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CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
amos megged
The Ordenanza del Señor Cuauhtémoc Re-Visited
In a recent study of the famous Ordenanza del señor Cuauhtémoc Perla
Valle and Rafael Tena provide us with a scrupulous analysis and an
excellent translation of the full text, the glyphs, the various depictions
and Náhuatl annotations, the historic personalities, hydraulic works, and
local ecology, seen on the cadastral map of attached to this manuscript.
Nonetheless, throughout her study, Valle voices doubts as to the authen-
ticity of the given date of execution of this map, which was supposedly
composed in 1523, still during Cuauhtémoc’s lifetime and by his order;
she is absolutely right to lean towards a far more probable date of com-
position, around 1560, and bases her doubts on the Náhuatl paleogra-
phy, which is visibly that of the 1560s and not of the 1520s, as well as
on the dating of the hydraulic works that appear there. The date of
1523 can possibly be associated with the entire process of upheaval that
took place around Lake Texcoco concerning the division of the waters
and lands around it during Cuauhtémoc’s captivity.
Ending her study, Valle makes an important emphasis when she
adheres towards viewing this manuscript as perhaps an inseparable part
of the Primordial Titles’/Techialoyans’ genre.1 She may well refer there
to what I would like to further address here, namely, the powerful sense
of the longue durée that this particular manuscript as well as the rest of
the sources studied below manifest in conjunction with what the ‘’supra-
texts’’ of Lake Texcoco’s social memory expresses. The Ordenanza del
señor Cuauhtémoc could indeed be incorporated into the constantly en-
larging corpus of the by-now recognized Primordial Titles. The manu-
script, as its counterparts in this genre, contains sacred contents, rever-
ential addresses, historical personalities from the Chichimec past, as
well as a survey of boundaries. Furthermore, it also entails a judicial
process, taking place around the same time as the rest of the Primor-
1 Ordenanza del Señor Cuauhtémoc.
346 AMOS MEGGED
dial Titles (in 1704), as well as warnings supposedly issued by Cuauh-
témoc [The Eagle Descends] himself, against letting the Spaniards en-
croach the lands and waters of the Lake. He thus calls upon his people
to cherish this historical heritage, to preserve its values, to provide for
local necessities, and resist any future encroachment of the Lake.2 In
spite of the overall similarities and compatibility with the Primordial
Titles of the later eras, this particular manuscript is devoid of any Chris-
tian-Hispanic elements that vigorously intrude into its counterparts in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
What lies behind all this is what one seeks to uncover here, that is,
a more comprehensive explication of why and when this entire manu-
script and others of the such were initially composed and thereafter
re-asserted by the various towns and individuals involved. In 1708,
the inhabitants of the parcialidad of Santa María Mixihuca appealed
to the court of the Audiencia in Mexico City for the third time, for the
sake of gaining access to marshlands and reed on the shores of Lake
Texcoco. The two preceding appeals were in 1542 and in 1566. They
claimed that the Lake shores, the marshland, and reeds had belonged
to them for centuries back and was expropriated from them. Only on
20 May, 1712, were they allowed to present their case before presiding
judges together with an accompanying material of evidence which they
wished to spread open before them. The commissioned translator-inter-
preter of their appeal was Manuel Mancio. Mancio was already involved
during the same time in yet another important case fought in the court
of the Audiencia in Mexico City, and was possibly also the same person
behind most if not all of the Primordial Titles presented during the first
decade of the eighteenth century. The other lawsuit was fought in court
between the inhabitants of the parcialidad of Santiago Tlatelolco, as a
corporal body, with Don Lucas de Santiago, a native from the barrio of
La Concepción, as well as with some inhabitants of the barrio of San
Sebastián, between 1704 and 1708. The lawsuit concerned lands, ciénega
(marshland) and the Lake’s water and products, and what was presented
by the people of Tlatelolco in defense of their claims against the expro-
priation of their legacy and property were the three old maps and texts
painted on maguey paper belonging to the 1560s and earlier.3 There
were, undoubtedly so, other appeals and lawsuits that followed suit by
other members and corporate bodies of these communities bordering
the Lake shores with others, who sought to interrupt the old order of
2 Cédula dada por el emperador Quauhtemotzin, f. 16.
3 Título Primordial de Santa María Magdalena Mixihuca, Archivo General Agrario, exp.
23/899 (1708-1736).
347
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
things in the entire area, such as the owners of the Baños del Peñol 4 and
it was Mancio who was in charge of translating and interpreting the
pictorial and oral testimony presented by the litigants.
The significance of this entire process lay in the essence of the abil-
ity of these members and corporate bodies to bring forth a whole com-
plex of historic and memorial layers that transcended time and are
fully evinced in the explanations translated by Manuel Mancio, who
played a vital role in these dramas. Reading the appeals made by the
people of Santa Catalina, and of Santa María Magdalena Mixihuca, one
gets a clear sense of how, by the eighteenth century, such narratives
contained separate pieces of the past, pertaining to three different eras,
could eventually be taken over and be interwoven and maintained to
make a whole, coherent schema, based upon both pictorial and oral ac-
counts and testimony. We have in hand yet another Primordial Title
belonging to the same area and time period that might throw addi-
tional light on the state of local remembrance around Lake Texcoco and
its modus operandi during the first decade of the eighteenth century. The
consciousness and identification with these texts and pictorial accounts
and depictions was absolutely both vivid and lucid in 1704 as well as in
1712. What I suggest is to view this narrative plot from the vantage point
of the people who produced their Primordial Titles and presented them
in public between 1704 and 1712. Such view, in retrospect, may have the
advantage of enabling us to seek out the modus operandi of selectivity and
divergence within these local products of social memory as well as their
place in the very heart of the Primordial Titles’ genre.
Fragmented Memories of Lake Texcoco’s Towns and former Altépetl
The “sub-texts’’ produced by the diverse towns and groups living around
Lake Texcoco dealt primarily with as well as conveyed common, longue
durée Nahua patterns of shared sacred contexts, established in both oral
and pictorial traditions long before the Spanish Conquest, that seem-
ingly maintained cohesion and common affiliations. These sub-texts,
as I call them here, served to preserve and engender an ideal, ‘’utopic’’
social model. These principals of cross-ethnic relationships, retained in
the sub-text, strictly followed the centuries-long, multi-faceted creed of
social as well as spiritual bonding in Nahua thought, upon which Nahua
City-States (altépetl) were all founded. Implied is a ‘’Unity of Diversity’’,
4 Cédula Dada por el Emperador Quauhtemotzin para el Reparto de la Laguna Grande de
Tescuco en 1523. (México D. F.: Vargas Rea, 1943).
348 AMOS MEGGED
whereby diverse groups (calpolleque), settled together on a shared land,
each retaining their own autochthonous identity. At the center lay the
prime symbol of unity, represented by the Flowery Tree, which extend-
ed its branches across the universe and its all-embracing ramifications
reached all the way to the limits of the lands.5 Accordingly, the concep-
tualization of the borders (tepantli) signified for the Nahua that these
do not enclose the inhabitants from the outside, but allow the inclusion
of others, like the Náhuatl term tetlan, which means, ‘’among others’’,
‘’among peoples’’.6 The ‘’supra-texts’’, in contrast, usually deal with frag-
mentation and diversification of interests, vis-à-vis the new rulers, and
in this sense of the Post-Conquest, namely, the Spaniards. They were
thus usually composed by individual towns, struggling to claim a new
order, or by rivaling elite factions or individual nobles within a certain
community, for the particular sake of gaining special rights and privi-
leges. The supra-text in the social memory of towns and former city-
states (altépetl) around Lake Texcoco contained acts of deliberate “social
amnesia” that served, besides local interests vis-à-vis the Spaniards,
definitive political purposes of settling long lasting fueds among foeing
native parties. The initiative taken in this direction was not always based
upon power relations that, supposedly was largely the privilege of for-
mer dominant groups; the case of Tlatelolco presented below clearly
leads to this direction. Ancient legacies that survived in each of the
towns throughout the Central Plateau of Mexico during the 1560s and
70s, therefore, concerned in their very essence: the imposing contexts
of ethnic identities, hegemonies, and self-rule, before the Spaniards,
had now to be revived and re-told as a direct outcome of acts of the
rupturing of the old boundary-shrines. But, the way in which such leg-
acies were re-told to the Spaniards was emphatically devoid of its sacred
contexts, or, that these sacred contents remained veiled and incoherent
to the Spaniards. What I would further like to emphasize at this point
is the centrality of the performances of land and boundary surveys to
the re-assertion of local social memory between the early sixteenth and
5 See, an extensive treatment of this concept, as well as Alfredo López Austin’s em-
phasis on the axis mundi conceptualization of the Cosmic Tree, below; the ramification
of the Cosmic/Flowery Tree can be interpreted to represent each of the ethnic goups
or communities united together in harmony. In his beautiful anthropological study of
present-day Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala, Robert S. Carlsen refers to the Maya-Tz’útujil
expression Kotsej Juyu Ruchiliew, ‘’Flowering Mountain Earth’’, as a ‘’multidimensional’’
concept, refering to ‘’more than vegetation’’. It ‘’is a unifying concept, inextricably linking
vegetation, the human life cycle, kinsip, modes of production, religion, political hierarchy,
conceptions of time, and even celestial movements.’’ Robert S. Carlsen (The War for the
Heart and Soul of A Highland Maya Town), p. 50-52.
6 Campbell, Florentine Codex Vocabulary.
349
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
the early eighteenth centuries, as well as the overwhelming significance
of the process for the entire area studied. Just as the boundary-survey
conducted in 1532 between Totomihuacan and Cuauhtinchan was the
very background for the composition of the Mapa de los linderos de Cu-
auhtinchan y Totomihuacan and subsequently produced the Historia tolte-
ca-chichimeca, which in turn was presented in the framework of a lawsuit
between Cuauhtinchan and Tepeaca in 1546-1547.7 Such land surveys
and performances of tours of the terrain were absolutely essential for
the re-assertion of memory in this area of the Lake.
What is revealed to us from the contents of the first decade of the
eighteenth-century’s Primordial Titles of the Lake’s communities should
also be linked primarily with what was being projected already during
the first part of the sixteenth century out of the social memory pro-
duced around the Lake, by distinct towns and individual indigenous
nobles. It is there also that one is able to obtain part of the answers
concerning the origins and background to Cuauhtémoc’s Ordenanza: as
to why and when such a manuscript was composed, and what are the
inner and outer motives that triggered off the entire process of re-as-
sertion and a re-vindication of the area’s social memory of their past
deeds and glories.Where should one begin is in the evolving state of
fragmentation among the towns lying on Lake Texcoco’s shores, be-
tween 1521 and 1530, which brings about a subsequent climate of ap-
peals for rights and privileges drafted and presented to the Spanish
crown, between the early part of the 1560s and the 1570s by a number
of former city-states and towns around Lake Texcoco. In the core of all
these accounts lies the split and fragmented nature of this social mem-
ory, an inclination which is easily understood in the context of the long-
lasting power struggles between these city-states before the coming of
the Spanish Conquest.
During the first decade of the seventeenth century, Fernando de
Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, the Texcocan chronicler (1578-1650), was an heir of
Texcoco’s great ruling dynasty of Nezahualcóyotl (1402-1472) and of Ix-
tlilxóchitl II (1521-1531), as well as a distant relative of Cuitláhuac of
Tenochtitlan (died in December 1520). In the two other parts of his
opera magna, the Sumaria relación and the Compendio histórico he high-
lights Texcoco’s prominent role under the baptized Don Fernando
Tecocoltzin, Cacamatzin’s brother, in fighting along with the Spaniards
in the final acts of subjection of the Mexica territory. Tecocoltzin, the
plague-stricken and unnamed heir to the Texcocan crown, who re-
7 Luis Reyes García (Cuauhtinchan del siglo xii al xvi. Formación y desarrollo histórico de
un señorío prehispánico), p. 13.
