The TLaTOani in TenochTiTlan • 59vital supply of freshwater, would have been the axis of the
new tlatoani’s inaugural procession.
This western axis out of the city was also the one used
when the ruler returned as victorious conqueror after a
military campaign. When Ahuitzotl returned home from
his scorched-earth campaign of the rebellious Teloloapan,
he first stopped at Chapultepec, where he was greeted by a
joyous procession of priests and elders. 27 To enter the city,
Ahuitzotl would have traced the route of the Chapultepec
aqueduct that linked the lakeshore site to the Tlacopan
causeway, thereby following the route of freshwater. No
doubt Ahuitzotl entered the city dressed in battle regalia,
making public the spoils of battle as well as revealing him-
self to the public. But the victorious tlatoani was not seen
just on the Tlacopan causeway; Ahuitzotl, flush with his
Tehuantepec victory, “then visited the temples of the dif-
ferent gods that were in the city, going to one each day.” 28
Since these main temples of Tenochtitlan’s component
altepeme lay outside the temple precinct, with their sacred
precincts set roughly on the intercardinal points, Ahuitzotl
might head out in a different direction on each of the days.
This four-day period was followed by a visit to the south-
ern lake districts, which took the victorious emperor and
his glittering court along the Ixtapalapa causeway.
So, despite the rhetoric of unseeability, Mexica rulers
were very visible within the city, usually as triumphant mili-
tary victors. The tlatoani’s movement through the city in
colorful and noisy processions would have reinforced the
importance of the principal axes, particularly the ones to
the south and the west. This latter one linked to Chapulte-
pec, the ruler’s ceremonial entrance to the city. One could
argue that the representations of the tlatoani’s power via
these public presentations were most closely shaped by
elite concerns. But in their encounter with spaces, they
could not be so hermetic, because the spaces of the city
had their own, independent public life. Thus, Chapultepec
was a particularly strategic point for ritual event, because
it was well known to the city’s populace (who manned the
work gangs to build and clean the canals) as the source of
life-giving freshwater.
Another important practice that served to inflect the
lived spaces within the city were the mitotes (from itotia,
“to dance”), or ritual dances, and we will encounter these
again in discussing the post-Conquest city in chapter 8.
These were a key feature of ruler accessions; Durán, who
offers the fullest account of the coronation of Ahuitzotl,
says that the feasting and dancing lasted for four days; such
four-day dances were repeated as part of the coronation
rituals of Moteuczoma II. 29 The coronation mitotes were
held within the palace walls and thus did not spill out into
public spaces, but the insistent beating of the loud drums
certainly did, as the sonic effect of the coronation perme-
ated every corner of the surrounding area.
The guest lists reveal something of their function,
although they were often secret, since many guests were
rulers of surrounding polities and thus officially “enemies.”
During the days of dancing, the guests were given rich
gifts of jewels, feathers, and cloth. In such an asymmetri-
cal exchange of gifts, the richness of the Mexica state was
meant to overwhelm rather than show affection, the kind
of gifting that Marcel Mauss would describe among chiefs
of the Canadian Northwest, where “the only way to dem-
onstrate his fortune is by expending it to the humiliation
of others, by putting them ‘in the shadow of his name.’” 30
The eating of mushrooms followed, to induce an altered,
hallucinogenic state, reserved for only the most sacred of
events. But dances were not just for coronation, as they
were part of almost any sacred event; priests and celebrants
sang and danced to welcome the victorious ruler into the
city; city dwellers sang and danced at almost every one of
the important veintena, or monthly feasts, happening every
twenty days, most likely filling the plazas of their altepetl
temple. In these dances, the unified and disciplined move-
ment of a large body of people gave a tactile presence to
ritual and social cohesion, as well as marked the spaces in
which they occurred.sPaTiaL agency
In the introduction, we saw the three intersecting spheres
that constituted the city’s space; one way of envisioning
them was to view them like a landscape captured in a
painting: the dominant foreground filling the view (repre-
sentations of space), the midground (the lived space that
includes the built environment), and the dimly perceived
background (practice), much of it lying beyond the horizon
line. But this metaphor rests on the idea that it is our gaze,
as we stand outside of our imagined picture of a past land-
scape, that perceives this triad and our minds that make
sense of the relationship between the three spatial strata or
spheres. But, of course, Mexica dwellers of the city did not
stand outside these spaces as we do, and from their vantage
within the landscape, these spatial spheres intersected and
interpenetrated into a seamless whole.