Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

76 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

In the days after their victory, Spanish conquerors with-
drew with their plunder to the southern city of Coyoacan,
where Cortés had set himself up in a palace, along with a
bevy of Mexica nobles held captive, among them Cuauhte-
moc, who had ordered the evacuation of the city. At first,
Cortés seemed to want nothing more than to have the
city disappear into the lake out of which it had been born,
even declaring that any indigenous resident moving back
would be executed, setting up a gallows in the main plaza
for the task. The history of Tenochtitlan might have ended
here; many of Cortés’s soldiers argued that Coyoacan was a
better place to build the capital, a healthy, defensible spot,
with drainage. 10 But Cortés, perhaps still enchanted by his
memories of the glittering capital, decided that Tenochtit-
lan would rise again, this time as his city. 11
A map of the center of the city created around 1563
would seem to record the triumph of Cortés’s ambition
some four decades later (figure 4.3). It shows us the heart
of the city, the Plaza Mayor, once dominated by the great
twin temples dedicated to Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli,
but no trace of that past remains. Instead, we see entirely

new architecture modeled on European examples. To the

east, at the bottom right side of the map, the palaces of

Moteuczoma II have been replaced by the royal palace, a

secondhand palace bought from the Cortés family in 1562;

to the west, on the left side of the map, where the palaces

of Axayacatl once stood, are the fortresslike residences of

the Cortés family. They overwhelm the rather diminutive

building on the north side of the plaza, roughly in the cen-

ter of the map, labeled as “iglesia mayor” (main church),

also known as the Cathedral of Mexico. It served the city’s

Spanish population and was the seat of the Bishop of

Mexico, with the first bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, arriving

in 1534. After the Conquest, the Spanish population was

small in relation to the indigenous population of the city,

but around the time the map was created in the 1560s, it

had grown to about 3,000 vecinos (property-owning resi-

dents who were recognized by the town council, almost

figuRe 4.3. Map of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, ca. 1563. Top

is oriented to the north. Spain, Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y

Deporte, Archivo General de Indias, MP-Mexico, 3.