350 AMOS MEGGED
mained in Tenochtitlan while his brother and three sisters were slaugh-
tered by the Spaniards, replaced Coanacochtzin, who had apparently
refused to succumb to Cortés’s demand for a total submission due to
Texcoco’s killing of forty-five Spanish soldiers and three hundred Tlax-
calans. He foresaw degradation and humiliation, and made the decision
to join Cuauhtémoc in Tenochtitlan. Tecocoltzin, who was the natural
son of Nezahualpiltzintli, was the first to be baptized in this great city-
state.8 According to Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, in his Compendio histórico, Don
Fernando Tecocoltzin, as he was now called, was “extremely white-bod-
ied and tall, as though he could have been like any Spaniard for his
whiteness…and had already mastered the Castilian language”. He was
appointed by Cortés as the new acting governor of Texcoco, and vigor-
ously continued Texcoco’s active cooperation with Spanish campaigns
of expansion and subjugation in Iztapalapan and thereafter in the en-
tire Valley of Mexico, mobilizing allied armies from Chalco and the
Acolhua for the final siege of Tenochtitlan and its subjects.
On the day of metlacatli omome calli, of the third month of hueytezo-
zotli, under Ixtlilxóchitl, Tecocoltzin’s brother and successor, Texcoco’s
army left for Tenochtitlan to wage the final battle on the city, entering
by way of Acachinanco, the muddy flats on the southern entrance to the
city, where former heroic battles between Texcoco and Tlatelolco were
once fought. The author then describes the scene in the plundered and
burned city of Tenochtitlan, on July 22, 1521. He describes how, during
that night, Ixtlilxóchitl watched “pleasingly” the Mexica coming out of
their hideaways, dying of hunger and thirst. Observing them he was
thus able to form his impression of what were the astounding circum-
stances in the heart of this city: “of hunger, and pestilences, that the
inhabitants underwent, and how by night…they came out to fish and
search for herbs and roots and tree barks to be able to endure...” The
author’s forefather, Ixtlilxóchitl, then informed Cortés of those sites
where the “unfortunate Mexica were”, and sent his soldiers to kill near-
ly a thousand of them, taking many others as captives. There is not
much sympathy here for this act. The author concludes the narration
of Tenochtitlan’s fall with the scene of Papantzin Oxocotzin, Mo-
tecuhzoma’s sister, Cuitláhuac’s wife, who, together with other principal
wives of Tenochtitlan’s ruling families, was being exiled to Texcoco;
Tecuichpoch (doña Isabel Motecuhzoma), and Cuauhtémoc’s consort,
was also among the noble women taken by Cortés, to later become his
mistress [mentioned in the Cantares mexicanos: “Tlaxcalan Piece”]. The
great looting of Tenochtitlan was then followed by the carrying away of
8 Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Sumaria relación, v. I, p. 389-92.
351
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
large numbers of men and women as slaves. Then, the final tally of
destruction and deaths on both sides: about 30 000 of Texcoco’s sol-
diers, 240 000 men of the Mexica, and much of the Mexica nobility, by
August 13, 1521.
In the Título primordial de San Miguel Atlahutla, one finds a brief
mention, in a unique way, of these last days: “Now, you should realize,
my beloved children, that when Christianity entered Mexico, they have
chosen who was to govern, when in Mexico and in Santiago Tlatelolco
they have made war, during ninety-two days, they have taken the shield
and the war club (macuahuitl) in their hands, in August of 1521 years.”9
On that same day, Tenochtitlan’s last ruler, Cuauhtémoc left the city,
sailing across the Lake by canoe, and surrendered himself to the Span-
iards. He was taken immediately to Cortés, and offered the latter to do
away with him, which Cortés repudiated. A short while later, he gave his
consent to one of his captains, Julian de Alderete, to interrogate Cuauh-
témoc using heavy means of torture, so that he should divulge where the
rest of his Empire’s gold was hidden. After his feet were burned by boiled
oil, Cuauhtémoc was finally left alone, gravely wounded.
During the following years, between 1521 and 1525, he remained
imprisoned, awaiting his fate. Meanwhile, he regained health, and was
baptized under the Spanish-Christian name of Fernando de Alvarado.
Alva Ixtlilxóchitl concludes his account of the Tenochca ruin with a few
lines dedicated to the death of Cuauhtémoc. He informs his readers
that according to the native lords, the pictograms, songs, and histories
of the land he consulted all tell of his death in the province of Acalan.
In yet another piece he had written, the Relación sucinta Alva Ixtlilxóchitl
made the choice of ending the part pertaining to the order of succes-
sion in Tenochtitlan with an epic description of Cuauhtémoc’s execu-
tion by Spanish captains in Acalan, in 1525, “being the one who de-
fended the city and lost it, garroted by orders of Cortés, with other lords
and rulers of Texcoco, Tenochtitlan and Tlacuba, and from other
parts.” 10 In the Compendio histórico Alva Ixtlilxóchitl supplies his own
reasoning for the Cortés’s actions: “Cortés killed him without guilt, only
to have the land remain with no natural rulers; the former, if he would
have been made by God to understand [his actions] he would have had
to maintain them under his eyes, and esteem them like precious gems,
which would have been the triumph of their deeds. Nevertheless, he
was always determined to do away with the nobles, and even his own
9 Títulos primordiales del pueblo de San Miguel Atlahutla, Ignacio Silva Cruz, Trans. and
ed. (AGN, 2002), f. 7r.
10 Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Relación sucinta, v. I, p. 410.
352 AMOS MEGGED
grandchildren, and conceal their actions, and leave all the glory to
himself…” 11
In the annal-type manuscript belonging to Cuauhtinchan, Libro de
los guardianes y gobernadores de Cuauhtinchan, one finds a parallel explica-
tion and information concerning Cuauhtémoc’s death. Under the en-
tery for the year 6 Tecpatl (1524), it says that, ‘’it was then that they
hanged the tlatoani [tlatoque]of Tlatelolco, Don Pedro Couanecotzin,
Cuauhtemoctzin and Tetlepanquetzatzin; they accused them, and the
Marquéz was informed that these three had authorized the act of assas-
sinating them (the Spaniards) on the road. Having heard that, the Mar-
quéz ordered to execute the tlatoani. Nevertheless, this was not true, and
not for this reason their souls were freed, but only that they were placed
on poles, hated, and ultimately murdered.’’12
In 1531, perhaps for the first time that a native town presented
litigation to the Spanish colonial court of the Audiencia in Mexico City
against another native town. The case was fought between the lords of
Santiago Tlatelolco and the town of Ecatepec, over rights over land and
calpulli, due to the usurpation and expropriation of lands and precious
possessions, belonging to their local supreme lord.13 Ex-calpolli (or,
estancias”) mentioned in the Tlatelolco-Ecatepec lawsuit, as those of
Acalhuacan, Coatitlan, and Tolpelac, were originally subjects of Tlate-
lolco; in 1531, Acalhuacan’s governor and nobility were still trying to
reappropriate these places, after they have been placed by Hernando
Cortés (in 1527) under the encomienda granted to Leonor de Mo-
tecuhzoma.14 Tlatelolco’s governor and nobility, on their part, were
correspondingly trying to re-appropriate these places after they had
been placed during the same year by Cortés under the encomienda
11 Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Compendio histórico, v. I, p. 479-505.
12 Libro de los guardianes, p. 40-71. Luis Reyes García (Cuauhtinchan del siglo xii al xvi.
Formación y desarrollo histórico de un señorío prehispánico), p. 35.
13 “El consejo, justicias y regidores del pueblo de Santiago Tlatelolco, contra el go-
bernador e indios del pueblo de San Cristóbal Ecatepec, sobre el derecho de la estancia
de Acalhuacan, 1562”, agI, Justicia, leg. 159, n. 5, testimony by Diego Gonzálo, Principal de
Coatitlan, 15 April, 1530.
14 Emma Pérez-Rocha (Privilegios en lucha, la información de doña Isabel Moctezuma),
p. 26-27, ibidem. One of the witnesses in the Tlatelolco-Ecatepec lawsuit, thirty-year-old Don
Francisco, principal de Coatitlan, attested that he saw how the native lords of Aculhuacan
would go to complain before Pedro Gallego, that the lords of Tlatelolco compelled them
to come and work for them at the royal court, and provide them with turkeys, maize, and
mantas. Gallego, who had been Leonor’s instructor before her first marriage to Juan Paez
(in 1527-8?), contested that, “if they do that, he would flog them and break the heads of
those in Mexico City”. Note that in their own litigation, the lords of Tlatelolco empha-
sized their autonomy from Motecuhzoma, and their separate rule from that of the greater
Tenochtitlan; Valderrama based his allegation on Cortés’s instruction from 1527.
353
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
granted to Leonor de Motecuhzoma, the heiress married now to a
Spanish conquistador, Pedro Gallego. How fragile and shaky was the
situation and power-balance in major areas around Tenochtitlan, even
ten years after the Conquest, is attested in the Anales de Cuauhtitlán;
according to these, Chiconahutla and Ecatepec, although tributaries of
Motecuhzoma [tequihuaque= “tributaries”] remained under their own
tlatoque until the Spanish Conquest, and the local rulers in Chicona-
hutla and in Ecatepec were, Tlaltecatl and Paintzin, respectively.15
As the early lawsuits conducted between Tlatelolco and its ex-de-
pendencies indicate, the lords of Tlatelolco, in effect, continued to ig-
nore Leonor’s rule, and compelled the local lords and inhabitants to
remain loyal to them only, and to refrain from rendering tributes or
services to either Leonor or to Christóbal de Valderrama, the ex-visita-
dor general of the Royal Council of the Indies in Spain. One should note
that in their own litigation the lords of Tlatelolco emphasize their au-
tonomy from Motecuhzoma, and their rule separate from that of the
greater Tenochtitlan; Valderrama based his allegation on Cortés’s in-
structions from 1527, and on a real cédula from 1529. Attached to the
litigation we find an appeal on behalf of the principales and inhabitants
of Acalhuacan to the Audiencia. In their appeal, they disclaimed their
declared belonging to the town of Ecatepec and maintained that they
had always been an integral part of Santiago Tlatelolco. Like Tlatelolco,
‘’they were now subject to His Majesty and not to any other encomen-
dero’’. In the past, they claimed, they had rendered a particular service
to Motecuhzoma as his vassals, but were never part of his patrimony. As
the rest of the inhabitants of Mexico, they had also recognized Mo-
tecuhzoma’s rule and jurisdiction, but not over their lands. Their juris-
diction could not be separated from that of Santiago Tlatelolco, nor
could it be considered void in the time when it had been granted by
Cortés to Malintzin, his spouse.16 On October 5, 1557, the Tlatelolco’s
attorney presented an original document dated March 27, 1537 of an
inventory of belongings, gold and jewlery, on a ship leaving Veracruz
for Castile in Spain. This also included the original litigation between
Cristóbal de Valderrama, and his wife Leonor de Motecuhzoma against
Don Juan and the principales of Tlatelolco. A copy of the original de-
nunciation made to the Audiencia in April 15, 1531, by Cristóbal de
Valderrama, against Don Hernando de Tapia and Don Juan, of Tlate-
lolco, who disclaimed his and his wife’s holding of Acalhuacan and
15 Anales de Cuauhtitlán, f. 83.
16 “El consejo, justicias y regidores del pueblo de Santiago Tlatelolco, contra el go-
bernador e indios del pueblo de San Cristóbal Ecatepec, sobre el derecho de la estancia
de Acalhuacan, 1562”, agI, Justicia, leg. 159, n. 5, f. 1289r.
