14 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
around 1820. 25 Thus, using representations of space as a
starting point, and amplifying what they show (and some-
times, what they omit) and drawing on other data, can lead
us to the lived spaces of the city.
memoRy
While I have treated the three intersecting spheres, rep-
resentations of space, lived spaces, and spatial practices,
in a largely synchronic fashion, it is worth underscoring
their diachronic nature, and what a conservative force a
relationship to past representations and practices can be.
For instance, a city map, that representation of the space
par excellence, is indebted to earlier models of maps for
inspiration to its creator and for legibility to its audience.
A volume by one of Mexico City’s leading historians, Sonia
Lombardo, serves to make the point. Her Atlas histórico
de la ciudad de México discusses major maps of the city
in chronological sequence, and on its pages one can see
visual connections between many of the maps reproduced
therein, like links in a chain, as their makers updated
previous maps to better conform to the expectations of
their audiences about what a map should be, as well as to
changes in the urban form itself. 26 In other words, each
map of the present is indebted to a map of the past.
On an individual level, it is the capacity for memory that
ties urban dwellers to the city’s past, often through habitual
memory (this is the place to which I return to buy beans
and corn), an aspect of memory that has its greatest impact
on practices. But the past might also be drawn into the
present as urban dwellers remember specific occurrences
via mental retrieval and revival. This kind of memory might
be activated by an encounter with a specific place—thus
engaging the capacity of memory that Aristotle called
“anamnēsis”—the effort to recall. 27 In fact, in elaborating
on the ways that memories are constructed and reinforced,
scholars have emphasized the key role that spaces have.
While one’s first field of associations might be created
through deeply personal experience and lodged in indi-
vidual memory, like those one might have of the childhood
home or of the landscape of adolescent wanderings, other
place memories are shaped by collective social practices
and shared by a wider body of people. 28 One trigger
for place memory is the commemorative monument or
marker, which declares a particular spot as the place where
something happened. Place memory goes beyond the
physical monument; the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs
underscored the role of commemorative rituals in shaping
a sense of the past, as did Paul Connerton. 29 Such collec-
tive rituals make their mark on lived space and contribute
to the social nature of space, as underscored by Lefebvre:
“Itself the outcome of past actions, social space is what
permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others
and prohibiting yet others.” 30 Much of this capacity of
spaces to shape future action has to do with the memory
of urban dwellers.
The complex relation between representation, practice,
and memory can be seen in a street sign in today’s Mexico
City that names the spot as the “Puente de Alvarado,”
after a bridge that no longer exists, once standing at the
site of the “Salto de Alvarado” (Alvarado’s leap, figure 1.9).
This event occurred during the first phase of the city’s
conquest, at the end of June 1520; when the Spaniards
were first routed from Tenochtitlan, Cortés’s second-in-
command made a daring leap to safety across a canal. The
name on the street sign is a representation of the space,
installed and maintained by Mexico City’s government.
Well-schooled residents of the city today who take note
of the sign might carry its meaning downward into the
lived space of this street’s edge, drawing from an internal
cache of memories of a lesson learned in a history class.
In post-Conquest Mexico City, however, a practice in the
form of a procession also shaped the space, as on August
13th, the feast of San Hipólito, the city’s residents marched
toward this spot from the Plaza Mayor to celebrate the
day on which Cuauhtemoc was defeated and Mexico City
was founded. Thus, individual memories—of participation
in this parade or of viewing it as a spectator—also play afiguRe 1.9. Street sign, Puente de Alvarado, Mexico City, 2009.
Author photograph.