Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

waTeR and The sacRed ciTy • 41

thus, on the Beinecke Map, the gray pigments used to rep-
resent muddy earth at the edge of a waterway contained
an admixture of Maya blue, a precious pigment imported
into the Valley of Mexico from southern Mexico. In the
Beinecke Map, Maya blue was used to convey the presence
of water in the earth, even though its blue color was not vis-
ible to the naked eye. In contrast, gray pigments that were
used to show elements like a wall with no watery element
lacked Maya blue. Magaloni’s findings suggest that such a
careful use of pigments corresponding to the nature of the
thing represented was part of the longer painting tradi-
tion of central Mexico, one that the painters of the Map of
Santa Cruz would have participated in. 53 Thus, the Santa
Cruz artist’s (or artists’) use of the different, greenish pig-
ment—which had not only a different color but a different
composition, as revealed by the craquelure over its sur-
face—was likely an effort to capture the lakes’ salty nature,
whereas the pure blue (likely to be Maya blue, although no
studies have been made of the composition of the map’s
pigments) was the material used to represent sweet water.
The Map of Santa Cruz is one of the rare represen-
tations of the city to show the complex system of water-
works; the compelling vignettes of daily life and interac-
tions between Spaniards and indigenous peoples that one
can see along the roads in the landscape surrounding the
island city have attracted the most attention of research-
ers, but the waterworks and the transport system that they
enabled were clearly of equal, if not greater, interest to its

creators. In figure 2.8, the artists have carefully limned

darker blue lines that cross the lakes on the left (Lakes

Chalco and Xochimilco) to show the canals that were

maintained in the shallow lakes, allowing rowers to pass

with canoes in the dry season. Freshwater rivers, streams,

and springs fed many of them, so they appear the deep

blue of freshwater. Others appear as the watery continu-

ation of roads that reach the lakeshore; these points were

the small ports where goods would be loaded onto boats

for quicker passage by lake. The importance of this sweet

water between the two dikes is signaled in the Map of

Santa Cruz by the number of fishermen, seen in figure 2.9

as they cast their rods and pull out fish, with others stand-

ing on the dike itself and casting nets into the water, show-

ing how the dikes could function as a pathway through the

water as well as a protective barrier. Below, in the salty lake,

bird trappers set up their nets to catch ducks and other

water-loving birds.

Representations of space like the Map of Santa Cruz

reflected the lived spaces of the city, like those great water-

works and networks of roads and canals that we see on the

map, and the artists’ attentiveness to the dikes and under-

standing of the separations of water indicate how wide-

spread knowledge and appreciation of this infrastructure

figuRe 2.9. Unknown creator, dikes of Ahuitzotl and Nezahualcoyotl,

detail, Map of Santa Cruz, ca. 1537–1555. Uppsala University Library,

Sweden.