66 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
quality, and were both thought to share in the teotl of
Chalchiuhtlicue.
If teotl expresses this view of the world as a hierophany
and was made present to the residents of Tenochtitlan
through the motion or force that animated the natural
world and had agency within it, another Nahuatl word
was used to describe its expression or manifestation in
perceptible, concrete form. Teixiptla, those performed
images that were transubstantiations of the deities them-
selves, are best known as the richly garbed “deity perform-
ers” who played a central role in all Mexica ceremonies, as
they did in the opening of the Acuecuexco aqueduct in
- Here, the most important presence was the teixiptla
of Chal chiuhtlicue, a priest costumed as this deity, who
stood at the aqueduct accompanied “by all the priests of
the temples,” who played flutes and blew on conch-shell
horns to welcome the water into the city. 54 His costume is
carefully detailed in Durán’s account:
As [the water] began to run toward the city, a man disguised
as the goddess of the waters and springs appeared, dressed
to impersonate the deity, in a blue garment over which was
a surplice similar to a scapulary. This last was covered with
costly green and blue stones. He also wore a diadem made
of white heron feathers and his face was stained with liquid
rubber. His forehead was covered blue, in his ears were two
green stones, another on his lower lip, and on his wrists
he wore strings of blue and green beads. In his hands he
carried rattles shaped like turtles and a bag filled with the
flour of blue maize. His legs were painted blue and he was
wearing blue sandals, signifying the color of water. 55The priest was, in essence, a living manifestation of the
deity Chalchiuhtlicue; his presence, as he danced in neat,
measured steps, was meant to “welcome” the teotl of the
deity, as manifest in the current of water. Costume played
a key role in effecting this identification. In the image of
Chalchiuhtlicue from the sacred calendar represented in
the Codex Borbonicus, the figure’s costume is similar to
Durán’s description of the priest’s garb—she too wears
blue and green garments and a heron-feathered headdress,
her face and costume spotted with black rubber. More of
the relationship between the priest/teixiptla and the deity
he represented is revealed in the speech quoted by Durán:
Once in a while the man who was impersonating the deity
took some of the water in his hand and drank it, thenspilled it on both sides of the canal and, with great rever-
ence, spoke to the water: “O precious lady, welcome to your
own road! From now on you will follow this course and I,
who represent your image [semejanza], have come here to
receive you, to greet you and to congratulate you for your
arrival. Behold, lady, today you must come to your own
city, Mexico-Tenochtitlan.” 56The use of the imperative form by the speaking teixiptla
suggests not supplication, but the idea that control over
water was afforded when the teixiptla moved within the
ritual context created by the movements of the dance and
the music. In addition, the teixiptla made possible a “real
physical interaction” between the community of believers
and the deity. 57 And as old men threw fish and water snakes
and other amphibious creatures into the water along the
aqueduct before it entered the city, they spoke directly to
the deity, “telling the canal to carry them into Tenochtitlan
in order that they might reproduce there.” 58
As we envision the elaborately dressed human teixip-
tla of Chalchiuhtlicue standing at the edge of the newly
built aqueduct and welcoming the water into the city and
directing the flow through the aqueduct (“from now on
you will follow your own course”), we witness the human
teixiptla’s agency “disturbing the causal milieu,” in Gell’s
words, making itself known through the construction of
the aqueduct and the resultant change in Tenochtitlan’s
aquatic profile. This transfer of agency between deity and
its teixiptla allows me to venture that the stone sculptures
that dominate the known corpus of Mexica art were per-
ceived to have a similar agency. In their ornament-filled
surfaces, or evidence of ritual dressing, they share many
of the same features that transformed human actors, such
as rulers and priests, into deities. And the accounts of the
feeding of the “idols” on the part of Spanish observers all
point to sculptures as also animate beings, that is, pos-
sessing the same agency that both human performers and
sacred architecture did—to the point that they could bring
death. In the testimony offered in an idolatry trial of 1539,
one Mateo revealed that his father, a confidant of Moteuc-
zoma II, had been entrusted with an “idol,” almost certainly
the sacred bundle of Huitzilopochtli, to save during the
war of conquest. This sacred figure was described and pic-
tured to be little more than a bundle of cloth. Nonetheless,
Mateo described his father as having “a bundled idol that
he worshipped, very heavy, and that he never unwrapped
it, just worshipped it, and that no noble would ever unwrap