110 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
arched doorway, with its masonry construction carefully
detailed—the new (to the New World) building technol-
ogy of arch and keystone, which was regarded with awe by
the first generation of indigenous masons to use it. 42 This
doorway leads to a large enclosed courtyard, dominated at
one end by the government palace, which faces eastward.
As represented here, the courtyard plaza was a highly con-
trolled space, with one entrance from the street and no
marked exit, except perhaps through the back of the tecpan
itself. The architectural habit of enclosing special spaces
with low walls had pre-Hispanic roots and was seen in its
fullest expression in the Coatepantli, a great serpent wall
that was built around the Templo Mayor.
The architecture of this building is not completely
clear from the Osuna rendering, but comparison to the
rendering of the tecpan of Santiago Tlatelolco, which lay
a little more than a mile to the north, makes the design
somewhat clearer (figure 5.6). A schematic rendering of
this second tecpan appears in the Tlatelolco Codex, a native
manuscript of ca. 1565; this building had the same walled
courtyard, but above its arcaded portico, there was a second
story, along with a second-story porch-like space. Simi-
lar elements appear in Mexico-Tenochtitlan’s indigenous
palace—a large walled courtyard and two-story building,
with porch. 43 In the low-built city, the tall building would
have been visible from a distance.
The front wall of the tecpan bordered the enormous
tianguis to the east, and thus the two-story palace was
always a visible presence in the busy marketplace; we have
seen how indigenous lords might tax transactions in mar-
ketplaces, and considering this, the proximity of the tecpan
to the tianguis was a practical choice, as well as a symbolic
one, as all the goings-on within the tianguis would have
been visible from the balcony of the two-story tecpan. Ta k-
ing stock of the emergent indigenous city in 1541, twenty
years after the Conquest, we see a shift of power toward the
parcialidad of San Juan Moyotlan. Joining the great mar-
ket there was the tecpan, then under construction. Nearby
was the great chapel of San José de los Naturales, part of
the complex of the monastery of San Francisco that had
been moved there in 1525, and together these created a new
center of gravity in the city. Their siting in Moyotlan gave
them historical pedigree as home to Yopico, the tlaxilacalli
that had been settled by one of the originating migrating
clans of the Mexica and the temple that was the final stop
on Mexica coronation rituals.
Almost certainly, the election of Moyotlan as preemi-
nent was meant to check the interests of other powerful
clans of indigenous elites in the city. The parceling out of
the different sections of the city to different indigenous
elites effected under Cortés left the parcialidades in the
hands of different indigenous families who built their
respective palaces, as did the family of Juan Velázquez
Tlacotzin, whose home was adjacent to the early tianguis
also in Moyotlan (see figure 4.2). 44 Later lawsuits tell
us why location was so important: in the pre-Hispanic
period, the urban altepetl customarily supplied tribute
labor to the leader (tlatoani) of the altepetl, and these pat-
terns endured; establishing oneself as a parcialidad leader
meant access to local labor. One such competitive clan
was the Tapia family, who descended from don Andrés de
Tapia Motelchiuhtzin, who had briefly been gobernador.
His son, don Hernando de Tapia, was an interpreter for
the audiencia, a position that gave him access to Span-
ish Crown officials, and at his death, he was a wealthy
man. 45 He lived in a large urban palace in San Pablo Teo-
pan that appears on the Map of Santa Cruz. 46 The ability
of post-Conquest gobernadores to command indigenous
labor is revealed in a lawsuit of 1576, after the powerful
don Hernando died, when the community of San Juan
Moyotlan charged that they had built a large palace for
the Tapia family when Motel chiuh tzin, don Hernando’s
father, was governor (1526–1530) on the understanding
that this was a community building, not one to be passed
down to the Tapia heirs; the wealthy Tapia family coun-
tered that the building was, and always had been, their
family palace. 47 The Map of Santa Cruz shows another
urban palace in Teopan, this one belonging to “don Pablo,”figuRe 5.6. The tecpan of Santiago Tlatelolco. Author drawing after
Codex Tlatelolco, sec. 5.