The ciTy in The conquesT’s wake • 81and a “very feared man.” 21 During the siege of the city, he
emerged as the key negotiator between the increasingly
embattled Mexica and the conquistadores. 22 After the
Conquest, he was a person trusted by Cortés, who put him
in charge of “people and construction,” and appointed him
head of one of the city’s four parts, probably the largest
polity of Moyotlan. 23 The other parts were entrusted to
other indigenous elites, and these partitions would have
irksome political consequences, as we will see in chapter 7.
When Tlacotzin was christened, he took on the new Span-
ish name of Velázquez, a name he gave to the marketplace.
This new tianquiztli was built adjacent to his house, offering
confirmation of who was doing the work of reconstructing
the post-Conquest city—the old elites, who knew how to
run things. 24
Most histories have neglected Tlacotzin, but he is an
important figure in native annals. Consider his depiction
in the Codex Aubin (see figure 1.6). He appears at the
center of folio 45r, adjacent to the year 5 Reed (1523), and
his title, “cihuacoatl,” appears written in pictographic script
above his head, a serpent (coatl) with the head of a woman
(cihuatl). As in the images on the previous page of Cuitla-
hua, who ruled for a mere eighty days in 1520 before dying
of smallpox, and of Cuauhtemoc, who succeeded Cuitla-
hua and whose image appears above him, Tlacotzin wears
the turquoise miter, the xiuhhuitzolli, a symbol of high
authority, and sits on the tepotzoicpalli, the high-backed
throne; however, he does not wear the brilliant blue tilmatli
of the huei tlatoani, instead wearing a deep-red cloak deco-
rated with black curves and dots, evocative of the ocelot
pattern made out of feathers worn by pre-Hispanic Mexica
warriors into battle. 25 Nor is he numbered in the list of
Mexica rulers, as were his predecessors Cuitlahua and
Cuauhtemoc. The text reads, “Here, Cihuacoatl Tlacotzin,
was seated as ruler; during his rule there was an eclipse of
the sun,” an astronomical event of immense importance. 26
While it is true that he and other elites were quick to
collaborate with a colonial regime, at the same time, we
must appreciate not only that managing the ecology and
economy of the refounded city was a complex endeavor,
as it had been in Tenochtitlan, but also that the lives of
tens of thousands of Mexica depended upon its contin-
ued functioning. The new conquistadores, for all of their
brash confidence, had no understanding of the complex
economic and ecological balance of the urban prize that
the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan was during the war of con-
quest. Tlacotzin did, and the title “atempanecatl,” or “field or
lagoon marshal,” given to the earlier cihuacoatl suggests that
one of the roles of office was the maintenance of the city’s
infrastructure, especially those great dikes made of stone
and adobe that kept the water in check. 27 The Humboldt
Fragment II, a map created sometime before 1564–1565,
showing lands either owned by or worked for high-ranking
Conquest-era Mexica nobles, lists the owners’ pictographic
names within their respective fields on the right side of
the map, which is reproduced here (figure 4.6). On the
right edge of this work, Tlacotzin is set among other high-
ranking Mexica elites, and is identified by an alphabetic
gloss that reads “Jua Velazque Tlacotzin.” His “cihuacoatl”
title appears written pictographically as the image of a
serpent (coatl) out of whose mouth a female (cihuatl) face
appears. A short staff with an angled top appears to the
right of the cihuacoatl glyph, and the Codex Mendoza
(on folio 64r) assigns this particular symbol of authority to
the lord responsible for “repairing the streets and bridges”
that led to an adjacent temple pyramid, further suggesting
that Tlacotzin played a lead role in maintaining the city’s
infrastructure.
Cortés wrote that the city’s marketplace was reestab-
lished “among where the Spanish lived,” but it was in fact
also adjacent to Tlacotzin’s house, a placement not without
benefits for Tlacotzin. 28 In the chaotic aftermath of the
Conquest, the larger system of imperial tribute collection
was being overhauled by the Spanish, who sought ways
to funnel the stream of goods that flowed to local native
lords and into imperial centers like Tenochtitlan into their
own coffers. A handful of indigenous elites, like a few of
the children of Moteuczoma, were eventually granted
encomiendas—assignments of entire indigenous towns for
their labor—by the Crown. However, most other elites
in the city were left out of this golden circle and needed
to find ways to support themselves and their extended
families, especially as they competed with a new class of
Spanish overlords for goods and services that commoners
were obliged to provide to their rulers. The reallocation
of lands within the city to themselves and their depen-
dents was one way to support themselves. Another was
availing themselves of the traditional taxes that indigenous
commoners were used to paying in the market. Oversee-
ing the market was one method of procuring this income
stream, a key resource for the indigenous elites in the
early colonial period, as tax collection on marketed goods
was a pro forma feature of urban life, almost certainly a
pre-Hispanic holdover. 29