180 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
of water, but on this day, the crowd was riled up by the
archbishop’s threat to the established order and particu-
larly his assault on their Franciscan leaders.
At Santa María, the two sides clashed: the indigenous
procession from San Francisco surged like a deluge toward
the chapel where Montúfar’s minions were attempting to
enter, hitting them with sticks, throwing stones at their
heads, stealing their hats, tearing their clothing, and almost
killing the constable. 54 As Montúfar’s men were beaten out
of Santa María, the Franciscans, reportedly, did nothing
to intervene.
The way this event is normally interpreted, as in Robert
Ricard’s Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, the incident seems
to be one scene in the larger drama of a churchly power
struggle, where the Franciscans, belying the pacific nature
of their founder, were marshaling all of their resources
to keep the meddling bishop from encroaching on their
indigenous stronghold. However, it is difficult today to
treat the rebelling indigenous peoples as merely Franciscan
pawns, given the large and growing evidence of indigenous
agency. 55 The loss of Santa María would certainly have
curtailed Franciscan access to some of Mexico City’s indig-
enous population (and their labor) and interrupted an
important spatial axis that they held in the city. But it was
also important to the indigenous cabildo, which was closely
allied with the Franciscans. By maintaining this axis, Fran-
ciscans and their indigenous allies kept open an important
opportunity for an expression of their public face.
The tumult at Santa María was on its surface shocking
to the archbishop because his representatives were beaten
up, but it was also disturbing because an event that would,
in normal circumstances, show the successful evangeliza-
tion of the city’s indigenous residents, and their devotion
to the holy presence manifest in the image of Mary and
other saints, became the very moment when they rejected
the decisions of the church’s hierarchy. Montúfar was out-
foxed because the city’s political leaders emerged not as
seditious rabble-rousers, but as an organized and pious
community manifesting their faith on the day appointed by
the church’s calendar. Their display of force had its desired
effects: the Franciscans maintained their hold on Santa
María until the eighteenth century.
The oaTh of aLLegiance of 1557
Such processions, like the one that erupted in violence in
1569, were not the only spectacles in which the indigenous
rulers appeared; other important forums were those events
in which they showed their support for royal authority.
One of the most important (and given the longevity of
Charles V and Philip II, the two Habsburg rulers of New
Spain in the sixteenth century, the rarest) of all royal cer-
emonies was the jura, or oath of allegiance to a new king,
taken by all royal officials. News of the ascent of Philip II
reached New Spain in 1557, and the official oath was held
in Mexico City on June 6 of that year, and was celebrated
with exceptional pomp. It is known to us because the artist
of an indigenous pictorial, the Tlatelolco Codex, created
in Mexico-Tenochtitlan’s sister city, devoted an extensive
visual description to the event; a brief account also appears
in the city’s Actas de cabildo. 56 The Tlatelolco Codex is an
annals-style history, offering a timeline of events begin-
ning in 1542 and ending in 1560. Vertical red lines divide
the codex year by year; the year that concerns us, 1557, is
elaborately rendered, and while it forms part of a longer
strip, its artist, or artists, composed this section as a single,
integral unit (figure 8.3). It shows a collection of events
happening in the year 1557, arranged into four horizontal
registers. At top left, in the uppermost register, is the figure
of don Cristóbal de Guzmán Cecetzin (r. 1557–1562), who
was seated as gobernador of the city in 1557 at the end of
the term of don Esteban de Guzmán. Below his figure, the
toponym of Tenochtitlan appears as a small cactus growing
from a rock, and behind his head, his name is rendered
hieroglyphically. 57 While this image may pertain to his
seating as gobernador, the center of the page is devoted to
the events of the oath for Philip II, which happened in
June. Here, in the second, third, and fourth registers, we see
indigenous and royal governments brought together to take
the oath to the newly anointed king. The second register of
the page is dominated by a raised platform, called a cadalso,
measuring about thirty feet long and fifteen wide, that was
erected for the occasion on the Plaza Mayor, outside the
Cathedral’s west door and opposite the royal palace, which
sat to the west of the plaza at that time (it would move
to the east in 1562). This was constructed by indigenous
laborers, who also brought the adobe bricks. 58 On it, the
highest-ranking Spanish officials of the royal government
and the Catholic Church are seated, including Viceroy don
Luis de Velasco (center left) and Archbishop Alonso de
Montúfar, dressed in his red cape and archbishop’s miter
(center right). 59 The book in his hands, the open Gospel,
will be the site of the most important moment of this ritual.
Upon it, those gathered will swear an oath of allegiance to