354 AMOS MEGGED
Ecatepec.17 The third litigant, Arias Sotebo, contested by presenting his
own interrogation of the witnesses with regard to Motecuhzoma’s pat-
rimony over Ecatepec, Tlatelolco and all other towns under his Empire,
and what had been left as a deed to his daughters. Attached to the liti-
gation we find an appeal on behalf of the principales and inhabitants of
Acalhuacan to the Audiencia. In their appeal, they disclaimed their
declared belonging to the town of Ecatepec and maintained that they
had always been an integral part of Santiago Tlatelolco. Like Tlatelolco,
they were subject to His Magesty, and not to any other encomendero.
In the past, they claimed, they had rendered a particular service to
Motecuhzoma as his vassals, but were never part of his patrimony. As
the rest of the inhabitants of Mexico, they had also recognized Mo-
tecuhzoma’s rule and jurisdiction, but not over their lands. Their juris-
diction could not be separated from that of Santiago Tlatelolco, nor
could it be considered void in the time when it had been granted by
Cortés to Malinche, his spouse.18
One could obviously interpret their appeal as the lords of Tlatelol-
co’s taking advantage of the absence of Hernando Cortés from the col-
ony. The new circumstances provided an opportunity for them to regain
access and control over their ex-subjects such as Acalhuacan for a while.
In 1531, a Spaniard came to testify about the use by the lords of Tlate-
lolco, in this lawsuit, of pictorial cadastral maps. He interpreted Tla-
telolco’s intentions, as attempting to regain control over the estancias
[outlying communities] appropriated by Ecatepec and he tried to per-
suade the local lords in the estancias to abide to Tlatelolco only.19 On the
one hand, what the representatives of estancias such as Acolhuacan ob-
viously aimed at representing to the Spaniards a supra-text of a seem-
ingly complex schema that, presumably, once connected and related
everything to a coherent and a unified entirety: that the “estancias” were
barrios [tlaxilacalme] of Tlatelolco. This signified that the lords of these
estancias were closely related by marriage to the rulers of Tlatelolco and
17 “El dicho Marquéz no tuvo poder ni facultad para hacer la dicha encomienda a la
dicha Doña Leonor (doña Marina), a manera que hizo, dandole los dichos pueblos por
juro de heredad, pues para esto se requiere expresamente aprobacíon de Vuestra Real
Persona otra decir que Motecuhzoma era señor de esta tierra, que todo era suyo, por que
aún que así fuese, no por eso dejaban de aver particulares señores que tenían pueblos y
cosas conocidas suyas, y al tiempo del dicho Motecuhzoma los governadores del pueblo
de Tlatelolco tenían y poseían por suyo la estancia la qual ni es de los bienes ni del pa-
trimonio de Motecuhzoma ni de la dicha Doña Leonor.” Ibidem, f. 1292v.
18 Ibidem, f. 1289r.
19 “Un día les dijeron los governadores indios de México [Tlatelolco] que viesen un
papel que traían pintado, en que traían, puesta a Coatitlan y otras estancias, y que venían
a suplicar a estos señores y oidores que mandesen dar para servir de ellos y que estaba
alli el cacique de Coatitlan presente”.
355
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
that the peoples of Tlatelolco and those of the estancias intermingled
and married among them, and usually visited each other. They therefore
emphasized the rule of the councils of the Triple Alliance, held every
fifty-two days, during times of stress, rebellions, wars, among the three
lords, and in each of the kingdom’s capitals in turn. There, they would
also nominate officers for judicial matters or otherwise; the succession
of one throne depended on the consent of the two other rulers. On the
other hand, the legal representative of the counter-litigant towns, of
Ecatepec, based his rhetoric upon conceptual essences taken from the
Salamanca debates on the Just War. The time in question was thus di-
vided between the “time of the pagans” and the “time of the Christians”.
He emphasized that what had been justified in pagan times could no
longer be accepted under the permissible post-conquest circumstances.
No rule, once an acceptable norm, could now be taken for granted.
The close marriage ties that existed long, between the two lineages
of Ecatepec (Ehecatepec) and Tenochtitlan contributed its share to this
complexity, as the latter was the vicious enemy of Tlatelolco. In the
“Various High Tenochca and Tlatelolca Lineages”, Codex Chimalpahin,
it is said that a noblewoman Tlapalizquixochtzin became a female ruler
of Ecatepec (cihuapilli= “noble woman”) and then Motecuhzoma Xo-
coyotzin asked for and married her; she gave birth to doña Francisca
de Motecuhzoma. Yet, another great lord of Tenochtitlan married a
noblewoman of Ecatepec, and to them Don Diego de Alvarado Huan-
itzin, the last native ruler of Ecatepec before the conquest, was born.20
Apart from this tradition, there were the claims made by the local lords
of Tlatelolco over the territory. When the Spaniards arrived in the area,
Don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin, who was to become the local ruler,
was begotten by Tlaquilolxochtzin, a noble woman of Ecatepec, and of
Tezozzomoctli Aculnahuacatzintli, a prominent lord from Tenochtit-
lan.21 In 1529, Cortés backed the lords of Tlatelolco’s claims regarding
their possession. Such were the major themes and patterns thread in
the supra-text of these two towns.
In 1537, yet another major lawsuit was conducted between feuding
Nahua communities located around the Lake: between Tequizistlan and
Texcoco.22 The historical background for the feud between them, as
they remembred in court, could be traced back to the times of King
Nezahualcóyotl’s reign in Texcoco, during which he instituted and re-
20 “Various High Tenochca and Tlatelolca Lineages”, Codex Chimalpahin, v. 2, p. 101.
21 Codex Chimalpahin, v. 2, p. 101; P. Carrasco, “The Territorial Structure of the Aztec
Empire”, in Harvey (edit.), Land and Politics, p. 100.
22 “El consejo de los indios de Tequizistlan con los indios de Texcoco sobre ciertas
instancias de tierras, 1538,” agI, Justicia, leg. 128, n. 1, 139 folios.
356 AMOS MEGGED
inforced Acolhua control over the towns of Acolman, Teotihuacan, Te-
quizistlan, and Tepexpan and marked the exact boundaries between his
kingdom and that of the Mexica.23 The border with the Mexica and the
Tepaneca on the western side of Acolhua territory extended now from
near Cuitláhuac across the water to Tequizistlan and to the outlet be-
tween Lake Xaltocan and Lake Texcoco, thence north to Xoloc, and
northeast outside of the Valley of Mexico, to Tototepec. Nezahualcóyotl
is cited by the feuding parties to have placed walls (“morillos muy gruesos”;
tenamitl, in Náhuatl) and frontier-markers, along the line, the exact
boundary divisions of which were recorded in the local annals of each of
the towns, as is also attested by the Texcocan chronist, Alva Ixtlilxóchitl.24
These walls clearly correspond to the Albarrada de Nezahualcóyotl
which is depicted on the above map of the Ordenanza del señor Cuauhté-
moc, traversing Mount Tepetzinco to the south-east, and are also anotted
in the accompanying text of the sixth boundary-marker.
In the Crónica mexicáyotl written by Alvarado Tezozómoc, it is respec-
tively accounted how the Mexica king, Motecuhzoma I, assigns Tequizis-
tlan as the extreme point where the boundary between the Mexica and
Acolhuaque territory dividing Lake Texcoco between the two kingdoms,
should run, and the line passing through the reed fields, in the middle
of the lake. The ritualized form of marking the boundaries is well at-
tested in this account: the Mexica king makes it public knowledge that
he intends to follow the necessary ritual procedures, stopping in Chiqui-
uhtepec to make the Cloud of Smoke sign (Señal de humareda), then
proceeding to Tultepec and from there to Tequizistlan.25 The lords and
governors of the Náhuatl-speaking Tequizistlan also represented their
aspirations and goals to the Spaniards, in the light of its geo-political
situation. Located on the western side of the Acolhuacan/Chichimeca
territory and province, Tequizistlan belonged to what Carrasco describes
as having been part of the “third territorial category”. Those were towns
that were “under the orders of stewards of the great king of the capital
city…there was no lord but only headmen [mayores] and officials [prin-
cipales] who ruled them. All were like tenants (renteros) of the lord of
Texcoco.”26 Situated on the most western point of the Acolhua territory,
at a distance of only five leagues from Tenochtitlan, and two from Tex-
coco, so close to Mexica control, Tequizistlan‘s local oligarchy naturally
felt threatened by the new circumstances. They therefore responded to
the new state of things by assigning their local tlacuilco to manufacture
23 Gibson, The Aztecs Under Colonial Rule, p. 18, 24.
24 Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Historia chichimeca, p. 158
25 Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicáyotl, p. 74-75.
26 Carrasco, “The Territorial Structure”, p. 97.
357
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
a “novel” version of its history that served the purpose of dis-association
from the rule of Texcoco. Around 1515, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin ap-
pointed his son-in-law, Cacamatzin, over Texcoco; the state was then
divided between supporters of Ixtlilxóchitl, to whom the rule over
Otumba [Otompan] was granted, and those of Cacamatzin. Ixtlilxóchitl
made Teotihuacan and Otompan his “cabeceras”.27
When Hernando Cortés had left for Hibueras in 1526, the lands of
the calpulli of Tequizistlan were granted by the ruling lord of Texcoco
to Don Juan Quxualtecl, a privileged nahuatlato (translator) serving the
Spaniards and living in Coyohuacan. The deal was that the lords of
Texcoco would still continue to harvest these lands, leaving half of them
behind to the macehuales who were tenant -farmers living on them, and
who were obliged to serve the nahuatlato with water and wood. The
lands were still considered by then to be part of the barrios [tlaxilacalme]
of the City-State of Texcoco and not a town on its own, and were de-
picted as such in the pictographic cadastral maps. One should also be
aware of the fact that on January 4, 1537, the indigenous town, that is,
the corporate enterprise of Texcoco, was established by the authority of
Viceroy Mendoza, and a title-deed was granted by Don Antonio Pimen-
tel, governor of Texcoco, on the orders of Fray Juan de Alameda.28
Great parcels of land, however, including royal property that was part-
ly shared with Spanish patrons remained private and came under dis-
pute when the Oztoticpac Lands Map was presented in court by 1540.29
Don Juan Quxualtecl owned the lands between 1524 and 1530, when
they were again retaken by force by the lords of Texcoco. Post-conquest
accounts on internal conflicts over inheritance within the Texcoco rul-
ing oligarchy between the inheriting noble brothers begin to surge right
after the establishment of the encomienda system in the area, by 1528-
9. Don Pablo, the elder son of Nezahualpilli ruled in succession after
the conquest. His younger brother, Tecocoltzin, was nominated by Cor-
tés as the present ruler. As to the division of lands: Tollancingo, for
example, was given to Don Carlos by his half-brother, Hernando Cortés
Ixtlixocochitl, and his uncle Don Pedro Tetlahuehuetzquitzin gave him
a large estate known as Octicpac. Those inner conflicts and the chance
exploited by one or two of the brothers to go on raids over adjoint
27 Joaquín García Icazbalceta, Nueva Colección de documentos para la historia de México,
v. 3: Juan Bautista Pomar, Relación de Tezcoco, Joaquín García Icazbalceta; also, Offner,
“Aztec Legal Process: The Case of Texcoco,” p. 241.
28 MacAfee, Byron and R.H. Barlow (eds. and trans.), “The Titles of Tetzcotzinco
(Santa María Nativitas)”, Tlalocan 3, no. 2, 1946, p. 110-127.
