History of Mexico City

Ancient foundations

It is thought that the Aztecs set out from their homeland, Aztlán (the source of the name Aztec), in the 12th century ce and arrived in the Valley of Mexico by the early 14th century. Sometime after they had left Aztlán, they united with a second group made up of nomadic hunter-gatherers, the Mexica, and took on their name. The Aztec-Mexica were experienced agriculturalists who constructed and planted chinampas (raised fields that have been misnamed “floating gardens” because they are largely surrounded by water). They reclaimed large amounts of land and maintained soil fertility by periodically scooping sediment from the bottom of Lake Texcoco (then called Meztliapan) and using it as mulch. They also depended on collecting, hunting, and fishing to complement their staple diet of corn (maize), beans, squash, and chili peppers from the chinampas. They netted fish and aquatic birds and gathered insect larvae, tadpoles and frogs, salamanders (axolotl), shrimp, and floating algae.

After settling temporarily at different lakeside sites, including the woods of Chapultepec and the lava flows of Tizapan (on the Pedregal de San Angel), the Aztecs sought a more permanent base. According to legend, one of their leader priests, Tenoch, had a vision in which the god Huitzilopochtli instructed them to look for a sacred site marked by an eagle with a snake in its beak, perched on a prickly pear cactus. The group came upon the sign on a small island along the western edge of Lake Texcoco, and in 1325 they founded Tenochtitlán. The sacred symbol, which came to be the emblem for their city, is now the coat of arms and central design of the Mexican national flag.

The Aztecs built a temple to Huitzilopochtli and began expanding their island-city into the surrounding marshes. The economy and social life continued to depend on the surrounding waters, but periodic disastrous floods threatened the city’s very existence; its rulers responded by building a series of flood-control levees. They also erected aqueducts to supply fresh water and canals to allow canoes to travel throughout the city and to settlements on the lake margins. Among the latter was the nearby twin city of Tlatelolco, which was simultaneously growing along the north shore of the lake.

The island of Tenochtitlán was connected to the mainland by three causeways. To the north was the causeway to Tepeyac, a small community on a spit near the present-day shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Another causeway led south to the peninsula on which the village of Ixtapalapa (Iztapalapa) was built. A third causeway extended westward to Tlacopan (Tacuba) and Chapultepec. Each causeway was interrupted by bridges, including a series of massive wooden drawbridges that formed part of the city’s defenses. The causeways converged on the ceremonial centre near the Templo Mayor and palaces, an area now occupied by the downtown Zócalo. Among the sacred precinct’s other features were schools, a ball court, and a large skull rack on which the Aztecs would eventually display the heads of fallen Spanish soldiers—and those of their warhorses.

Shortly after it was founded, Tenochtitlán inserted itself into a dynamic trade network and, together with Tlatelolco, became one of the main centres of consumption in the region. Tropical lowland products—including cotton, cacao, dyes, palm fronds, salt, and feathers—converged on the highland basin, and copper came from mines to the west. Tenochtitlán also attracted capable leaders and the muscle for labour and for waging war.

Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco comprised more than 70 neighbourhoods, including some dedicated to specific tradespeople, such as goldsmiths or pulque brewers, and others occupied by foreigners. Most of the houses were low and flat-roofed, although many elites lived in two-story dwellings. There were also terraced houses, and along the causeways were towers and other fortified sites. Administratively, Tenochtitlán was organized into calpulli, or ward districts, consisting of free commoners who held land, paid taxes, provided community services, and engaged in social and political activities. Each of these wards had its own temple and telpohcalli, or young men’s schools. By the early 16th century the city supported between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants (although some estimates have ranged higher), and it was the political and economic hub of a regional population that exceeded 1,000,000.

The first Spanish conquistadors to gaze on the city were awed by its size and orderliness, and they compared its grandeur to that of European centres such as Sevilla (Seville) and Salamanca in Spain and especially Venice in Italy, with its comparably intricate network of navigation canals, bridges, and causeways. In a report to the Spanish king, conquistador Hernán Cortés wrote of the twin cities’ commerce, noting especially the main market at Tlatelolco, where the Plaza of the Three Cultures stands today:

There is one square, twice as large as that of Salamanca, all surrounded by arcades, where there are daily more than sixty thousand souls, buying and selling, and where are found all the kinds of merchandise produced in these countries, including food products, jewels of gold and silver, lead,…zinc, stone, bones, shells, and feathers.…There is a street…where they sell every sort of bird…and they sell the skin of some…birds of prey with feathers, heads, beaks, and claws.…There is a street set apart for the sale of herbs [with] houses like apothecary shops, where prepared medicines are sold.…There are places like our barber shops where they wash and shave their heads. (Hernán Cortés, Fernando Cortés, His Five Letters to the Emperor Charles V, ed. and trans. by Francis A. McNutt [1908])

Cortés also described sales of fruits and vegetables, beeswax and honey, corn syrup (which he called “honey made of corn stalks”), varieties of cotton cloth, and reed mats used for cushions and floor coverings. In addition, the city had restaurants and innumerable service workers such as porters, suppliers of wood and charcoal, and collectors of human waste (for various agricultural and industrial uses).