206 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
de tianguis broad powers to enforce the regulated prices as
well as to punish miscreants in the Tianguis of Mexico as
well as in the other indigenous markets. 71 But the fact that
this order came from the viceroy, rather than the cabildo,
is revealing. Had the commerce of the Tianguis of Mexico
been, like that of the Plaza Mayor, clearly under the cabil-
do’s jurisdiction, then the cabildo could have dispatched the
alguacil itself (he was, after all, an employee). The viceroy’s
intervention suggests either that the cabildo had been doing
such a poor job of running the place that he had to step in,
or that the Spanish cabildo’s jurisdiction over commerce in
the Tianguis of Mexico was uncertain to begin with. 72
More than two decades later, in 1588, the indigenous
cabildo continued to claim jurisdiction over the lands of
the Tianguis of Mexico, by refusing a Spaniard the right
to build on a small parcel he claimed to own, the lot mea-
suring fifteen by seven varas, or about forty feet by twenty
feet; as part of this lawsuit, one of the maps of the tianguis
discussed in chapter 4 was created (see figure 4.9). The
indigenous cabildo based its claim both on ownership of
long standing, as well as on the brick-and-mortar evidence
that the tianguis presented. A witness stated that “it is
well known that the community and its government [of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan] have no other communal goods left,
of all that our ancestors once held and possessed in this
city, other than the tianguis.” 73 The cabildo made the point
more clearly some years later, in 1601, when another Span-
iard attempted to build within the Tianguis of Mexico, and
they, and the witnesses they summoned, testified that all
the land within the tianguis belonged to the native com-
munity. 74 One witness, Tómas Gabriel de los Angeles, a
resident of San Juan who was sixty-three years old, testified
that “all the ground that is built in the Tianguis [of Mexico]
is and always has been the property of the community of
Mexico and it has always been seen as and possessed by
[the community], as long as this witness has known, peace-
fully and without contest of any other person. And when
this witness was about ten years old [that is, around 1550],
during the time when an Indian named don Diego de San
Francisco [Tehuetzquititzin] was governor [of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan], this witness saw him divide the land [of the
tianguis] among the Indian craftsmen so that they would
hold the aforementioned land.” Another witness added that
to pay for the use of these spaces, these craftsmen would
send tortillas. 75 It is clear from the indigenous testimony
in this case that the tianguis lands were leased by the native
cabildo, but never fully alienated.
In contrast, the man contesting the native cabildo’s right
to control tianguis lands, a Spaniard named Diego Arias,
argued that any right the cabildo may have had had ceased
long before and that the land had been owned, and sold,
outright. In other words, the tianguis was private, not
communal, property. Such clashes, between an indigenous
understanding of communally held land and a Spanish
understanding of land as private property, were constant in
the valley. While some Spaniards who occupied property
around the Tianguis of Mexico joined the native cabildo in
their suit, the rationale presented by the latter was distinct.
Valeriano’s government argued that indigenous (and com-
munal) possession was established by the creation of the
space: “For the good of the community, we had laid out in
a square [quadrar] the tianguis. . . . Now both Spaniards
and naturales buy and sell all kinds of products in it and
the Tianguis is well-laid out, well-proportioned and square
[bien trazada e proporcionada e quadrada], its only flaw
being there is not enough space for such a large congrega-
tion of people, with hardly any room for all the naturales
and Spaniards.” 76
In arguing that the tianguis was communal property
that they controlled, the members of the cabildo of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan, led by Valeriano, carried forward a pre-
Hispanic category of communal land, but appropriated the
idea of the “traza,” the same idea that their counterparts on
the Spanish cabildo used to exert their hold on urban space.
In other words, to claim that the market was “trazado” was
not just to say it had been planned, its stalls laid out in
order; it was to use exactly the same language, and method,
that the occupants of the Spanish city used to stake their
claim on the island from the time of Alonso García Bravo,
the conquistador who laid out the Spanish traza at the
center of the city in the mid-1520s.
Representations of the space of the tianguis employ
a similar visual rhetoric of order. If we turn back to the
map of the Tianguis of Mexico, filled as it is with Nahuatl
glosses, we cannot be unimpressed with the regularity and
lucidity of its layout, based on blocks of four and five, with
slight extensions in some, so that within its framework, it
could accommodate all sizes of vendors (see figures 4.11
and 4.12). There is some evidence to suggest that the origi-
nal of this map (known only in the copy reproduced here)
was created during Valeriano’s reign. While an early inven-
tory calls it a work of 1531, this date is clearly in error: the
Tianguis of Mexico was not reestablished at this site until
1533, and three architectural features appear on it whose