Image of colonial Mexico-Tenochtitlán

Abstract

Of the novelties reported by the Spanish during their incursions into America, the cities appear with considerable prominence in the most varied records produced throughout the 16th century. Following a narrative pattern, all the mentions highlight the admiration felt by their observers, both because of the size and number of inhabitants of many towns, comparable or even superior to European cities, and because of the shape and organization of the buildings erected amidst the natural scenery. In the case of the areas located in Central Mexico, the city of México-Tenochtitlán, the center of the Mexica confederation conquered and reformulated by Hernán Cortés after his victory over Montezuma in 1521, gained the most space in these records. The image of this city remodeled to become the capital of New Spain appears in the two Diálogos written by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar in 1554, entitled Interior de la ciudad de México and Alrededores de México, in which three characters - Zamora, Zuazo and Alfaro - walk around the town and its surroundings describing what their eyes reveal to them. One of the aims of this article is to accompany this walk by mapping the perceptions left by this author on the pages of these dialogues. By tracing the images translated by Cervantes de Salazar in the interaction constructed between the three central figures - two inhabitants of the city and an outsider - the aim is to find out what image of the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlán appears to be constructed in its first contours, that is, when it becomes the center of the Spanish colony of that period between Mexica and Iberian traits.