Barbara Mundy’s recent monograph is a compelling history of the transformation of Aztec Tenochtitlan into Mexico City. During its height as the Mexica (Aztec) capital, Tenochtitlan had a population of around 150,000, making it one of the largest cities in the world and one that awed the Spaniards upon their arrival in 1519. Three years later, Hernando Cortés triumphantly explained in his Third Letter that the city was ‘destroyed and razed to the ground’. As Mundy explains, Cortés’ letter, along with other Spanish accounts, interpreted Tenochtitlan’s physical destruction and change in rulership as the city’s ‘death’. Through insightful analysis of pictorial manuscripts, maps, archaeological evidence, chronicles, and other materials, Mundy successfully upends the notion of Tenochtitlan’s death.
By examining Mexico-Tenochtitlan from the perspective of its indigenous residents, Mundy reveals how they retained their worldviews, technology, and trade centres during the sixteenth century. Mundy conceptualizes the city as a space, arguing that while the conquest changed the indigenous capital into a hub of the Spanish empire, it did not destroy indigenous Tenochtitlan, ‘either as an idea, as a built environment, or as an indigenous population centre’ (3). The work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau influence her interpretation of the city as both a physical and ideological entity, based on their theoretical paradigm for examining cities through representational space (maps), spatial practices (itineraries of inhabitants), and lived space (built environment). Mundy’s analysis focuses on Mexico-Tenochtitlan as a lived space, which allows her to reveal the temporal and ideological continuity of the city from the pre-contact period and through the early modern period.
Mundy focuses on two themes that transcended these periods: the role of the lake environment and the continuity of Mexica rulership. She evaluates these themes in eight chapters (2-9), along with an introduction and conclusion (Chapters 1 and 10). Mundy argues that Tenochtitlan’s unique geography shaped the lives of its inhabitants. Built on an undesired island in the shallow and salty Lake Texcoco, pre-contact Tenochtitlan served as a sacred centre in Mexica cosmology. As Mundy illustrates in Chapter 2, the Mexica (and Nahua society more generally) considered an ideal living space to be an altepetl (literally “water-hill”), which consisted of a mountain from which calm waters flowed. After the Mexica had been forced from their previous territory, they arrived on the island, where the presence of freshwater and the surrounding mountains compelled them to construct their city on this location. Lake Texcoco’s turbulent waters, controlled by the powerful deity Chalchiuhtlicue, constantly threatened to flood their city. To control Chalchiuhtlicue’s violent potential, Tenochtilan’s residents shaped their built environment with a complex dike and aqueduct system.
Mexica rulers oversaw these projects and actively aligned themselves to the harnessing of water (and Chalchiuhtlicue). They reinforced this connection through public performances and sculptures. Mundy explains that the Chapultepec aqueduct served as a principal freshwater axis, and that new rulers used the aqueduct as part of their inaugural procession, linking their rulership to spaces with tamed water. Doing so established a social contract between the ruler and his subjects: they provided tribute and labour, while he was understood to act as a delegate for the creator deity who protected the altepetl (Chapter 3). As Mundy demonstrates, control of their watery world was as vital to Mexica’s political power as was military expansion.
The war against the Mexica fought by Spaniards and their indigenous allies may have violently disturbed the metropolis, but did not destroy it. In the war’s aftermath, Mexica leaders and Franciscan friars played important roles in imagining and reconstructing Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The Mexica elite led repairs to the city’s damaged aqueducts and relocated the markets (Chapter 4). Mundy shows that the markets were crucial to the city’s success, as they re-affirmed Mexico-Tenochtitlan as a commercial hub. Similarly, after Spanish officials had indigenous labourers construct government buildings and a cathedral on top of the main temples at the centre of the Mexica capital, Mexica elites also rebuilt their tecpan, or government palace, in the south near the Chapultepec aqueduct. Indigenous spaces were re-centred, and both Mexica and Franciscans idealized the city as a New World Christian hub (Chapters 5 and 6). The Franciscans constructed their monastery near the Chapultepec aqueduct and the tecpan, for example, rather than in the Spanish city centre (Chapter 6). Mundy argues that the Franciscans sought to remake Tenochtitlan in Rome’s image—as a ‘pagan space remade into a Christian one’ (123).
These spatial transformations impacted the social contract between Mexica rulers and their tributary base. Through an impressive analysis of corporate identity through place-names, Mundy highlights that by the mid-century, epidemic diseases and high tributary demands unravelled how common people understood their social contract with their native rulers (Chapter 7). To reaffirm their leadership, indigenous rulers engaged in Christian rituals and processions to mark their spatial presence in the city, in a similar fashion as the pre-contact inaugural processions (Chapter 8). The Mexica elites’ success in water management further reaffirmed their important role in the city’s welfare (Chapter 9). By the mid-century, the Spaniards had failed at constructing a new aqueduct for Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Instead, the indigenous ruler Antonio de Valeriano oversaw the construction of a canal that brought water to the indigenous market. Mexica leaders successfully maintained the city’s economic base, markets, social structures, and control over their watery world, despite the Spanish presence.
Mundy has written an excellent book, with each chapter meticulously argued. She brings fresh interpretations to a variety of well-known materials such as the Teocalli Stone, the Mass of Saint Gregory feather-work, and the engraving of the monastery from the Rhetorica Christiana, as well as to indigenous pictorial manuscripts that have received less scholarly attention. She seamlessly weaves together evidence, drawing the reader in along a kind of walking tour of the streets of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Her work will appeal to a broad range of scholars, including art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars of the Early Modern World, as well as those interested in learning more about the intriguing history of Mexico City.
