conceived to be) was held to be a symbol of the sacred
altepetl, that “water hill” that signified an autonomous com-
munity throughout central Mexico. Looking northward
from the tecpan porch, Valeriano could see the markers of
the city’s Franciscan axis that ran from south to north, from
the great cross carved of a sacred ahuehuetl tree in the patio
of San Francisco all the way to the bell towers of the Fran-
ciscan monastery of Santiago Tlatelolco. Here, Tlatelolco’s
gobernador and cabildo leaders had been busy constructing
their own cistern (called a caja de agua) adjacent to their
market, Franciscan monastery, and tecpan. Excavations of
that site by Salvador Guilliem Arroyo have revealed this
Tlatelolco cistern to have been a magical place, filled as it
was with mural paintings. Visible by those who approached
it to fill their ceramic jugs, the paintings limned a watery
paradise, replete with abundant fish and aquatic life below
the line painted to show the surface of the water. Above
the painted waterline, fishermen and boaters availed them-
selves of nature’s bounty. 67 As would befit a water source
adjacent to the Franciscan church, the cross of Christian
salvation was painted at one end, entwining Christological
symbols with images of a watery utopia. We do not know
whether the original fountain of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
boasted of such glorious paintings, but we can imagine
that the swirling pool of freshwater alone was rich with
meaning for those drawn to it, evocative both of the city as
Christian paradise and of a water-rich altepetl.
vaLeRiano and The
Tianguis of mexico
During Valeriano’s term of office, the Spanish cabildo
sought to expand its jurisdiction over the city’s spaces by
approving grants and land transfers within it, as it had with
earlier rulers. But Valeriano’s role in resisting their incur-
sion into one of the key indigenous spaces of the city, the
Tianguis of Mexico, is worth attending to, because argu-
ments presented as part of a lawsuit show him articulating
indigenous communal rights to urban land and offer a cor-
rective to Charles Gibson’s contention that markets slipped
from indigenous control by around the 1540s. 68
Documents of the 1560s show that the indigenous gov-
ernors were overseeing land transfers within the space of
the tianguis into that decade and beyond, signaling that it
was a space that they controlled. But not without contest
from the city’s Spanish cabildo, who, as seen in chapter
4, were eager to assert their jurisdiction over the city’s
land. In February of 1560, the Spanish cabildo was asked
by a city resident, Juanes de Lugo, for a grant of land in
the tianguis, but the members refused because they were
planning to occupy this space with shop buildings, which,
like other such properties they held in the city, could be
used for rental income. 69 Lugo’s wife, who was indigenous,
then appealed to the native cabildo, which at that time was
headed by the gobernador Cecetzin, for a tianguis grant,
which she was given. The Spanish cabildo then angrily com-
plained to the viceroy that the native governor, in making
such grants, was usurping the viceroy’s authority (for the
native cabildo’s authority stemmed from his, and this grant
did not have his express approval), as well as its own, for it
had claimed jurisdiction over the tianguis as part of the city
lands under its control.
The Spanish cabildo revealed, in this lawsuit, its con-
tinuing desire for control of both the island’s space and all
its peoples. It took the opportunity the suit represented
to request high-handedly that the viceroy do away with
both autonomous indigenous governments of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan and Santiago Tlatelolco. In their stead, it
suggested that the viceroy name two indigenous officials
from each altepetl to serve as regidores on the Spanish
cabildo. Given that the cabildo typically had twelve regidores
to begin with, this request would have had the effect of rob-
bing the indigenous residents of the city of an autonomous
government and stripping indigenous leaders of almost
all of their royally recognized power. The request was not
granted. Later that year, the Spanish cabildo again asserted
its right over the tianguis land by giving permission to a
glassmaker to build a portal in front of his house, which
sat on the tianguis, proclaiming the portal a public space,
that is, one under its domain. 70
If the land of the tianguis was contested, so was the
regulation of commerce within it. The following year, in
1561, the viceroy issued an order giving the Spanish alguacil