29 H. R. Harvey, “The Oztoticpac Lands Map: A Reexamination”, in Harvey (edit.),
Land and Politics, p. 163-185.
358 AMOS MEGGED
towns’ lands, could partly explain the raid on Tequizistlan’s lands, and
it is probable that therefore the entire action was masterminded from
Ixtlilxóchitl’s place of reign in Otumba.30
The Tequizistlan case was a combination of circumstances. Texcoco’s
acts against Tequizistlan, between 1526 and 1530, were well rooted in
Texcoco’s intentions during the first decade or so after the Conquest,
intentions to re-conquer lands and communities that were formerly part
of their altépetl and were granted independence under separate enco-
miendas. The Texcocan brothers were also well aware of Cortés’s ab-
sence from the area, and of the still shaky repartimiento system. But the
feuding brothers obviously took advantage of Tequizistlan’s desire for
independence, to seek revenge over its ruler and to humiliate the entire
town. The aims of those communities that sought separation and inde-
pendence was to mobilize the help of more senior towns, which were
part of the great Texcocan hegemony, such as Tepexpan, and their
historical depository. Similarly, during the lawsuit’s continuous hearing
throughout 1538, Don Diego Mexialtecle, a witness belonging to the
local nobility of Tepexpan, had testified how his supreme ruler pos-
sessed a set of cadastral maps indicating the situation that had existed
in his area before the Spaniards arrived, as well as Tequizistlan’s his-
torical precedence over Texcoco. He recalled how he had viewed these
“maps” many times in the past and that “they were extremely large,
about three feet wide.”31 Tepexpan, by then, was already establishing
its own process of creating a official story that would reinforce its claims
of a separate ethnicity, its long history as an independent entity, and its
direct association with the royal line at Tenochtitlan.
How was the fate of such endeavors for independence recorded?
The Tira de Tepexpan executed in different phases by local scribes-paint-
ers (tlacuilo) in this town was made up of a series of pictograms, to which
Latin characters and Náhuatl phrases, written in the Spanish language,
were added, as well as figures of historical personalities of the New Spain
colony. Tepexpan was eager to attest to its favorable relationship with
the Spanish Conquerors.32 The Mapa Quinatzin, owned around 1600
by the Texcocan historian, Alva Ixtlilxóchitl depicts, on leaf three, vari-
ous crimes and their punishments. Column two, second row, illustrates
a series of three warnings administered to a “rebellious” ruler, by the
agents of the “Triple Alliance”.33 Jerome Offner comments on this: “…
30 Codex Chimalpahin, “Juan de San Antonio’s Letter”, p. 230-231.
31 agI, Justicia, leg. 128, n. 1, f. 79r.
32 J. H. Hernández, “Tira de Tepexpan”, Revista Histórica, v. I, n. 3, 1984, p. 17-19;
Boone, “Pictorial Documents and Visual Thinking ”, p. 189-90.
33 Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Historia chichimeca, v. II, p. 191.
359
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
it appears that column two deals with offences against rulers and ruler-
ship,” and asserts that final determination of those cases was carried out
at the nappapoallaolli (eighty-day council) in the Texcoco capital.34 By
1530, this council virtually no longer functioned, but Texcoco exercised
retaliation and punishment for such offences outside court, but with the
same severity and rigorousness as determined in the Otumba execution,
above. Many among the Triple Alliance’s subject towns filed claims for
independent status in the Audiencia of Mexico from the early 1530s and
up to the 1560s; they had once been inseparable from the former
great hegemonies such as those under the altépetl of Texcoco. In 1537,
Tequizistlan was among them. Two years after the beginning of the Te-
quizistlan court hearing, in 1539, Texcoco was shaken by yet another
dramatic development, when Don Carlos Mendoza Ometochtzin, the
ruler of Texcoco, was executed by orders of Archbishop Zumárraga for
heresy.35 In the course of the auto cabeza del proceso against Don Carlos,
which began in June 1539, his landholdings in Oztoticpac came under
review of the court. The cadastral maps of his palace, fields and orchards
were updated by local tlacuilco to set up an exact record of his lands, as
well as the rights by which he owned them, and the rents and taxes he
received from them. The Tequizistlan case is, therefore insparable from
the internal turmoil within Texcoco’s ex-altépetl.
The 1537 presentation in the court of the Audiencia in Mexico City
was clearly associated with memories going back to long before the
Conquest. In his second appearance in the Audiencia on 20 May 1537,
Don Juan, the acting cacique of Tequizistlan after Itzcayque’s death,
presented a rather complex interpretation of history, based upon the
early, deviating version assigned during the late 1470s for the local
tlacuilco to record. According to Don Diego Mexialtecle, one of the lords
who accompanied Don Juan: “Those of Tequizistlan were among the
first settlers and founders [on these lands] and inhabited them well
before those who established and populated Texcoco and became its rul-
ers. And thereafter they had placed the corner stones between the two
towns, marked and named...they came up with their tributes to the lords
of Texcoco, but that each of the towns had its own proper ruler.”36 Don
Juan started by carefully describing Tequizistlan’s independent role and
status as linked to its Chichimeca past, and he indirectly blamed the
“tyrants of Texcoco” for ruling over them without any real right before
the Conquest. Don Juan and the lords of Tequizistlan who appeared in
34 Jerome A. Offner, “Aztec Legal Process: The Case of Texcoco”, in Elizabeth Hill
Boone (ed.), The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, p. 141-158.
35 Codex en Cruz, Charles E. Dibble (ed.), p. 52.
36 agI, Justicia, leg. 128, n. 1, f. 8r.
360 AMOS MEGGED
court with him, acknowledged the ancient right of the lords of Texcoco
over their jurisdiction, but claimed that the jurisdiction of the altépetl
was limited to senioral rights and a limited amount of tribute only. Rule
and ownership of land and control over the macehuales was, accord-
ingly, always confined to the local lords,or, teuctli and their tecalli and
never to the tlatoque of Texcoco, until the lords of Texcoco had taken
their lands by force, before the arrival of the Spaniards. Don Juan also
quoted Cortés’s decree issued in Coyohuacan that all the former rulers
of altépetl should be fully aware that all the lands taken by force and
compulsion should be returned to their legitimate owners.
According to the historical version presented by Don Juan, Texcoco
played a malignant, destructive role in contributing directly to the dis-
integration that occurred in the indigenous society as a direct result of
the Conquest and its local collaborators. That is, by letting the Span-
iards in, to “end their tyrannical subjection”, as well as by “looting the
land and bringing oppression upon their people”, Texococan rulers
had presumably forsaken their pre-Conquest loyalties.37 Don Juan went
on to describe Ixtlilxochitzin’s rule (the tlatoani of Texcoco), as oppres-
sive at first; and then, the change into the Spanish encomienda system,
as a relief. This can also be related to what is told in the “Texcoca Ac-
counts of conquest Episodes”, namely, that after the Spaniards confined
the rulers of the Triple Alliance in Coyohuacan, “Atenco, Tlaixpan,
Papalotla, Calpulapa, and manymore places that we abandoned used
to belong to Nezahualcoyotzin”.38 What is manifest is, the conception
of “a supreme form of justice”: accordingly, the Spaniards carried out
this justice in the form of restituting the lands and property unjustly
expropriated by the lords and altépetl of Texcoco before their arrival.
They, thereafter, granting each cabecera its “justified” autonomy, as sep-
arate from the overall structuration and empowerment of the new co-
lonial regime. The Marqués’s instructions had been carried out prompt-
ly from Coyohuacan, as Don Juan attested. Don Juan, the governor of
Tequizistlan and Tototzingo, displayed in the court of the Audiencia a
series of pictograms or “paintings” depicting the acts of plunder, usur-
pation, robbing, and assassination of his predecessor in office and his
37 Ibidem Ixtlilxochitzin is mentioned in the “Texcoca Accounts of conquest Episodes”
[Anonymous and by Don Pablo Ahuachpain, Don Francisco de Andrada, and Don Lorenzo],
as the elder brother, supreme lord of Texcoco upon the arrival of Cortés in the city-state.
His younger brother, Tecocoltzin, was set up as the ruler by Cortés. When Ixtlixochitzin
died, he designated Don Jorge Yoyontzin to be the ruler, who was succeeded by Don Pedro
Tetlahuehuetzquititzin; Don Pablo is one of Nezahualpilli’s sons who ruled in succession
after the conquest. Codex Chimalpahin, p. 190-191, 202-203, 208.
38 Ibidem, v. 2, p. 191.
361
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
precious possessions, by the governor and lords of Texcoco. One by one,
Don Juan’s witnesses appeared. Assisted by the pictograms, they re-
called the sequence of events that had led finally to the assassination
of their supreme lord, and to the dispossession of his lands. As the
pictorials determined to stress, and as the witnesses had dramatically
attested, one night, in 1530, Ixtlilxóchitl, the supreme lord of Texcoco
who had previously assisted Cortés in his final conquest of Tenochtit-
lan, and his nobles came to Tequizistlan and forcefully entered the
lodgings of Itzqaique, the local governor. Then they carried him away,
enclosed in a wooden cage, to a ravine near Otumba, where he was
executed without a trial.39 On the same occasion, the Texcocan lords
were said to have also reentered the town and plundered Itzqaique‘s
household, as an act of vengeance and humiliation, taking away with
them much of his golden jewels, rare feathers, and royal ornaments
and clothes.
A year or so later, during the time when Tequizistlan remained
without a ruler, a few of the Texcocan lords, among them Don Pedro
Tetlahuehuetzquititzin, had also seized some of the lands that were both
part of Itzqaique’s “private possession” (as pillalli, or lordly lands) and
as part of the corporate town, the estancias de Ixtapa y Nesqupuy-
aque.40 Before the court was the fact that prior to Ixtlilxóchitl‘s death,
away from his seat in Otumba, the oidores of the Audiencia had already
expropriated from him the lands formerly belonging to Texcoco that
he had taken by force from other ex-cabeceras. Ixtlilxóchitl was then
forced to flee from Otumba and seek refuge at the Franciscan monas-
tery in Texcoco. As an epilogue to the course of events, we find one of
Don Juan’s witnesses, Martín Taateal, principal of Huexutlan, recalling
how he was well aware of the fact that Ixtlilxochitl had fled to the Fran-
ciscan monastery in Texcoco, “so that they would not seize him for the
ill treatments he had committed against the inhabitants of the entire
area. There he died painfully.”41 In the letter of Juan de San Antonio,
in the Codex Chimalpahin, one reads a short account stating that before
he died, in 1531 at the monastery, Ixtlilxóchitl dictated a will in the
presence of Fray Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo, entrusting the lands to
his brothers.42 According to Codex Chimalpahin, when Ixtlixochitl died
39 Enclosure in a wooden cage was, apparently, a common punishment meted out by
the judges in the Tlacxitlan in pre-Columbian Mexico. Thus, Sahagún tells us, “one would
be seized and jailed in a wooden cage”, Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 8,
Chapter 14, p. 41-45.
40 agI, Justicia, leg. 128, n. 1, Ibidem, f. 2v.
41 Ibidem, f. 36r.
42 Codex Chimalpahin, v. 2, p. 211.
362 AMOS MEGGED
he designated Don Jorge Yoyontzin to be the ruler, who was succeeded
by Don Pedro Tetlahuehuetzquititzin.43 It was the latter who stood in
court in defense of Texcoco, in 1537.
