num_pages: 256
description: Winner Book Prize in Latin American Studies Colonial Section of Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 2016ALAA Book Award Association for Latin American Art/Arvey Foundation 2016The capital of the Aztec empire Tenochtitlan was in its era one of the largest cities in the world. Built on an island in the middle of a shallow lake its population numbered perhaps 150000 with another 350000 people in the urban network clustered around the lake shores. In 1521 at the height of Tenochtitlan's power which extended over much of Central Mexico Hernando Cortes and his followers conquered the city. Cortes boasted to King Charles V of Spain that Tenochtitlan was destroyed and razed to the ground. But was it?Drawing on period representations of the city in sculptures texts and maps The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan the Life of Mexico City builds a convincing case that this global capital remained through the sixteenth century very much an Amerindian city. Barbara E. Mundy foregrounds the role the city's indigenous peoples the Nahua played in shaping Mexico City through the construction of permanent architecture and engagement in ceremonial actions. She demonstrates that the Aztec ruling elites who retained power even after the conquest were instrumental in building and then rebuilding the city. Mundy shows how the Nahua entered into mutually advantageous alliances with the Franciscans to maintain the city's sacred nodes. She also focuses on the practical and symbolic role of the city's extraordinary waterworks--the product of a massive ecological manipulation begun in the fifteenth century--to reveal how the Nahua struggled to maintain control of water resources in early Mexico City.
language: English
title: The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City
publisher: University of Texas Press