The Lords of Tetzcoco: The Transformation of Indigenous Rule in Postconquest Central Mexico

Abstract

In The Lords of Tetzcoco, Bradley Benton provides a much-needed overview of sixteenth-century Tetzcoco and its Native nobility. Perhaps best known as the second most powerful city within the Aztec empire, Tetzcoco was the capital of the larger Acolhua domain, Acolhuacan, and sold itself as the intellectual and cultural hub of central Mexico. Benton’s concern is not so much on the preconquest reputation of the city but instead on how its Indigenous rulers adapted to colonial rule and managed to retain relative power and affluence despite the fact that many other Indigenous nobles suffered a loss of political and economic power during the sixteenth century. Benton associates the relatively better fortunes of Tetzcoco’s leading nobles to their active responses to Spanish colonial rule and astute negotiations of new positions of power under this rule.Benton’s approach is largely chronological. He first explains the political situation in Tetzcoco in the years immediately before the conquest and in the first decades after the imposition of colonial rule. Just before the arrival of the Spaniards, Tetzcoco had experienced a breakdown in authority, with different factions of nobles competing for control over the city-state. Benton painstakingly reconstructs these different factions, their various familial connections, and their claims to power, which remained largely unresolved throughout the first decades of colonial rule. Benton uses the well-known inquisition trial of don Carlos Ometochtzin to shed light on some of these rivalries. As Benton shows, Ometochtzin’s denouement hinged more on the familial and political tensions that characterized 1530s Tetzcoco as well as Spanish norms regarding sexual practices and concubinage, than the more commonly referenced idolatry for which he was also accused.From 1540 through the mid-1560s, Tetzcoco experienced a time of relative stability, with two Tetzcoca nobles, don Antonio Pimentel Ihuian and his nephew don Hernando Pimentel Ihuian, reasserting traditional authority over the city. In chapter 2, Benton links their success to an adroit embrace of Christianity, their provision of basic services to the people of Tetzcoco, their legal responses to Spanish incursions on Native lands, and use of pictorial documents and letters to the king that promoted Tetzcoco’s preconquest greatness. Nevertheless, after 1564, Tetzcoco experienced increasing instability, with the city’s nobles losing political authority and Tetzcoco itself facing increasing economic pressure. And yet, despite these challenges, the noble family of Tetzcoco managed to retain some measure of wealth. In the second part of the book, Benton traces the survival of the family and its cacicazgo, or entailed estate. He focuses on particular family lines, paying special attention to the noble women of Tetzcoco and their mestizo children, including the well-known writers and cousins, Juan Bautista de Pomar and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl.Throughout the book, Benton explains his sources—which span the Native and Spanish spheres and include both alphabetic and pictorial systems of writing—with clarity and logic. In recent years, Tetzcoco has appealed to an interdisciplinary group of scholars whose works have contributed to an increased understanding of specific aspects of preconquest and early colonial Tetzcoco. By taking a wider approach to Tetzcoco and the fortunes of its leading families throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, Benton’s work helps to contextualize these other, more focused studies and provides students and scholars a necessary starting point for future works on Tetzcoco and the Acolhua peoples.