During the early 1560s, the important town Tlacopan (Tacuba), that
was part of the prestigious league of the Triple Alliance before the com-
ing of the Spaniards, presented its own history of its glorious past, in
an attempt to legitimize the position, land holdings, and rights to trib-
ute by the heirs of Doña Isabel, Motecuhzoma’s daughter. Cortés as-
signed Tacuba to himself, but it was seized by the acting governors in
1525. The following year, Cortés set aside Tacuba as a permanent grant
to Isabel Motecuhzoma and her descendants. The encomienda outlived
her first two Spanish husbands, Alonso de Grado (died by 1527) and
Pedro Gallego (died in 1531) and married a third, Juan Cano, before
her own death in 1550. At this time, the tributes were divided among
the four claimants, the widower Cano (who died in 1572), his two sons
by Isabel, Pedro and Gonzalo, and the eldest son of Isabel by Pedro
Gallego, Juan de Andrade (Gallego) Motecuhzoma. Isabel’s third hus-
band, the Spaniard Juan Cano commissioned one of the Franciscan
friars from Culhuacan to “translate” the ancient, pictorial accounts of
the Valley of Mexico into Spanish. The work, entitled Relación de la
genealogía e linaje de los Señores... de la Nueva España”, and “Orígen de los
Mexicanos” were both dispatched to the Spanish monarch, Charles V. 44
And in 1548, Juan Cano appealed to the Audiencia on behalf of his
wife, doña Isabel, for a restitution of her rights over her father’s patri-
mony, as well as that of her maternal grandfather, Ahuitzotl; her par-
ents’ patrimony included among many other possessions, lands under
Tlacopan’s jurisdiction, Chichiguautla and Aguatepec. The appeal was
made in two separate parts; the first, between 10 January and 21 June
1548, and the second, between 29 April and 23 June 1553, after Isabel’s
death. The final verdict by the Audiencia was given in 1556.45 Ten years
later, in 1566, Don Antonio Cortés, the governor of Tacuba (Tlacopan)
and his fellow principales filed an appeal in the court of the Audiencia
in Mexico City that their town be incorporated within the jurisdiction
of the royal crown and thus be exempted from paying tributes. To
achieve this goal the Tacuba dignitaries emphasized Tlacopan’s central
role in the administration and operation of the Triple Alliance hege-
mony before the Conquest, and for this purpose they brought forward
43 Ibidem.
44 Joaquín García Icazbalceta, Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de México,
5v.; v. 2, p. 240-280.
45 Privilegios en lucha, la información de doña Isabel Moctezuma, p. 16, 23.
363
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
some of the senior witnesses who had previously testified in favor of
doña Isabel.46
Their testimony throws significant light on the living memory of
the great traditions of rule around Lake Texcoco, mobilized during the
1560s for the sake of obtaining certain prerogatives from the Spanish
crown. On 15 March 1566, Don Antonio Cortés addressed a letter to
the monarch of Spain explaining the background for his and his digni-
taries’ petition for special rights. This was followed on 23 August 1566,
by a formal petition presented to the Audiencia on behalf of himself
and forty-nine members of the local nobility of Tlacopan, accompanied
by a registry of the names of local nobles to be perpetually exempted
from tribute.47 The list began with the twelve presiding judges of the
Supreme Council of Tlacopan (tecutlatoque), with Don Jerónimo de
Aguila heading the list, the seven tequitlato [or, tribute gatherers], as well
as thirty others of the local nobility, who were not in office (pilli= hijos
dalgo”). Between 7 September 1566 and 2 March 1567, Don Jerónimo
de Aguila presented the court with a number of Spanish and native
lords as witnesses as part of the Interrogation (interrogatorio) carried out
on their behalf. Those included Pedro de Menses and Alonso Ortiz de
Zumisa, Spanish conquistadores of Tenochtitlan; lords and principales
from Coyoacan; lords from the barrios of San Juan and San Sebastián,
in Mexico City; lords and principales from Tlatelolco, from the towns of
Tula and from Tepexi del Río, as well as Fr. Alonso de Molina Girona
from the Franciscan monastery in Santiago Tlatelolco. The latter was pos-
sibly behind the drafting of some earlier accounts. Juan Grande was ap-
pointed as a translator from Náhuatl and as the scribe.
The first four questions in the Interrogation are related to the spe-
cial status of sovereignty and self-rule that Tlacopan maintained
throughout the pre-Columbian period and the subject towns under its
jurisdiction. The fifth question centers on Tacuba’s benevolent role
under the Spanish rule and its obedience to the Audiencia. The sixth
concerns the rules, norms and ceremonies of succession under the for-
mer rule of the Triple Alliance. The seventh deals with the last supreme
rulers of Tlacopan and Texcoco and their present, legitimate heirs. In
Tlacopan, Totohuiquatzin, who ruled between 1489 and until the Span-
ish Conquest, was the last among these rulers of the Triple Alliance to
be seen to conduct the ceremony of bequeathing his rule to his son, Don
46 “Don Antonio Cortés, cacique, y los demás principales del pueblo de Tacuba, sobre
que se ponga el dicho pueblo en la corona real y les conmute los tributos en otras partes,
1566”, agI, Justicia, leg. 1029, n. 10.
47 “Para Regimientos perpétuos del Cabildo de la ciudad de Tlacopan, siendo Su
Magestad servido”, Ibidem.
364 AMOS MEGGED
Antonio Cortés. One of the indigenous witnesses from Tula, Juan Tla-
cuchexia, recalled how he was present at Totoquihuatzin’s deathbed.
And in Texcoco, the last ruler before the Spaniards was Cacamatzin who
having no children, bequeathed the throne to his brother, Coanaco-
chtzin, who was succeeded in turn by Don Hernando Pimentel (between
1545 and 1564), his elder son and the ruling governor of Texcoco.48
The eighth described a solemn ceremony held in Mexico City during
which the three former rulers of Tlacopan, Texcoco and Tenochtitlan
took oath to remain forever loyal to the king of Spain, Philip II; this
was probably in 1557, on the occasion of celebrating the king’s acces-
sion to the throne (also mentioned in the Códice de Tlatelolco, leaf No.
6). Two of the first Spanish conquistadors of this region, sixty-year-old
Pedro de Menenses and sixty-eight-year-old Alonso Ortiz, were brought
into court to speak on behalf of Tacuba, and testify about what they had
witnessed when they first arrived in the Valley of Mexico and to Lake
Texcoco. They said that they were fully aware of the extent of the rule
of the three kingdoms of the Triple Alliance and their delineated limits of
jurisdiction. Ortiz spoke Náhuatl and apparently was well acquainted
with three lords of Texcoco and Tacuba. He said that he was aware of
the fact that after he had conquered new parts he saw how the locally
installed calpixqui of each of the three altépetl still represented a third
part of the total rule of that particular province or town conquered; the situ-
ation remained so until the local ruler was finally disposed of by the
Spaniards. Ortiz also informed the court that while the rulers of Tenoch-
titlan and Texcoco, Cacamatzin and Motecuhzoma were imprisoned by
Cortés, they were still considered both by the Spaniards and the in-
digenous population as legitimate rulers. He had initially heard about
the three kingdoms from the lords of Tlaxcala, and thereafter from the
supreme lords of the three kingdoms themselves.49
According to additional noble witnesses coming mainly from Tex-
coco, the division of power among the Triple Alliance city-states was
based upon a tripartite organization, established by the primordial
kings. The entire region that composed the alliance was divided into
three parts, each defined geographically as the domain of one of the three
capitals.50 The three altépetl maintained their own governing body and
courts of justice. The ruling council consisted of twelve members who
48 See also, “Texcoca accounts of conquest episodes”, Codex Chimalpahin, v. 2, p. 205.
49 agI, Justicia, leg. 1029, f. 6r-7v.
50 See also, Pedro Carrasco, The Tenochca Empire of Ancient Mexico, p. 29. On the Triple
Alliance, see also, Susan Gillespie, “The Aztec Triple Alliance”, p. 236-239, especially her
remark that, “a re-analysis of these texts [the documents related to the Triple Alliance]reveals
how the “remembrance” of the “Triple Alliance” varied considerably along ethnic lines”.
365
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
presided over and administered their levying of tribute and labor re-
cruitement on the basis of an autonomous rule and legislature without
outside interference, each of the rulers on his own account and over his
own judicature.51 Each of the altépetl had its distinct “republics” of sub-
ject headtowns but in times of war and rebellion, they would get to-
gether in each of the kingdom’s capitals. In times of peace, elections of
new office-holders for matters of justice or otherwise, would take place
every eighty days when they would convene in each other’s capital.52
Succession in each of the city-states depended on the consent of the two
other lords/kings. Upon the death of one of the three hueytlatoani (the
supreme ruler), the others would convene and thereupon nominate his
successor- his elder son. In a ritual of accession, with all the three of
them wearing feathered headdresses, they placed their right hands on
the nominee’s head. The witnesses of Texcoco testified that they had
been present on one such occasion. The latest of such ceremonies took
place in Texcoco in 1519, when Cacamatzin, the last supreme ruler was
about to die, and chose Coanacotzin, his brother as his successor. “Like-
wise they conducted their ceremonies, electing him as such supreme
ruler of such head-town in place of his father, and as such he would be
confirmed by the rest, who would also see to it that he should be obeyed
and the rest of the lords reaffirmed his nomination and treated him in
the same manner as his late father, before he died.”53
During the mid sixteenth century, yet another lengthy lawsuit over
lands, boundary-shrines, and limits, between the town of Culhuacan
and the town of Xochimilco, was also conducted in the Audiencia in
51 Motolinía describes this council in Texcoco as consisting of six sets of two judges,
each of which was responsible for six large territories. The matters of law were dealt with by
two supreme judges and the local ruler. Offner, Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco, p. 56.
52 On the “Eighty-day council” see, Juan de Torquemada, Torquemada, Monarchía
indiana v. 2, p. 355. An eighty-day period is also mentioned as a period of examination
exercised by the Tenochca vis-à-vis potential allies in order to examine their loyalty,
during which their rulers would have had to remain enclosed in their palaces and their
temples would not operate. See, Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, Chapter 48, on
the instruction to the lords of Tenantzinco.
53Así mismo hacían sus ceremonias nombrándole por tal señor de la tal cabecera en lugar
del dicho su padre, y por tal le confirmaban y mandaban que le obedescazen por tal señor y los
otros señores le renombraron y le tenían como a su padre de antes que muriese.” agI, Justicia, leg.
1029, n. 10, March 15 1566, f. 11v-13r, Seventy-five-year old Alonso Nuñez, principal of
Texcoco (born in the year of the Discovery), and fifty-nine year-old Lorenzo Maldonado
principal of Texcoco. See also, Gillespie’s remark that, “investigating how the Triple Alliance
came to be incorporated into the historical traditions requires a thorough reexamination
of the salient documents —both the historical narratives and these other types of re-
cords— against the larger background of events that affected the sociopolitical organiza-
tion of indigenous peoples in the first century after the conquest.” Gillespie, “The Aztec
Triple Alliance”, p. 241.
366 AMOS MEGGED
Mexico City between 1551 and 1573. The manuscripts related to this
lawsuit correspond to two phases: the first, which began in 1551 and
ended in 1573; the second, between 1703 and 1714, was inseparable
from the composición de tierras of Culhuacan and concerns a site of ga-
nado menor (sheep) and eight caballerías de tierra situated between Mexi-
calzingo and Xochimilco. The documents pertaining to the first phase
contain, in addition, a map painted back in 1551 on amatl or fig-bark
paper, the size of which was 68 x 67.5 cm. The map redraws the con-
tours of the disputed areas, commemorating the locations of the old as
well as the present towns, the roads, the canals, the lake, and the lands.
