Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

84 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

created in and around the city. Since many of them date to
the 1560s or after, we see in them later historical consoli-
dation; nonetheless, the authority of their rulers contin-
ued to preoccupy Mexica elites, intellectuals, and scribes,
evidence that the careful ideological construction by pre-
Conquest Mexica rulers of their centrality—a centrality
hinging on their semidivine status—was not completely
dismantled over the course of the century. Just as native
manuscripts concur in showing an interregnum of rulers
of dubious legitimacy up to 1532, many of them agree on
their aftermath: a new leader was chosen who again mer-
ited being crowned with the xiuhhuitzolli and garbed with
the xiuhtilmatli-techilnahuayo. He was Huanitzin, one of
the highest-ranking members of the Mexica royal family, a
survivor of Cortés’s march to Honduras, a ruler who was
a pivotal figure in the creation of post-Conquest Mexico
City, much as Tlacotzin, the first post-Conquest ruler, had
been, and his vision for the city will be the subject of the
next chapter.

The Tianguis of mexico

Despite their dubious legitimacy, the gobernadores who
followed Tlacotzin were all involved in shaping the city’s
great tianguis. Under Xochiquentzin, the market was relo-
cated in 1533 to a site farther to the south from where it
had been under Tlacotzin, where it would remain through

the seventeenth century. A contemporary document makes

it clear that this relocation actually served to bring the

Tianguis back to its original, pre-Hispanic site. The Span-

ish cabildo, responding to Xochiquentzin’s petition not to

move the market, in turn requested of the Real Audien-

cia that “it not move the Tianguis of Mexico to where it

once was,” whereas, in the view of the audiencia, one of

the advantages of the new market was that it would be

returned to “where it was” (italics mine). 42 A detail from

the Map of Santa Cruz shows us a signal advantage of this

original site in revealing the deep blue lines of canals cut

into the lakebed and wending through the city that led to

the tianguis, which is identified on the map as “el mercado”

(figure 4.8). These water routes allowed goods and produce

to be brought in via canoes even in the dry season, the most

efficient and favored means of transport in the valley. The

water route between the post-1533 Tianguis of Mexico and

the southern chinampa regions, the area’s breadbasket, was

direct; on this detail of the western-oriented map, they lay

Acamapichtli

r. 1376–1395

Itzcoatl

r. 1427–1440

Tezozomoc

Atotoztli

Moteuczoma I

r. 1440–1468

Chimalpopoca

r. 1417–1427

Huitzilihuitl

r. 1396–1417

Axayacatl

r. 1468–1481

Tezozomoc

Acolnahuacatl

Moteuczoma II

r. 1502–1520

Cuitlahua

r. 1520

TezcatlpopocaCuauhtemoc

r. 1520–1525

don Francisco de

Alvarado

Matlaccohuatl

don Antonio Valeriano

r. 1573–1599

doña Isabel de

Alvarado Moteuczoma

don Cristóbal de

Guzmán Cecetzin

r. 1557–1562

don Antonio Valeriano

the younger

r. 1620s

don Diego de

Alvarado Huanitzin

r. 1537/1538–1541

don Diego de San Francisco

Tehuetzquititzin

r. 1541–1554

don Luis de Santa María

Cipactzin

r. 1563–1565

doña Francisca

Moteuczoma

m.

m.

m.

son

son

Tizocic

r. 1481–1486

Ahuitzotl

r. 1486–1502

figuRe 4.7. Genealogy of the indigenous rulers of Mexico-

Tenochtitlan belonging to the Mexica royal house, 1376–1620s.

Diagram by Olga Vanegas after María Castañeda de la Paz, “Sibling

Maps, Spatial Rivalries: The Beinecke Map and the Plano Parcial

de la Ciudad de México.” In Painting a Map of Sixteenth-Century

Mexico City: Land, Writing, and Native Rule, edited by Mary E.

Miller and Barbara E. Mundy (New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book

and Manuscript Library, 2012), 54.