inTRoducTion • 17by the occupation of the center of the city by Spaniards
beginning in the 1520s. There are precursors to such an
approach in the work of Edmundo O’Gorman, who
brought up the question of spatial continuities between
the pre-Hispanic and sixteenth-century city in an article
published in 1938; Alfonso Caso also offered strong evi-
dence for the colonial continuities of the pre-Hispanic
spatial and social categories in the city in his landmark
study of its neighborhoods. 37 Caso’s interest was not in
the sixteenth-century city, but in the quotidian spaces of
pre-Hispanic Tenochtitlan, and to this end he identified
the locations of the tlaxilacalli (neighborhoods) that were
the component elements of the city. However, all of his
supporting data was drawn from post-Conquest sources,
some of it directly describing the post-Conquest city. As a
result, Caso’s article and accompanying map (see figure 7.3)
underscored continuities of indigenous lived space before
and after the Conquest, particularly in the arrangement of
sixteenth-century religious buildings and other features of
the built environment. 38 And the work of Edward Calnek
has, over decades, contributed immeasurably to our under-
standing of Mexico City as an indigenous city. 39
Evidence of continuity is revealed by the map in fig-
ure 1.10, which shows how pre-Hispanic Tenochtitlan was
divided by roads that radiated from the central temple
precinct. These were practical conduits: the ones running
south, west, and north led to the great, wide causeways that
connected the city to the lakeshore. Another map of the
city, this one published in 1524 with Cortés’s Second Letter,
shows much the same. It is the earliest European printed
map of the city and offers a bird’s-eye view of the valley, ori-
ented to the west, with a separate map of the Gulf Coast,
oriented to the south, included at left (figure 1.11). The 1524
maps were created by a European artist, but the city view
at right was likely drawn from a Mexica source, and shows
us Tenochtitlan at center, as a porous disk surrounded by
a larger ring of water of the lake; canals thread through the
city and once served to irrigate raised fields called chinam-
pas that supplied food to city’s residents. 40 The blocks of
houses that appear to float on the water may be the artist’s
imaginative evocation of these urban atolls. The ceremonial
precinct at the center of the city is pictured as a walledfiguRe 1.11. Unknown creator, map of Tenochtitlan (at right) and
schema of the Gulf Coast (at left), from Hernando Cortés’s Second
Letter, Praeclara Fernandi Cortesii de Noua Maris Oceani Hyspania
Narratio . . . (Nuremberg, 1524). Courtesy of the Newberry Library,
Chicago, Ayer 655.51.C8 1524d.