The greatness of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztecs
On November 8, 1519, a group of Spanish conquistadors, led by Hernán Cortés, arrived in the Valley of Mexico. In the distance you could see Lake Texcoco and several towns that arose on its shores: Mixquic, Iztapalapa, Huitzilopochco, Coyoacán, Tlacopán and Texcoco.
In the center of the lake, full of canoes, they saw, on a vast island crossed by canals, a great city: it was the capital of the kingdom of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlán.
Below is a comment by the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, extracted from his book True History of the Conquest of New Spain:
Seeing so many cities and towns built on the water, and other towns on dry land, we were amazed. There were those who thought that it was a spell, like those narrated in the book of Amadís, since there were large towers, temples and pyramids erected in the water. Others wondered if all this was a dream.
The agglomeration of Lake Texcoco was made up of Tenochtitlán, a rocky island on which the most important temples and public buildings were located, and Tlatelolco, joined to Tenochtitlán, where there was a temple and a market. The city, founded by the mythical king Tenoch in 1325, was also built on swampy land, after patient work that lasted many years, using foundation material.
At the beginning of the 16th century, it had an area of approximately 1,000 hectares (10 square km) and was divided into four neighborhoods: Cuepopán, to the north; Teopán, to the south; Moyotlán, to the east and Aztacalco to the west.
In each neighborhood there were groups of houses called Calpulli, which had their own temple, school and neighborhood chief. The Calpulli were also distinguished by the work of their inhabitants: artisans, merchants and fishermen.
There has been much speculation about the population of Tenochtitlán upon the arrival of the conquistadors. The books of Spanish historians of the time report that in the city there were from 60,000 to 120,000 “fuegos”, bonfires, or residential units.
However, the true number of Tenochtitlán's population remains a mystery. From some books from that period, such as the True History of the Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Díaz del Vastillo, it is deduced that the families were very large.
If it is considered that an average of seven individuals lived in each house, it can be estimated that a total of approximately 700,000 people lived in the capital of the Aztecs.
Other more cautious estimates propose a number of 550,000 residents. In any case, this value, very respectable for the 16th century, made Tenochtitlán the most populated city in America and the third in the world after the Chinese cities of Beijing (700,000 inhabitants) and Hangzhou (600,000 inhabitants), with notable difference from Istanbul (300,000 inhabitants) and Seville (250,000 inhabitants).
The center of current Mexico City, called Zócalo, corresponds to what was the center of Tenochtitlán. In March 1978, some Mexican archaeologists found evidence of what was called Teocalli, a pyramid 30 meters high, with a base measuring 100x80 meters, at the top of which there were two sanctuaries: Tláloc (God of rain and abundance) and Huitzilopochtli (God of the Sun and war).
On the sides of Teocalli there were two boarding schools-monasteries, called Calmécac, where the high priests lived. In front of the Teocalli was the sanctuary of the wind god Ehécatl, a conical construction supported by a base of four platforms. Between this last sanctuary and the wall that separated the ceremonial center (called Coatepantli) from the city, there was a patio, called Tlachtli, used for the ball game, to which a cosmological significance was attributed (the ball represented the Sun). Inside the ceremonial center there was also a weapons warehouse, spas for ritual baths, a music academy and houses where nobles who came on pilgrimages stayed. Likewise, there was a macabre place: in the so-called Tzompantli, the skulls of the victims who had been sacrificed were exposed.
The sovereign's palace was, however, outside the ceremonial center, but very close to it. The residence of Moctezuma II, the king of the Aztecs at the time of the arrival of Hernán Cortés, was sumptuous.
It was a two-story building, with large interior gardens where exotic plants abounded, where elegant swans swam in the ponds and where numerous multicolored birds chirped in the aviaries.
Hernán Cortés and his men were astonished when Moctezuma II, sinning in naivety, invited them to reside in the palace.
Here is a description of the Spanish conqueror of the capital of the Aztecs, extracted from the Second Letter of Relation to Emperor Charles V (1522):
The day after my arrival in the city of Iztapalapa, I decided to leave, and after having walked half a league, I entered a wide street that crosses the lagoon until I reach the great city of Temixtitan (Tenochtitlán), which is founded on the exact center of this lake; The avenue was so wide that we could have traveled it with eight horses placed side by side...We continued along this street, which, half a league from the entrance to the city of Temixtitlán, joins another road that connects it with the mainland, and right there there is a castle with a double tower, a high wall and two main gates, one to enter and the other to exit. A short distance away there is a wooden bridge about ten steps wide... once we crossed it, Lord Moctezuma came to receive us with two hundred other lords...
This great city of Temixtitan is founded in the center of this lake, and the main land To it there are two leagues from any point from which one wishes to enter. There are four main entrances, reached by means of wide streets, the same as those I described above. The city is as big as Seville and Córdoba combined. Its main roads are very wide and straight, and some have parallel channels where many canoes travel. It has many squares where there is an active market and people who want to sell and buy. There is also a square as large as the entire city of Salamanca, in Castilla, all surrounded by portals where around sixty thousand people gather daily to buy and sell...
In addition to being a ceremonial and political center of fundamental importance, Tenochtitlán was also a very active commercial point. As described in the Letter of Relation, the main market was in Tlatelolco, where there were about 25,000 merchants selling food (corn, beans, tomatoes, cocoa, sweet potatoes, salt, honey, turkeys and other edible birds; fish, crustaceans, mollusks), fabrics, footwear, puma and jaguar skins, stone, obsidian and copper utensils; ceramics, tobacco, carved wood and other handicrafts; gold and jade jewelry.
Since there was no currency, everything was obtained through barter, but the custom of exchanging objects for cocoa or bean seeds was increasingly common. It was a rudimentary attempt at payment. However, there were numerous controversies and, for this reason, there were several watchers, in addition to three magistrates who, in the event of a dispute, issued an immediate ruling.
As the water in the lagoon was not drinkable, the sovereign Moctezuma I (1440-1469) had a 5-kilometer-long aqueduct built from the sources of Chapultepec.
After the population increase, fresh, clean water became scarce.
Emperor Ahuízotl (1486-1503) had a second aqueduct built, 8 kilometers long, which transported water from the heights of Coyoacán.
Tenochtitlán was a lake city that depended on Lake Texcoco to supply itself with fish, crustaceans and mollusks, but frequent floods, especially during the rainy season, caused its population to suffer calamities.
Moctezuma I ordered the construction, in 1449, of a large wall, about 16 kilometers long, in order to contain the floods of Lake Texcoco.
Consequently, at the beginning of the 16th century, Tenochtitlán was a cosmopolitan city where various cultures of the Mexican highlands intersected. What would have been the development of that metropolis of the ancient world if the terrible destructive impact of the Spanish conquerors had not occurred in 1519?
YURI LEVERATTO
