waTeR and aLTePeTL in The LaTe sixTeenTh-cenTuRy ciTy • 193the altepetl, both as an idea and for the practical func-
tioning of the city, it is worth turning to a page in the
seventeenth-century Codex Cozcatzin, which includes a
complaint about don Diego de San Francisco Tehuetzqui-
titzin (r. 1541–1554), discussed in Chapter 7. Another sec-
tion of this document is a history of the huei tlatoque of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and it begins with an image of the
last pre-Hispanic ruler, Moteuczoma II, and two of his
children, doña Isabel Moctezoma and don Pedro Moc-
tezoma Tlacahuepantli (figure 9.1). 11 Moteuczoma II is
seated on the high-backed tepotzoicpalli, and behind him
is a hill glyph, marked with the nopal cactus, part of the
hieroglyphic name of Tenochtitlan. In its highest branches
hangs the turquoise miter, the “crown” of Mexica rulers, as
well as part of the name glyph of Moteuczoma himself.
Moteuczoma’s body is covered in a white tilmatli, marked
on its edges with the tenixyo border. His daughter, above
whose head is set the Moteuczoma name glyph, wears a
huipil with a similar border, and behind her, her brother
don Pedro wears a striped cloak with the tenixyo border.
Never holding office, don Pedro is seated on a low stool.
The glyph for his Nahuatl name (understood here as Tlaca-
cuapantli) appears connected to his head, where the head
of a person (tlaca) sits upon (pan) a beam of wood (cua-
huitl). Below is a schematic landscape. At the lower right
corner is the familiar tepetl symbol, marked with volutes on
the side to show its stony character and a large stone (tetl)
at the top. The diamond-and-dot pattern, here filled with
pigment, is old iconography used to show the rough skin of
Tlaltecuhtli, the earth deity whose sacrifice brought about
the world as the Nahua knew it. It is comparable to the
patterns seen in the map reproduced in figure 2.18. From
a cave-like opening at the bottom of the hill, a stream of
water (atl) emerges, the necessary element to show that
this is an altepetl, evoking the origin of the streams at the
foundation of Tenochtitlan. As this stream flows along the
bottom of the page and then up its left side, it changes from
symbol to landscape, appearing like a canal on the left. In
the center of the page, it takes on more characteristics of
the lake, growing with reeds and hosting water birds, water
snakes, and a furry animal that might be a nutria, all neatly
ordered within a horizontal band. To the left of the tepetl
symbol in the bottom register is an indigenous-style build-
ing, with red posts and lintel around the central doorway,
and the disk pattern that marked special buildings is seen
on the entablature, the same pattern that we have seen
decorating the tecpan of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
Since this document is a historical chronicle meant to
support doña Isabel’s noble genealogy, on first glance, there
seems to be no particular need to include these images of
altepetl, indigenous building, and water on the page. But
seen in light of the document’s larger rhetorical claims—
a statement about the historical roots and argument for
the necessity of indigenous rulers—the ordered watery
environment is linked into this nexus of ideas, in the same
way that a more famous opening image, that of the Codex
Mendoza, was (see figure 1.3). Symbols for the altepetl often
show it as a hill glyph with a stream of water emerging
from the bottom, like the glyph of Chapultepec in the
Codex Aubin (see figure 1.7); however, in the case of the
Codex Cozcatzin, the life-giving water from the base of
the altepetl feeds a hydraulic system of canals and lakes.
And as we have seen, this system was not mere symbol,
but once existed in and around the city, where the Mexica
rulers over time manipulated the surrounding salty lakes
and springs to provide freshwater to the city residents. The
linkage of altepetl, rulership, and the supply of water in
a seventeenth-century manuscript shows its indelibility
through time, and in this chapter we will see how its endur-
ance was fostered by a ruler of Mexico-Tenochtitlan who
sought once again to provision the city with freshwater
from the miraculous source of Chapultepec.The conquisTadoRes
and The waTeR sysTem
The manipulation of the Valley of Mexico environment
and the transformation of the Laguna of Mexico from salt
water into fresh was the result of experiments that spanned
centuries among the valley peoples. But with the Conquest,
the control of the system fell into the hands of the city’s
new Spanish inhabitants, who made the major decisions
about the resources to be devoted to its infrastructure.
The Spanish cabildo of Mexico City was mostly concerned
with expanding the wealth and prerogatives of its members
and vecinos (citizens), and thus it neglected crucial infra-
structure maintenance, no doubt resulting in part from
a poor understanding of the function of the waterworks.
As a result, the indigenous labor drafts that historically
had been devoted to the constant upkeep demanded by the
waterworks—the cleaning of the canals, the maintenance
of causeways and dikes, the monitoring of water levels
in different parts of the lake, and the corrective openings
and closings of dams—were siphoned off to the building