72
Only twenty months after Moteuczoma II paraded down
the causeway of Ixtapalapa in the regalia that conveyed
the sweep of his imperial power, in the city over which he
once ruled, corpses littered the streets and choked the fitful
canals, while the doorways of empty houses looked out
over abandoned chinampas and an overpowering stench
filled the once-clear air. The city the Mexica had so care-
fully built out of the lake was nearly unrecognizable and
Moteuczoma himself dead at the hands of an assassin.
The apocalypse began in 1520, as the Spaniards turned
on their Mexica hosts, who repelled them from the city
midyear. After regrouping and massing their indigenous
allies, the Spaniards returned to the Valley of Mexico and
inaugurated their deadly siege of the city on May 13, 1521,
with Cristóbal de Olid breaking the water pipes that sup-
plied Tenochtitlan from Chapultepec. Three months later
to the day, Cuauhtemoc, Moteuczoma’s successor, surren-
dered. 1 In the days following, the joined cities of Tenoch-
titlan and Tlatelolco were at first like any war booty, up for
grabs by the looting armies, who had their way with their
women and any remaining wealth. The Anales de Tlate-
lolco records: “Once the lords [including Cuauhtemoc]
were imprisoned, the people began to leave, they went
looking for a place to escape, they had hardly a rag to tie
around their waist. But the Christians looked everywhere,
ripping the clothes off women to search between their legs,
looking in their ears, in their mouths and in their hair.” 2
The victorious soldiers soon left—there was nothing to eat
in the city anyway—and Cuauhtemoc was allowed to give
the command to evacuate the city, so flooding out along the
causeways were the surviving Mexica who could muster
some desperate connection to relatives or contacts in the
lakeside cities, where there was water and the possibility
of a daily tortilla or bowl of gruel. Bernal Díaz del Cas-
tillo, who witnessed the scene, wrote, “During three days
and nights they never ceased streaming out and all three
causeways were crowded with men, women and children,
so thin, yellow, dirty and stinking that it was pitiful to see
them.” 3 A native account follows that trail of tears along the
causeways: “Thus was the manner in which the common
people left, when they scattered among the surrounding
cities, when they went for shelter in corners and between
h o u s e s .” 4 And in the once-glorious city, only a skeleton
crew remained.
Many histories of the Conquest close here, with the
scene of the defeated and vacant Tenochtitlan. They
thereby contribute to the myth of its death. 5 And sub-
sequent historical representations have perpetuated this
myth by zeroing in on the initial settlement by conquista-
dores. It began as Hernando Cortés stood on the ruined
grounds of the ceremonial precinct of the Mexica capital
in 1522 and began to parcel out lands to his men-at-arms.
By 1524, the streets of the traza (grid plan) were being laid
out by Alonso García Bravo (one of the conquistadores). 6
The rectilinear streets that composed the traza began to
extend outward from the center of the former sacred cer-
emonial precinct, and the pyramids and other works of
monumental architecture were quickly decapitated of their
topmost shrines, in time-honored fashion. Consider figure
4.1, from George Kubler’s influential Mexican Architecture