218 • noTes To Pages 86–101
Mayor market was as important in the sixteenth
century as in the seventeenth, but there is little
direct evidence to support this point, except for
the description of cabildo historian Francisco
Cervantes de Salazar, Life in the Imperial and
Loyal City of Mexico in New Spain, trans. Minnie
Lee Barrett Shepard, 41–42 (quoted at the
beginning of chapter 10). Jorge Olvera Ramos,
Los mercados de la Plaza Mayor en la Ciudad de
México. For instance, Henry Hawks does not
mention a market in the Plaza Mayor in his
1572 report on New Spain’s commerce. Henry
Hawks, “A Relation of the Commodities of
Nova Hispana,” 545–553. On the role of floods
in relocating the markets, see Archivo General
de la Nación, Mexico, Indios 12, 1st pte., exp. 236,
fol. 148, and 2nd pte., exp. 68, fol. 199.
- The evidence for their daily operation is
indirect: a 1595 order that Indians that sell in the
tianguises of the plazas of Santiago, San Juan,
and San Hipólito refrain from doing so after
mass on Sundays and on feast days would have
been unnecessary if they did not run on these
days (Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico,
Indios 6, 2nd pte., exp. 1063, fol. 289); Hawks, “A
Relation of the Commodities of Nova Hispana.” - Vasco de Puga, Provisiones, cedulas,
instrucciones de su Magestad . . . , 2:148, 188–189,
248–249. More on viceregal attempts at
provisioning the city is covered in Gibson, The
Aztecs under Spanish Rule, 355; Pedro de Gante
is mentioned in Olvera Ramos, Los mercados de
la Plaza Mayor, 60. - In Francisco del Paso y Troncoso and
Silvio Arturo Zavala, eds., Epistolario de Nueva
España, 1505–1818, 15:162–165 (doc. 876). - Dibble, Códice Aubin, 63.
- Cervantes de Salazar, Life in the Imperial
and Loyal City of Mexico, 57; Kubler, Mexican
Architecture of the Sixteenth Century, 1:205. - Martha Fernández, “Convento de Nuestra
Señora de Regina Coeli,” in Armando Ruiz, ed.,
Arquitectura religiosa de la ciudad de México, 170. - Olvera Ramos, Los mercados de la Plaza
Mayor, 68. - In personal communication with me
in 2012, Jonathan Truitt underscored the
preeminence of women in the marketplace;
also confirming their preeminence are orders
specifically directed to indigenous female sellers
(named as “indias”) in Archivo General de la
Nación, Mexico, Indios 4, exp. 4; Indios 6, exp.
79; Indios 6, exp. 234. - Jacqueline de Durand-Forest, “Cambios
económicos y moneda entre los aztecas”; Janet
Long-Solís, “El abastecimiento de chile en el
mercado de la ciudad de México-Tenochtitlan
en el siglo XVI”; Lockhart, The Nahuas after the
Conquest, 185–198. Given the fidelity of copies to
their originals in other works of the collection
of Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci (1702–1755), I
trust that the copy of the map of the tianguis is
an equally faithful copy of the now-lost original.
This copy seems to have been made under the
direction of the collector Aubin, because the
word “effacé,” meant to mark an effaced area on
the original, also appears, written in the same
hand, on a copy he commissioned of the Codex
en Cruz (see Charles E. Dibble, ed., Codex en
Cruz, atlas, 68–69). This leads me to suppose
that Aubin, while in Mexico in the 1830s, was
looking at the original of the tianguis map
when he wrote his comment (“effacé”) on the
copy. While Aubin took the copy to France, the
original may have remained in Mexico.
- Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep:
Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of
Mexico. - In the Codex Santa Anita Zacatlalmanco,
indigenous leaders of the city of the later
sixteenth century wear hats. Codex Santa
Anita Zacatlalmanco, 71.1878.1.2970: Manuscrit
Mexico, Musée du quai Branly. - Woodrow Wilson Borah, Silk Raising in
Colonial Mexico. - Gibson, too, notes the “conservatism
of Indian material culture” in the markets in
the valley in The Aztecs under Spanish Rule,
353, commenting further on “the absence of
European tools, hardware, glass, and clothing, all
which lay beyond the ordinary Indian’s needs or
economic opportunities.” - Joaquín Aguirre and Juan Manuel
Montalbán, Recopilacion compendiada de las leyes
de Indias, aumentada con algunas notas que no
se hallan en la edicion de 1841 . . . , 407. Archivo
General de la Nación, Mexico, Tierras 35, exp. 2,
fol. 133r. - Mier y Terán Rocha, La primera traza,
- “... dejando a los indios sus propriedades.”
Aguirre and Montalbán, Recopilacion compen-
diada de las leyes de Indias, 4 0 7. - Bejarano, Actas de cabildo, September 19,
- Barbara E. Mundy, “ Pictography, Writing,
and Mapping in the Valley of Mexico and the
Beinecke Map,” in Mary Miller and Barbara E.
Mundy, eds., Painting a Map of Sixteenth-Century
Mexico City: Land, Writing and Native Rule,
42–48. - Bejarano, Actas de cabildo, January 5, 1526.
- See references in Archivo General de
la Nación, Mexico, Mercedes 5, which outline
the powers of the Spanish alguacil and other
directives. Traditionally, indigenous governors
and their tianguizhuaque (market overseers)
controlled markets. Lockhart, The Nahuas after
the Conquest, 185–198. - Land grants are covered in Mier y Terán
Rocha, La primera traza.
66. Henri Delacroix, La religion et la foi,
quoted in Halbwachs, On Collective Memory,
88n4.
67. Bejarano, Actas de cabildo, July 31, 1528.
68. On the cost of the pendón, see Bejarano,
Actas de cabildo, March 9, 1528; trumpets are
mentioned in Bejarano, Actas de cabildo, August
27, 1529; the pattern of the celebration is set out
in Bejarano, Actas de cabildo, August 11, 1529,
and the description varies slightly in its timing
from that described by Diego Valadés, Retórica
Cristiana, trans. Tarsicio Herrera Zapién,
467–469, who includes a long description,
probably as he witnessed it. It is also described
in Cervantes de Salazar, Life in the Imperial and
Loyal City of Mexico, 69.
69. After 1535, the regidor who led the
procession was accompanied by the viceroy and
the head of the audiencia, thereby putting on
display the structure of city government, as it
would develop.
70. On other rituals, see Linda Curcio-Nagy,
The Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City:
Performing Power and Identity.
71. Valadés, Retórica Cristiana, 467–469.
72. Arthur J. O. Anderson, trans., Bernardino
de Sahagún’s “Psalmodia Christiana” (Christian
Psalmody), 244–245.
73. Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 104.
74. A smaller set of names is used for new
Spanish constructions; thus, we find the
Atarazanas, or the “docks,” at the eastern limit
of the city; this name appears even in Nahuatl
documents.
75. In René Acuña, ed., “Descripción de la
ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala,” in Relaciones
geográficas del siglo XVI, 4:253.
76. Bejarano, Actas de cabildo, January 1, 1573;
January 1, 1575; August 1, 1578; January 29, 1582.
77. Chimalpahin, Annals of His Time, 71, 81,
169, 241, 299.
78. Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpahin, 1:159.
chaPTeR 5
- Tezozomoc, Crónica mexicayotl, 164.
- Evidence for this is found in Archivo
General de las Indias, Seville, Justicia 232, charge
2: documentation of the visita (visit of oversight)
of Vasco de Quiroga, in which one of the
witnesses is “don Diego, indio principal of the
barrio of San Juan, who states that he is more
than 50 years old.” Quoted in Ruiz Medrano,
Reshaping New Spain, 24. - Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule,
271–273. - On contests between city Indians and
the cabildo over lands reserved for the common
good, called ejidos in Spanish, just in the decade
of 1534–1544, see Bejarano, Actas de cabildo,