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In the second half of the fifteenth century and in the
wake of the creation of the Triple Alliance between the
Mexica, the Acolhua, and the Tepanec, the Mexica rulers
of Tenochtitlan grew wealthy in their island capital. The
successful wars of conquest waged inside and outside the
Valley of Mexico led to tribute of foodstuffs, cloth, and
luxury goods like feathers and jade, which flowed into the
capital as often as five times a year. In addition, nearby con-
quered towns provided the labor that Mexica rulers needed
to build the elaborate waterworks that protected the city
from floods. At the same time, the “taming” of the Laguna
of Mexico by creating a relatively sweet water enclave to the
west of Lake Tetzcoco allowed more areas to be converted
into chinampas, yielding greater agricultural productiv-
ity on and around the island. More of the city’s residents
turned to specialized trades, creating featherworks, gold
jewelry, pottery, and textiles. Better provisioned, the people
of Tenochtitlan prospered.
And so did their rulers. City residents—like all mem-
bers of altepeme—were expected to support the local nobil-
ity and the local temple with tribute goods and labor, to
hold up their end of the social contract. Rulers, in turn,
safeguarded and cared for the altepetl at large. The city’s
political stability was enhanced in this period by long-
ruling huei tlatoque, many holding office for a dozen years
or more: Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina (Moteuczoma I) ruled
for twenty-eight years (1440–1468); Axayacatl ruled for
thirteen years (1468–1481); Tizocic’s short reign (1481–
1486) was the anomaly; Ahuitzotl (1486–1502) ruled for
sixteen years; and the eighteen-year reign of Moteuczoma
Xocoyotzin (Moteuczoma II; 1502–1520) was ended by the
arrival of the Spaniards. In the last chapter, we saw how
these leaders set representations of themselves and the feats
of their rule within the city’s built environment, a strategy
to broadcast their presence widely and publicly by setting
themselves within, and adding to the valences of, the city’s
lived spaces. They reshaped the built environment through
the construction of protective dikes and causeways around
the city that kept the salt water of Lake Tetzcoco at bay
and allowed urban residents to transform the laguna into
a freshwater reserve. And then they represented the spaces
around them in sculpture, such as in the Teocalli of Sacred
Warfare, in which, as we saw in the last chapter, Moteuc-
zoma’s artists drew on cosmic templates wherein the male
solar deity triumphs over his female opponent to shape the
image of Tenochtitlan. The steady uptick in the number of
large monolithic (and therefore largely immobile) monu-
ments that can be ascribed to rulers from Moteuczoma I
onward offers further evidence of the Mexica huei tlatoque’s
interest in setting themselves and the events of their rule
into the spaces of the city.
Sculpture, however, existed in tandem with perfor-
mance, and in truth, the Mexica ruler was better known to
a pre-Hispanic public through performances that served
to make him visible to a wide spectrum of people—and
this quality of being “made visible” was crucial in the larger
construction of the ruler’s authority. As Louis Marin
pointed out about Louis XIV, a ruler known far and wide
to his subjects via representations, “the king is his image.” 1
For the Mexica huei tlatoani, it was through being seen,