188 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
thatched shelters around the outside of the Tecpan, there
the old military guard [of eagle warriors] stood, and within
the Tecpan, the Otomí guard danced for two nights.” 90
This two-day celebration evokes those great celebrations
staged by the Mexica huei tlatoani, complete with the eagle
warriors and festive songs and attendant mitotes, whose
music and movements we can only imagine from their
evocative names, such as the “dance of the Chichimecs,”
the great nomadic warriors who were the progenitors of
valley civilizations, and “the song of the spreading water.” It
was perhaps one of the few happy moments that Cipactzin
would enjoy, because just a month and a half later, calamity
struck Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
It came not in the form of one of the devastating plagues
that had decimated the native population, nor even in the
formal presentation of the charges made in the lawsuit;
instead, it was a new form of tax levied on the indigenous
population of New Spain, one coinciding with heightened
internal tensions in the native city. Questions about, and
quarrels over, tribute were endemic from the mid-1550s
over which natives should pay (were elites exempt?), how
much they should pay, and how it should be paid (in spe-
cie? in kind?). The indigenous lords of the Valley of Mexico
considered tribute so burdensome that they appealed to
the king in 1562 to suspend tribute payments for a decade. 91
So finally, when Gerónimo de Valderrama arrived to serve
as general inspector, one of his first tasks was the reform
of indigenous tribute payments. It was, in fact, probably
the main charge the king gave to Valderrama, who, having
previously served as head of the exchequer (contador mayor
de hacienda), was an accountant rather than a jurist. 92 He
based his reform on revised population figures, which
promised heavier tribute assessments for Mexico City’s
indigenous people, to be made in cash. In this, he broke
with long-standing practices of calling for payment by trib-
ute in kind. News of the new tribute levies leaked out at
the beginning of 1564, and when Cipactzin and the cabildo
members heard of the changes, they did everything in
their power to mitigate them, appealing time and again to
the audiencia. The Franciscans found them equally objec-
tionable; Mendieta drew a parallel between Valderrama’s
count and the census of King David (2 Samuel 24), which
“must not have pleased God” because in response, “He sent
another pestilence to his people,” and indeed, another epi-
demic had broken out that year. 93
The protests were to no avail. So on Thursday, July 13,
less than two weeks after they had been hit with a lawsuit
accusing them of incompetence and venality, Cipactzin and
the cabildo members, along with Juan Caro, their attorney,
gathered on the balcony of the tecpan. Below them, in the
plaza, were leaders and residents of the four parcialidades,
who had been waiting months to hear the result of the
negotiations, some of whom would have known about, if
not been party to, the lawsuit. In front of this hostile crowd,
Cipactzin then announced the new levies they would face
in the future, tribute money that would support not only
the Spanish government, but also the indigenous govern-
ment itself, which was to receive about half of the levy. The
crowd’s discontent found a spokesman in Miguel Teicniuh,
who called out, “In all this time that we negotiated, for six
months we contested in vain, for now there’s nothing to
be done, they have not heard our pleas. And here,” he said,
likely gesturing toward Cipactzin, who stood on the tec-
pan’s balcony, “is the lord of all of you—do you think he
did anything on your behalf? Perhaps he neglected you, or
didn’t take care of this community.” 94
When Teicniuh finished speaking, the riled crowd
began to riot. Cipactzin shouted over their heads to gath-
ered musicians to begin playing their wind instruments,
as if to remind all those gathered of the joyful and pacific
event of his wedding, when they had played in this same
space some six weeks before. The music did nothing. From
below, more local leaders raised their voices in dissent, the
crowd joined in with their yells, old women wept, and then
the throng erupted. A native official entered the crowd to
calm it and was nearly torn limb from limb. Hearing the
noise of the crowd in the tecpan patio, the market sellers
in the adjacent Tianguis of Mexico thronged toward the
nearby building, adding to the tumult. Cipactzin was able
to escape, so the swelling crowd vented their fury on the
architectural mass of the tecpan itself, throwing stones at
the upper part of the building and attacking what was
clearly a symbol of native authority, the row of rings and
flower border on the roofline. 95
Cipactzin is often scourged in histories as an ineffective
leader, but he also faced an era of impossible demands—
struggling to hold on to the time-honored means of
expressing his authority at the same time that the Spanish
Crown government was increasingly pressing in on elite
prerogative in the indigenous city. And he did not give
up. Although thrown in jail when he was unable to col-
lect the new tributes (gobernadores were also responsible
for delivery of tribute to the royal treasury), he and his
cabildo mounted a counterattack on one of the causes of