Culhuacan appears to the north, to the foot of Cerro de la Estrella and
to the south, the lands of Xochimilco, accompanied by two figures, one
of which appears with a gloss, “alcalde de Xochimilco”. To the east, a
willow tree stands, out of which two lines run all the way up to the Ace-
quia Real [Royal Waterway] and to Tenochtitlan. The triangular formed
signified the lands and boundary-shrines that had already been agreed
upon. The red stripe, to the south, marked by Oidor Alonso Maldo-
nado in 1551, was possibly to distinguish a tierra coloradaor pillalli,
lordly lands, while the black ink [tictlilmahiotia= “the scripture (made)
in black ink”] depicted commoners’ lands. Gibson suggests that during
the 1540s and 1550s some of the lands belonging to native rulers (tla-
tocatlalli) were converted into “common cultivated lands”.54 Possibly, a
single red line denoted a boundary between common land and neigh-
bouring noble property… to distinguish the tribute-exempt status of
pillalli.”55 Maldonado indicated the boundary-shrines to be “the true
limits delineating between the two towns”. This “painting” which had
been restored in some parts, was presented in 1574 to Pedro de Re-
quena, the judge nominated to resolve the differences between the two
towns, by the governor, alcaldes and principales of Culhuacan.56 Both
the Humboldt Fragment VIII in the Royal Museum of Berlin and the
Cadastral Fragment of the Ramírez Collection to be found at the Museo
Nacional de Antropología of Mexico (Archivo Histórico), portray col-
ored plots of land with heads of their native owners, identified by per-
sonal-name glyphs and Náhuatl annotations.57 The use of color in
54 Gibson, The Aztecs Under Colonial Rule, p. 261.
55 Harvey and Barbara Williams, Códice of Santa María Asunción, p. 38.
56 “Culhuacan con los de Xochimilco, sobre ciertas tierras, mojones y términos, que
los del dicho pueblo de Culhuacan dicen son suyas”, Biblioteca Francisco Javier Clavijero,
Universidad Iberoamericana, México, Manuscript n. 149, 149 folios. (“Diligencias, autos,
translados, notificaciones...”).
57 Eduard Seler, “Alexander von Humboldt’s Picture Manuscripts in the Royal Library
at Berlin”, in Mexican and Central American Antiquities, Calendar Systems, and History, Trans-
lated by Charles P. Bowditch, p. 123-229.
367
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
marking land divisions may also be interpreted as yet another example
of imparting memory by way of pictorial writing.
One of the documents, dating from 4 November 1573 described
how Julián de Salazar, the Corregidor of the town, together with Cris-
tóbal de Tapia, the alcalde mayor of Xochimilco, ten prominent persons
of each of the two towns, as well as a few macehuales, walked to the dis-
puted lands. From there, they proceeded to the site called Aculco, situ-
ated to the right of three trees, near the lake, down by Xochimilco.
There, on the site, the elders of Culhuacan exhibited the 1551 map
signed and authorized by Maldonado as containing a true testimony of
the exact limits between the two towns, as well as the lands specific set
aside for the lords of Culhuacan. Having shown the painting, those of
Culhuacan declared that those were the true limits that they had always
kept and cherished; and that those of Xochimilco had breached the
agreed limits wishing to expropriate these lands. To which the lords of
Xochimilco responded by exhibiting their own “painting” where it was
indicated that the limits were located far below the points indicated,
much closer to Culhuacan, next to Suchipacoya, and marked by differ-
ent, former boundary-shrines, whose names “they had already forgot-
ten”. At first, the two parties refused to reach a compromise over the
disputed lands but then, on 6 November 1573, the lords of Xochimilco
came to an agreement. In 1574, the local authorities together with their
encomendero, Hernando de Oñate, went to the site from where the
difference originated. There they encountered the Corregidor, Cris-
tóbal de Tapia, the alcalde, Pedro de Sotomayor, the regidor Pedro de
Mendoza, the alguacil mayor, Pedro de Meneses, and some of the lords
of Xochimilco. Pedro de Requena, the nominated judge on this case,
presented himself to them through an interpreter, saying that he was
sent by the Viceroy to deal with the differences still maintained between
them. He then asked them to choose the six most elderly persons of
each of the two towns, “who had thoroughly known the above lands and
remembered their limits and boundary-shrines”. The next phase took
place at the disputed lands to where the six persons proceeded, and
there they identified each one of the former boundary-shrines. Pedro
de Requena then instructed them to divide in half the disputed land,
being 212 brazas in size; the representatives agreed to divide the land
equally and resolve the problem; and a tall wooden cross was erected
next to the willow tree, which marked the dividing line reached by a
compromise. Viceroy, Don Martín Enríquez approved the solution be-
tween the two towns on 20 March 1574.58
58 ‘’Culhuacan con los de Xochimilco’’, Ibidem, f. 1v-6r.
368 AMOS MEGGED
Don Diego de Mendoza Imauhyantzin, a Native Impostor
Into this scene of the 1560s and 70s around Lake Texcoco, steps in Don
Diego de Mendoza Imauhyantzin, a native noble of Tlatelolco. Don Die-
go de Mendoza de Austria, as he was also called, was by 1562 the se-
venth native acting governor (tlatoani) of Tlatelolco. Tlatelolco, his
town, was governed by a succession of native governors, beginning with
Don Alonso Quauhnochtli; he was followed by Don Martín Tlacatecatl
and then by Don Diego de Mendoza Imauhyantzin Huitznahuatlaito-
tlac, who governed, according to Alvarado Tezozómoc for fourteen
years, until his death in 1563.59 He was succeeded by his heir, Don
Baltazar de Mendoza y Motecuhzoma only in 1585.60 By the early
1560s, Don Diego was already a highly reputed personality in both
indigenous and Spanish-colonial circles and high places.
It was around that time that Don Diego de Mendoza Imauhyantzin
Huitznahuatlaitotlac pretended to be Cuauhtémoc’s presumed son from
the latter’s marriage with Tecuichpotzin, or, Doña Isabel, as she was
later named. But we have no record of any offspring to this marriage,
nor is he mentioned in the famous lawsuit conducted in the court of the
Audiencia in Mexico City over Doña Isabel’s privileges and rights to
lands left to her by her late father, Motecuhzoma. Her sister, Doña
Leonor Motecuhzoma Cortés Xochimatzatzin, was married to Tepexic’s
ruler, Xochimatzatzin.61 According to the Tenochca chronicler, Alvara-
do Tezozómoc, Don Diego was in fact the son of Zayoltin, a prince of
Tlatelolco, but never was he an heir to Tenochtitlan’s royal lineage.
Nevertheless, according to the 1562 royal ordinance issued by Philip
II, granting Don Diego the coat-of-arms, he is named there a direct son
and heir of Cuauhtémoc, the ultimate Aztec Emperor and the ruler of
Tlatelolco. As such, following the execution of Cuauhtémoc’s statute
(Ordenanza), possibly around 1560-1562, Don Diego de Mendoza
Imauhyantzin was recognized by the crown also as a direct heir to Mo-
tecuhzoma’s property of the Lake and its environs in spite of the pend-
ing lawsuit with the heirs of Motecuhzoma’s daughter. That included
Lake Ecatepec, San Cristóbal Ecatepec, Tacuba, Chontalpa, Meztitlan,
Juchipila, Jalisco, Chalco Atenco, Cozcatlan, Tenamutla, Teposcolula,
59 Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica Mexicayotl, p. 172, 173.
60 “Información promovida por los descendientes de Moctezuma y Yuatonantzin,
1686”, Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología Archivo Histórico (Colección Antigua), v. T-4,
exp. 323; “Ordenanza del Emperador”, p. 33.
61 Don Joaquín de San Francisco, cacique y natural del pueblo de Tepexi de la Seda,
Archivo Histórico Judicial, InaH Puebla, doc. 256, 1585.
369
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
Ayacapan, Tezcamacoyo and Chilapan, as well as the permanent gov-
ernment of the towns of Santiago Tlatelolco and Chilapan, so that the
compilation and presentation in court of such a title and a history had
made Don Diego extremely profitable.62 In 1560, Don Diego de Men-
doza’s eminent figure appears in a key position on the first page of the
Códice de Tlateloloco, related to all major events in this town between
1540 and 1560. There, he is portrayed as sitting on a Spanish-style
chair placed on top of the toponym for Tlateloloco. His anthroponym,
above his head, is made up of both his Náhuatl and Spanish names, and
includes five phonetic elements. To his right, he is facing a glyphic
summary of his pious works and donations to the Church, such as the
acquisition of bells and ornamentation, as well as his participation in
the ceremonial procession of the first entry of the Holy Sacrament to
Tlatelolco in 1547. We also know from the information and testimony
presented by his descendants in 1687 that, during this period he had
also funded the establishment of a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of
Pilar in the church of Santiago in Tlatelolco to become also the patron
of her Cult.63 To his left, are the figures of his predecessors in the
governing of Tlatelolco, Don Alonso Cuauhnochtli and Don Martín
Cuauhtzin Tlacatecatl, as well as the Spanish campaigns in which all
these Tlatelolca nobles participated: the subjugation of the Chichime-
ca around Zacatecas during the so-called Mixton Rebellion, between
1540 and 1542 and the Spanish campaign in Pánuco. The sixth page
in this Códice represents, perhaps the peak of Don Diego’s career under
Spanish rule: he appears there alongside the native governors of Tenoch-
titlan, Tacuba, and Texcoco, as well as the Viceroy and Archbishop,
conducting the official celebration and public feast that took place in
Mexico City in 1557 in honor of the inauguration of Philip II to the
Spanish throne.64
Nevertheless, also in 1560, Don Diego had undergone a process of
residencia in Santiago Tlatelolco before Don Esteban de Guzmán, a na-
tive qualified judge from Xochimilco, and was interrogated for his acts
of expropriating lands back in 1557.65 The figure of the judge appears,
perhaps, in the Códice de Tlatelolco on folio VII (for the years 1558-
1559), on the right side of this page, on the bottom.66 In the Chimalpa-
hin Codex, we get an account of the judge’s term of office in Tenochti-
62 “Ordenanza del Emperador Carlos V, 1592...,” agn Tierras, v. 3, exp. 1.
63 Ibidem, testimony by Don Sebastián de Rivas, ex-governor of Tepozotlan.
64 Valle and Xavier Noguez, Códice de Tlatelolco; “Información promovida...1686”.
65 Perla Valle and Xavier Noguez, Códice de Tlatelolco, estudio preliminar, f. 1 and 8.
66 Códice de Tlatelolco.
370 AMOS MEGGED
tlan; it began in June 1554 and ended in January 1557.67 The Códice
Cozcatzin (ca. 1572) that served as a legal document in litigation, picto-
rially relates how during this time, Don Juan Luis Cozcatzin, the al-
calde ordinario and principal of the barrio of Coyutlan, San Sebastián, in
Tenochtitlan, presented the Viceroy with a petition in which he asked
for a restitution of lands allegedly expropriated in 1557 by Don Diego.
The Cozcatzin case entailed a total of fifty-five land titles, arranged in a
similar format of four large, quarter-shaped sections, on the left side of
which was the pictogram and toponym of the claimed property, to-
gether with its name in Latin characters. To the right, appeared the
phonetic signs of the anthroponym of the original owner of the prop-
erty, during the time when King Itzcóatl had formally divided these
lands, in 1439, and of his descendants who later claimed the rights over
their ancestors’ lands, as well as the measurements of the claimed lands.
