Reimagining the Mexico Valley after Conquest: A Spatial History Approach to the “Map of Tenochtitlan, 1550”

Caterina Pizzigoni, Columbia University
Gergely Baics, Barnard College
Sarah Baybeck, Barnard College

The “Map of Tenochtitlan, 1550,” is one of the earliest and most famous cartographic representations of Mexico City shortly after the conquest. It is unique in several ways. First, its author(s) were probably of Nahua origin, educated at the Franciscan monastery near Tlatelolco. The map therefore integrates Indigenous and Western cartographic traditions. Second, it is not a map of Mexico City-Tenochtitlan per se but of the region. Before the conquest, the Mexico Valley was among the world's most densely populated areas. In 1550, the small Spanish population, mostly present in the city, was engulfed by a vast Nahua world in the city and across the valley. Third, the map details not only the region's built environment and topography, but also its human and natural ecosystems. Its vision is in fact Indigenous, corresponding to the pre-conquest Mesoamerican urban tradition that treated city and countryside as integrated human and natural ecosystems. Fourth, the map narrates daily life, depicting interactions between the human and natural environments and between Spanish and Indigenous people. Overall, the “Map of Tenochtitlan, 1550” provides a veritable spatial catalogue of the built, natural, and human environments of one of Spanish America’s most important regions, and from an Indigenous perspective, from which derives its regionally-scaled and ecological vision and its familiarity with the territory. The map has attracted considerable scholarship, mainly focusing on its artistic production and representation. Instead, we explore it as a cartographic record, with locational specificity and accuracy, to create a spatial history project. We geo-reference the map, and use spatial history tools to analyze its rich locational data about the region’s built environment, ecologies, and daily life to reflect on the complex human and natural ecosystems of the Mexico Valley that had survived and continued to thrive after the conquest.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 49. HGIS at Scale