huaniTzin RecenTeRs The ciTy • 101member of Charles V’s court circle, was dispatched by the
monarch to serve as the viceroy of New Spain, arriving in
- As the executive head of the government, who ruled
in the king’s stead, Mendoza was charged with building a
centralized bureaucracy to represent the Crown’s interests
and to protect native charges from excessive exploitation.
Unlike Cortés, who feared native rulers and did his best to
undermine them, Mendoza was keenly aware of bloodline,
that near-sacred Spanish ideal of sangre. He saw the impor-
tance of a strategy of governance that included indigenous
rulers, which grew out of the second audiencia’s informal
strategy of using native rulership in the city, particularly as
a bulwark against the conquistador class.
As Mendoza entered the Plaza Mayor in mid-October
of 1535, members of the local government were arrayed to
meet him, including the second audiencia, the presidency
of which Mendoza would assume, as well as the members
of the Spanish cabildo (seated in the ayuntamiento), who
had jurisdiction over Spanish lands in the central part of
Mexico City and whose membership was drawn largely
from the conquistador class. If the cabildo feared that Men-
doza would continue to push back against their ambitions
to control lands outside of the city as well as indigenous
labor, as had the second audiencia, it was right to do so.
One of his curtailments was territorial: Mendoza cen-
tralized the granting of lands in his office and limited the
Spanish cabildo’s ability to grant lands outside of the city
proper; within the city, Mendoza insisted that the cabildo
keep a permanent record of grants in graphic form. He
also stripped grants from conquistadores who failed to
build on their lots appropriately. 3 But the most important
curtailment was political. By once again allowing mem-
bers of the Mexica royal house to be appointed rulers of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Mendoza helped reestablish a strong
indigenous authority within the city. A muscular native
government offered a means of checking the power of the
city’s Spanish cabildo members, who vied with the large
indigenous population for city lands, and the excesses of
the audiencia judges, who benefited from tributary labor. 4
Mendoza was deliberate in the reestablishment of the
royal line; the year after he arrived, in 1536, the “nobleman-
steward” don Pablo Xochiquentzin, who had been
appointed governor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan by Sebastián
Ramírez de Fuenleal, died. Mendoza left the seat empty for
at least a year, perhaps to better acquaint himself with the
structure of the Mexica ruling house and the available can-
didates. Native histories are unclear on how long the seat
figuRe 5.2. Unknown creator, don Diego Huanitzin (top), don Diego
Tehuetzquititzin (center), and Viceroy Luis de Velasco and don Esteban
de Guzmán (bottom), detail, Beinecke Map, ca. 1565. Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.