By 1560, the owners from Ixhuatepec had been removed of their lands
by Don Diego, then still the acting- governor of Tlatelolco. Don Juan
Cozcatzin endeavored to prove that these lands had been held by the
same owners for the previous 118 years.68 In the Códice Cozcatzin, f. 3v,
one gets a very similar account to the Ordenanza, possibly based upon
one common, oral and pictorial source. Even the style and wording are
almost the same. The donation and allocation of lands, however, was
accordingly made between 1438 and 1439, by Itzcóatl, and produced
as evidence in the 1572 litigation presented by Don Juan Luis Coz-
catzin, who was the alcalde ordinario and principal of the barrio of Coyut-
lan, San Sebastián, in Mexico City.69 In what followed, Don Luis de
Velasco reinstated him as the governor of Santiago Tlatelolco and had
made him the proprietor of the lands, part of which was contested in
the 1572 litigation filed in the Audiencia by Don Juan Luis Cozcatzin.
As I read it, the Ordenanza, or, Cuauhtémoc’s statute, as well as the
parallel Códice de Tlatelolco was most likely what Don Diego had under-
taken to produce in order to justify his acts. Furthermore, one should
also take into account the historical hostilities and differences between
the Lake’s feuding city-states: Texcoco, Tlatelolco, Tenochtitlan, and
Azcapotzalco, whose epic ordeals and final defeats are vividly recorded
and commemorated in the Ordenanza del señor Cuauhtémoc, as well as in
the complimentary sources, mainly the testimony presented in the court
of the Audiencia in Mexico City between 1531 and 1570, and described
above. Taking into consideration the combined aspects and contexts,
67 Codex Chimalpahin, v. 2, p. 41.
68 Códice Cozcatzin, f. 3r-10v.
69 Códice Cozcatzin, f. 3v, 14v.
371
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
one may assume that between the beginning of his period of captivity
and his final death, Cuauhtémoc did gather the Tlatelolca and Teno-
chca nobles and did discuss with them matters concerning their glori-
ous past as well as the administration of the Lake’s lands and boundar-
ies, that during these sessions he did spread open before them the
ancient cadastral histories that he held in his possession and that re-
corded the major events and agreements reached between the Tlate-
lolca and Tenochca rulers in the past; among the nobles present on
these occasions there might well have been Don Diego’s father. But
that the real process of the execution of the drawing of the limits be-
tween the feuding towns on the Lake’s shores had happened only after
Cuauhtémoc’s death, beginning in 1533 and lasted entire thirty years.
We get a full support for this assumption from the Libro de los guard-
ianes y gobernadores de Cuauhtinchan, under the entry for the year 2 Cal-
li (1533), indicates an important development closely related to what
we are dealing with here. That, during this particular year, ‘’the limits
were drawn between Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco’’, and that for
that occasion all the tecoanotzque [common litigants] of the Lake’s wa-
ters and products, the surrounding communities, that challenged
Tenochtitlan’s claims, were invited to partake in this meaningful act.
Next, it says that the boundary line ran along the acéquia, to the east,
next to the ‘’middle place’’ of the Lake, where major site of worship
there was the sacred cave at Ayacuhcalinla [Place of the Clouded Fight-
er], where a water source stood; the dividing line then proceeded along
and approximated the Cerro de Guerrero, as well as the twelfth bound-
ary-marker shown on the map of the Ordenanza.70 The Libro de los guar-
dianes further supplicates that, ‘’On that year they divided the jurisdic-
tion, the rulers of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, with those of Tlatelolco, and
they have established as a boundary the acequia grande’’.71 The acts
made by the different communities around the Lake to settle their dif-
ferences and finally dissolve the disputes concerning the lands and
acequias are also mentioned in the Primordial Title of Santa María Mag-
dalena Mixihuca.72
The same acts of division are also mentioned in the Primordial
Title of San Gregorio Atlapulco. The Title forms part of a body of
manuscripts known as Anales de San Gregorio Apeapulco. Although nei-
ther the date of their composition nor their presumed author is known
to us, it is quite plausible that they originate from pictorial manuscripts,
70 Ordenanza del señor Cuauhtémoc.
71 Libro de los guardianes y gobernadores de Cuauhtinchan, p. 41.
72 Título Primordial de Santa María Magdalena Mixihuca, f. 74r.
372 AMOS MEGGED
and cadastral histories painted somewhere around the third or fourth
decade of the sixteenth century. I also view the Anales de San Gregorio
Apeapulco as intimately connected with the complex historic theme of
the division of Lake Texcoco, which took place some time after Cuauh-
témoc’s death. The town of San Gregorio Apeapulco was located near
Ajusco and south-west of Lake Xochimilco, and its Title tells of the
times when the borders between this community and the neighboring
groups were finally established, and this in direct relation to the water
sources surrounding them. The date provided for the performance of
the setting of the limits is 1523, when the Spaniards had supposedly
approved of their claims to the land, and thereafter Christianity arrived
in their town.73 The boundary line, as the Title describes, ran all the
way up (north) to Xochimilco, where the boundary shrine was estab-
lished in Moyotepetl (Mosquito Mound). The narration continues with
an act of a reunion that takes place between distinct settler groups, and
the marking of the boundary line by a delegate named Diego María
Chalchiuhtzin, who came from the neighboring town of Colhuacan.
The place where they all reunited is described as ‘’cueva del agua del
baño’’ [Cave of the Bathing Water], possibly, a former sacred location
where ritual acts of purification would take place, where the boundary
line passed. The author goes on to stress further that the limits of
Zacamalinalli [Malinalli Grass] transcended the Lake’s water, and the
cave, and it was there that the people of Xochiquetzalcotli [Warrior in the
cult of Xochiquetzal] met with the women of Xochimilco, Acatolchima-
lizpale, and Xochihuipile Quetzalhuipile. The site of Xochiquetzalcotli,
which was possibly one of the boundary altars/shrines, is referred to
here as María sobre el Agua [Mary on the Water].74
Further along the path, during the state of upheaval that erupted,
after Cuauhtémoc’s execution the oral testimony of these gatherings
was promptly disseminated among the nobility of the joined cities and was
in use in the developing feuds between the former city-states, as we have
highlighted above. During the early 1560s, when the entire area had
undergone an accelerated process of political change, came the time
to turn the oral and the pictorial amalgam into effect by way of the
executed manuscript, which was in the very form of a Primordial Title.
73 The date of 1523 can possibly be associated with the entire process of upheaval that
took place around Lake Texcoco concerning the division of the waters and lands around
it during Cuauhtémoc’s captivity. One wanders whether or not this date was intentionally
inserted by the anonymous author of this Título to suit the Ordenanza del señor Cuauhtémoc
supposedly composed and issued during this very same year, and which was probably well
known by this time.
74 Título Primordial de San Gregorio Atlapulco, Tlalocan, v. 3 (1952), p. 122-136.
373
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
I very much suspect that it was at that point that Don Diego de Men-
doza Imauhyantzin himself was behind this initiative. The cadastral
version of produced, then, meant to manifest the prominence of the
former rulers of Tlatelolco, the major religious and political institu-
tions, the wars won, the succession of the rule, and the lands and waters
owned by his forefathers. In this respect, both the Códice Cozcatzin and
the Ordenanza are intimately linked with other, mixed documents, such
as Códice de Ixhuatepec and with the Títulos de Santa Isabel Tola providing
an account of Itzcóatl’s donations. All of them also refer to the inde-
pendent histories [annals] of the rulers of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco
ever since their origins, as independent rulers, the empowerment of
Tlatelolco by the Tenochca in 1473, and the end of their joint depen-
dency around 1560. The final division of the Lake was thereafter es-
tablished between the great rulers of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, and
Texcoco’s rights and jurisdiction were apparently discontinued, as it is
explained.
As yet another facet to the explanation for the background behind
Don Diego’s deeds and actions are to be sought and found in the sphere
of cultural transformation and shifting identities among some Tenochca
and Tlatelolca nobility, by the mid sixteenth century. Don Diego’s per-
sona and deeds, as they appear in various documents of the time re-
present, in effect, an outmost case-study of such a shifting indigenous
identity as well as a Mestized identity, highly split between deeply-root-
ed noble, indigenous essences and escalating Spanish-Christian persua-
sions that were both bequeathed for generations to follow. We know that
Don Diego was married to doña Magdalena de Mendoza Cuacuapitza-
huac; Magdalena’s surname was after Cuacuapitzahuac, the son of Hue-
hue Tezozomoctli, king of Azcapotzalco, and himself, the founding
ruler of Tlatelolco, who, according to Tezozómoc’s Crónica mexicáyotl ruled
up to his death during the year 4-Tochtli, 1418),75 and she herself was a
cacica from Azcapotzalco. They had three sons together: Baltazar, Mel-
chior and Gaspar; the first, Don Baltazar de Mendoza Itzcuauhtzin,
married a woman by the name of Ana, the daughter of Huitzilcalcatl
Tlailotlac, whom Alvarado Tezozómoc describes as having been “simply
a merchant among the Tlatelolca’’.76 Don Baltazar would later succeed
his father as the ninth governor of Tlatelolco (in 1582).77
A manuscript entitled “Información promovida por los descendientes de
Moctezuma y Yuatonantzin, 1686the copy of which is now kept at the
75 Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicáyotl, p. 98.
76 Ibidem, p. 173.
77 “Información promovida...”.
374 AMOS MEGGED
Archivo Histórico de la Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología in Mexico
City, contains 296 folios written in Spanish. On three consecutive folios
placed at the beginning of this manuscript are the striking illustrations
of three ancient Chichimeca-Mexica rulers. These were probably in-
spired or directly copied from old pictorial codices: Nezahualpintzintli,
or, Nezahualcóyotl (1402-1472), the supreme ruler of Texcoco, who
appears here as a young prince (figure 1); his deeds are given much
prominence in the Ordenanza del señor Cuauhtémoc: on folio 12r of the
text, in the context of the war fought over the Lake’s territory between
the Tlatelolca and the Tenochca, headed by Cuauhtlatohuatzin and
Itzcohuatzin respectedly, on one side, and the Texcoca, headed by Ne-
zahualcóyotl, on the other. The thick walls constructed by Nezahual-
cóyotl to divide the Lake and as a dike (Albarrada de Nezahualcóyotl)
are depicted on the above map of the Ordenanza del señor Cuauhtémoc,
traversing Mount Tepetzinco to the south-east, and are also anotted in
the accompanying text of the sixth boundary-marker. The other two
figures are, Cuauhtlateza cuitlatzin, most probably referring to Cuauh-
tlatohuatzin (figure 2), the ruler of Tlatelolco in Itzcóatl’s era, which
also figures prominently in the Ordenanza, and Tocuzpotzin, whom we
cannot identify (figure 3). The three are wearing traditional noble out-
fit; Nezahualcóyotl appears here with his famous headgear or hair orna-
ment (quetzallalpilloni), with quetzal feather tassels,78 and wears a long
ornamented cloak, a loin-cloth and ear ornaments (yacaxihuitl). In his
left hand he is holding a chalice-like incense burner (tlemaitl) with an
incense bag (xiquipilli) possibly attached to it and on his feet he wears
leather-skin sandals.
The figure of Cuauhtlatzacuitlatzin is even more elaborate and el-
egant: on the right hand he holds a pine-torch (tlepilli), usually held
during processions, and on the left hand, an incense burner (tlemaitl);
he also wears lavish ear-rings, and a headgear, and his stylized cloak is
decorated with what appears to be the figures of the image of a Cipactli,
the serpent skull, emerging from the earth, as well as other zoomorphic
figures. The third, Tocuzpotzin, holds an arrow in his left hand and
wears a greenstones’ bracelet on his wrist; in his right hand he holds a
quetzal-feathered fan (ecacehuatztli) and an incense bag (xiquipilli), and
seems to represent the early, nomadic, Chichimeca phase in Mexica
culture. The three figures representing the ancient ancestors also con-
vey and impart a ‘’cognitive schema’’ per se: these are all the compo-
78 “Información promovida...”, f. 15r-17v. The headgear worn by this king is shown
in the Codex Ixtlilxóchitl, f. 108r, in the Primeros memoriales, Image 7, and in the Florentine
Codex, I, f. 12r and 39v.
