A House Divided: Noble Tetzcocan Factionalism and the Audiencia of Mexico

Tetzcoco was one of the two most important altepetl, or city-states, in the central Mexican “Aztec Empire” when the Spaniards arrived in 1519. It was the cultural capital of the Aztec Empire, home to the famed “poet-kings” Nezahualcoyotl and Nezahualpilli, and was second in power only to the Aztec capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Yet by the seventeenth century, Tetzcoco had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former grandeur. The early colonial period was difficult for Tetzcoco, but these dramatic changes are not particularly well understood. How did the Tetzcoca indigenous nobility respond to the challenges of Spanish colonial authority and society? What strategies did they adopt in order to secure their place in the newly Hispanized environment in which they found themselves? How did their choices influence the waning power of their home polity within the colonial power structure? This presentation—based on archival research from’s Archivo General de la Nación—examines the actions of Tetzcocan nobles in lawsuits brought before’s Real Audiencia. Specifically, I will look at the protracted dispute between, on the one side, the nobles of Tetzcoco and, on the other, their cousins don Francisco Pimentel and Juan de Pomar. This legal battle over rights to the cacicazgo, or lordly estate, of Tetzcoco, raged for nearly thirty years, paralyzed Tetzcoco’s indigenous government, and nearly destroyed Tetzcoco’s hereditary nobility. The legal strategies used by Pimentel and Pomar nonetheless provide insight into the changing nature of indigenous Tetzcocan politics and society by century’s end and the relative importance of Spanish colonial institutions in noble native life.