375
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
Figure 1. Nezahualpintzintli
376 AMOS MEGGED
Figure 2. Cuauhtlatzacuitlatzin
377
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
Figure 3. Tocuzpotzin
378 AMOS MEGGED
nents and iconography to be forever memorized and commemorated,
‘’so that the word of the ancients won’t be lost’’ (ynic amo poliuiz yn itlatol
y huehuetque), as it is said on the text of the Ordenanza (folio 12r.) Not a
few of these components will be applied later on the coat-of-arms, be-
low, to be carried over to the next generations.
The rest of the overall content and nature of this manuscript is an
appeal for privileges and prerogatives by Don Roque García, the Mes-
tizo governor of Atcopan, married to doña Magdalena de Mendoza de
los Reyes, the governess of Tacuba, and originally from the Minas de Pa-
chuca, who is presented there as a distant but a direct heir of the ancient
rulers of Azcapotzalco, Tezozomoctli and Cuacuapitlahuac, as well as of
Don Diego de Mendoza de Austria. What Don Roque García, the Mes-
tizo governor of Atcopan asked for was to be authorized to obtain equal
rights, privileges and honors as those inherited by his wife from her
ancestors in Azcapotzalco, Santiago Tlatelolco and in Tacuba; these
included, among many other privileges, the right to appoint local gov-
ernors in both Azcapotzalco and Tlatelolco. To strengthen his case be-
fore the Audiencia of Mexico, Don Roque presented a marriage cer-
tificate from the church of the Minas de Pachuca, dating from 23 March
1655; baptismal certificates signed by the parish priest of this town list-
ing their six legitimate sons and daughters: Diego, Antonio, María,
Francesca, María and Lorenzo, a formal declaration made in court by
Don Joseph de Morales y Mendoza, his brother-in-law, about their sta-
tus as living in matrimony, their merits and life as good Christians, and
his wife’s royal ancestry from the times of the Aztec kings, as well as six
testimonials by prominent indigenous nobles from various towns such
as Don Sebastián de Rivas, the ex-governor of Tepozotlan, and married
to Clara de Mendoza, Magdalena de Mendoza’s sister, and Don Diego
Luis Motecuhzoma, a cacique and a noble from the barrio of San Se-
bastián Teocaltitlan in Mexico City. They all attested in full detail as to
the genealogy, ancestry and eminence of ‘’Cuauhtémoc’s heirs’’ and
they all remembered how they were present during the baptisms of the
children Don Roque García’s and Magdalena de Mendoza. Also men-
tioned are the pious deeds and duties done by all of those heirs,
throughout the decades for the sake of promoting and disseminating
the Christian faith and Hispanic interests ever since the days of Don
Diego de Mendoza. Among the remaining hiers mentioned in the man-
uscript are, doña Augustina de Mendoza de los Reyes, the grand-daugh-
ter of Don Diego’s son, Don Baltazar de Mendoza, and married to Don
Juan García Bravo de Aguilar, as well as her parents, doña Magdalena
de Mendoza Moctezuma, Don Baltazar’s daughter from his marriage
with Ana de Mendoza de Castilla (a Spaniard), and Don Juan de Santa
379
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
María, her husband, also a Spaniard, so that Spanish blood was running
clearly in this genealogical memory.
Nevertheless, by far the most significant document kept by Don
Roque’s wife and presented in court by Don Roque himself was a certi-
fied copy of a royal ordinance issued in Madrid on 16 August 1563, a
year after Don Diego’s death, and signed by King Philip II. The ordi-
nance granted Don Diego the exclusive privilege of possessing a famil-
ial coat-of-arms, as recompense for his active contributions to and his
proliferation of both Spanish and Christian goals in Mexico. The ordi-
nance begins with an emphasis on Don Diego’s royal pedigree all the
way down from the ancient king Tezozomoctli of Azcapotzalco and from
Cuacuatlatzacuilztin in Santiago Tlatelolco. It then goes on to relate
how his supposed father, Cuauhtémoc, and himself had served the
Spanish king and contributed their share to advance the Spanish Em-
peror’s goals in New Spain, participating in all the military campaigns
in Xochipilco, Jalisco, Mecatlan and Nueva Galicia, as well as Pánuco
and the conquest of the Tierra Chichimeca, “that ensued right after the
conquest of Tenochtitlan”, with their men and arms. And therefore, as
it is said, in order that his and his father’s pious deeds for the Spanish
crown cherished in memoria perpetua, and so that he and his descen-
dants should be forever honored, they are to be granted a coat-of-arms
that should be suspended above the doorways of his own house and in
the houses of his future heirs. This had occurred seven years after the
Audiencia of Mexico ruled in favor of Isabel de Motecuhzoma’s petition
for privileges and inheritance of her father’s and grandfather’s patri-
mony. The grant can obviously be explained by the fact that, until his
death, Don Diego had accumulated a whole body of deeds carried out
in favor of the Spanish king’s goals and interests in New Spain. He was
known for his cooperation and collaboration with Spanish campaigns
to curb native resistance and warfare that still continued in some areas
that were not yet fully subjugated, as well as encourage Christian prac-
tice among his compatriots. His ancestors’ beliefs, and deeds before and
during the Conquest, had undoubtedly not been cast aside but, by the
early 1560s, were separated and “encapsulated” within a world totally
distinct from the new loyalties, beliefs and alliances.
More than five full folios of this manuscript are dedicated to a
lengthy and a vivid description of the iconography of Don Diego de
Mendoza de Austria’s coat-of-arms. The “syncretic’’ nature of this coat-
of-arms, brings to light not only the full significance of the synthesis
between native and Christian-Hispanic aspects of their separate identi-
ties, but also the collaborational nature of this emblem, which appears
at first to be the product of a direct Spanish dictation and appropria-
380 AMOS MEGGED
tion; however, after reading the text in depth, one reaches the conclu-
sion that this emblem was also, undoubtedly the end-product of Don
Diego’s willingness as well as initiative to imprint upon this family em-
blem the dual aspects of his and his descendants’ identity. This dual
nature is clearly manifest in the presence of Tenochtitlan’s toponym
within the coat-of-arms; and in the presence of diverse additional native
representations, such as native feathers and a set of nobles’ skin sandals
(‘’alpargatas de indios’’). In Aztec society, the commoners were allowed to
wear only sandals of woven reeds, while dignitaries wore elegant leath-
er skin sandals with painted figures on them, cactli.79 See also, Neza-
hualpintzintli’s image above, wearing such sandals that might possibly
had inspired the designers of this coat-of-arms; the coyote figure, or-
ange-painted bows and arrows.
And the outline of this coat-of-arms is as follows:
A shield that should be divided into two parts made of a quadrant
shape. On the upper part is a large rock (tecpatl= pedernal?), placed in
the middle of a white or a silver background and, on top of it, an old,
wild and a shining black eagle, ‘’with his golden feet on top of the rock;
and on this eagle’s side, a green tree, that they call maguey (nopalli).’’The
association here is certainly that of cuauhnochtli, tuna del águila, which
was also the name given to the hearts sacrificed as offering to the Sun,
and the heart element, which symbolized the center of the universe.
The eagle was also the most powerful symbol attached to the most
valiant warriors who fought in the xochiyaóyotl the Flowery War. On
the other part of the shield, to the left hand of the eagle’s figure, an
orange-painted bow and an arrow [mitl]; and on the other part, below
the rock, a source of water painted in white and in blue, with its health-
ful water, with a green background, all the way down to the middle of
the shield.80
On the lower part of the shield, on the left hand, an ornamental
border in black and silver, together with eight golden shields, each one
of which is divided into two parts; the one to the right hand, a tender-
loin placed against a blue background, and on the left hand: “Lumen ad
revelationem Gentium et Gloriam Plebis quam visque scam. ad ultra clarai
tuaewhich is somewhat an altered version of the original phrase, in
Luke 2:32: “Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuae
Israhel. A Light for revelation to the gentiles and glory to your people,
Israel” and, possibly, intended to carry through the essence of an “as-
79 The Essential Codex Mendoza, p. 186 (folio 64r).
80 [See, for comparison, Códice Aubin, “The Founding of Mexico”, 51].
381
CUAUHTÉMOC’S HEIRS
signment’’ for Don Diego’s heirs: to spread the Word of God among
their people and convert them all to a true Christianity. This was fol-
lowed by blue, yellow and silver feathers, followed by the coat-of-arms
of the Mendozas, arranged in the following manner: it should be di-
vided in the form of a cross, on the upper part, a colored band with a
green background, and on the lower part, the same band, painted in
gold, with a green background, and on its side, “Ave María” on a gold-
en background, and on the other part, to the left: Gratia Plena” with a
golden background. On top, outside the shield, a grayish roll with an
ornamentation of feathers, with colored feathers and a green, gold and
silver flora. And overhanging from the shield, are yellow, blue and white
feathers; on top of the shield, a spear with white and silver flags, and
in their center, a golden willow; on the other side of the shield a sword,
a golden guard, and in the middle of the sword, a set of native leather
skin sandals (alpargatas de indios), painted in red, white and yellow, and
on them a golden head of a coyote, ornamented with yellow and green
feathers, that they call ezpetlatl [Cloth decorated with figures]. Above, is
a figure of a star on the upper hand of the shield with a red background,
and the other part of this quadrant, in Castilla. Gloria sic mundi.’’
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Book
Columbus arrived on North American shores in 1492, and Cortés had replaced Moctezuma, the Aztec Nahua emperor, as the major figurehead in central Mexico by 1521. Five centuries later, the convergence of "old" and "new" worlds and the consequences of colonization continue to fascinate and horrify us. In Transcending Conquest, Stephanie Wood uses Nahuatl writings and illustrations to reveal Nahua perspectives on Spanish colonial occupation of the Western Hemisphere. Mesoamerican peoples have a strong tradition of pictorial record keeping, and out of respect for this tradition, Wood examines multiple examples of pictorial imagery to explore how Native manuscripts have depicted the European invader and colonizer. She has combed national and provincial archives in Mexico and visited some of the Nahua communities of central Mexico to collect and translate Native texts. Analyzing and interpreting changes in indigenous views and attitudes throughout three hundred years of foreign rule, Wood considers variations in perspectives--between the indigenous elite and the laboring classes, and between those who resisted and those who allied themselves with the European intruders. Transcending Conquest goes beyond the familiar voices recorded by scribes in central colonial Mexico and the Spanish conquerors to include indigenous views from the outlying Mesoamerican provinces and to explore Native historical narratives from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Wood explores how evolving sentiments in indigenous communities about increasing competition for resources ultimately resulted in an anti-Spanish discourse, a trend largely overlooked by scholars--until now. Transcending Conquest takes us beyond the romantic focus on the deeds of the Spanish conqueror to show how the so-called "conquest" was limited by the ways that Native peoples and their descendants reshaped the historical narrative to better suit their memories, identities, and visions of the future.
Article
Here is the complete history of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, one of the two most important religious groups in the Spanish empire in America, from the Conquest to Independence in the early nineteenth century. Based upon ten years of research, this study focuses on the effect if Spanish institutions on Indian life at the local level.
agn Tierras, v. 3, exp. 1. 63 Ibidem, testimony by don sebastián de rivas, ex-governor of tepozotlan Códice de Tlatelolco
  • V Del Emperador Carlos
"ordenanza del emperador carlos V, 1592...," agn Tierras, v. 3, exp. 1. 63 Ibidem, testimony by don sebastián de rivas, ex-governor of tepozotlan. 64 Valle and Xavier noguez, Códice de Tlatelolco; "información promovida...1686".