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MEXICO
CITY - HISTORY |
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And when we saw all those
cities and villages built in the
water, and other great towns on
dry land, and that straight and
level causeway leading to
Mexico, we were astounded. These
great towns and cues and
buildings rising from the water,
all made of stone, seemed like
an enchanted vision from the
tales of Amadis. Indeed, some of
our soldiers asked whether it
was not all a dream.
- Bernal Díaz
It's hardly surprising that
Cortés and his followers should
have been so taken by their
first sight of Tenochtitlán
, capital of the Aztecs. For
what they found, built in the
middle of a lake traversed by
great causeways, was a
beautiful, strictly regulated,
stone-built city of 300,000
people, easily the equal of
anything they might have
experienced in Europe. The Aztec
people (or, as they called
themselves, the Mexica) had
arrived at the lake, after years
of wandering and living off what
they could scavenge or pillage
from settled communities, in
around 1345. Their own legends
have it that Huitzilopochtli had
ordered them to build a city
where they found an eagle
perched on a cactus devouring a
snake, and this they duly saw on
an island in the middle of the
lake; this is the basis of the
nopal, eagle and snake motif
that forms the centrepiece of
the modern Mexican flag and
appears everywhere, from coins
and official seals to woven
designs on rugs. The reality was
probably more desperate - driven
from place to place, the lake
seemed a last resort - but for
whatever reasons it proved an
ideal site. Well stocked with
fish, it was also fertile, once
they had constructed their chinampas
, or floating gardens of reeds,
and virtually impregnable, too:
the causeways, when they were
completed, could be flooded and
the bridges raised to thwart
attacks (or to escape, as the
Spanish found to their cost on
the Noche Triste ).
The island city eventually
grew to cover an area of some
thirteen square kilometres, much
of it reclaimed from the lake,
and from this base the Aztecs
were able to begin their
programme of expansion: first,
dominating the valley by a
series of strategic alliances,
war and treachery, and finally,
in a period of less than a
hundred years before the
Conquest, establishing an empire
that demanded tribute from and
traded with the most distant
parts of the country.
The Conquest
Cortés landed on the
east coast in 1519, bringing
with him an army of only a few
hundred men, and began his
long march on Tenochtitlán.
Several key factors assured
his survival: superior
weaponry, which included
firearms; the shock effect of
horses (never having seen such
animals, the Aztecs at first
believed them to be extensions
of their riders); the support
of tribes who were either
enemies or suppressed subjects
of the Aztecs; and the
unwillingness of the Aztec
emperor to resist openly.
Moctezuma II
(Montezuma), who had suffered
heavy defeats in campaigns
against the Tarascans in the
west, was a broodingly
religious man who, it is said,
believed Cortés to be the
pale-skinned, bearded god
Quetzalcoatl, returned to
fulfil ancient prophecies.
Accordingly he admitted him to
the city - fearfully, but with
a show of ceremonious welcome.
By way of repaying this
hospitality the Spanish took
Moctezuma prisoner, and later
attacked the great Aztec
temples, killing many priests
and placing Christian chapels
alongside their altars.
Meanwhile, there was growing
unrest in the city at the
emperor's passivity and at the
rapacious behaviour of his
guests. Moctezuma was
eventually killed - according
to the Spanish stoned to death
by his own people while trying
to quell a riot - and the
Spaniards driven from the city
with heavy losses. Cortés,
and a few of his followers,
however, escaped to the
security of Tlaxcala, most
loyal of his native allies,
there to regroup and plan a
new assault. Finally, rearmed
and reinforced, their numbers
swelled by indigenous allies,
and with ships built in
secret, they laid a
three-month siege, finally
taking the city in the face of
suicidal opposition in August
1521.
The city's defeat is still
a harsh memory: Cortés
himself is hardly revered, but
the natives who assisted him,
and in particular Moctezuma
and Malinche, the woman who
acted as Cortés's
interpreter, are non-people.
You won't find a monument to
Moctezuma in the country,
though Cuauhtémoc, his
successor who led the fierce
resistance, is commemorated
everywhere; Malinche is
represented, acidly, in some
of Diego Rivera's more
outspoken murals. More
telling, perhaps, of the
bitterness of the struggle, is
that so little physical
evidence remains: "All
that I saw then," wrote
Bernal Díaz, "is
overthrown and destroyed;
nothing is left
standing."
Spanish and post-colonial
Mexico City
The victorious Spanish
systematically smashed every
visible aspect of the old
culture, as often as not using
the very stones of the old
city to construct the new, and
building a new palace for Cortés
on the site of the Aztec
emperor's palace. A few
decades ago it was thought
that everything was lost;
slowly, however, particularly
during construction of the
Metro and in the remarkable
discovery of remains of the Templo
Mayor beneath the colonial
Zócalo, remains of Tenochtitlán
have been brought to light.
The new city
developed slowly in its early
years, only attaining the
level of population that the
old had enjoyed at the
beginning of the twentieth
century. It spread far wider,
however, as the lake was
drained, filled and built over
- only tiny vestiges remain
today - and grew with
considerable grace. In many
ways it's a singularly
unfortunate place to site a
modern city. Pestilent from
the earliest days, the
inadequately drained waters
harboured fevers, and the
native population was
constantly swept by epidemics
of European diseases. Many of
the buildings, too, simply
began to sink into the soft
lake bed, a process probably
accelerated by regular
earthquakes. You'll see old
churches and mansions leaning
at crazy angles throughout the
centre, and though repairs to
buildings damaged by the
disastrous earthquake
of September 1985 are long
complete, several empty shells
remain standing.
By the third quarter of the
nineteenth century, the city
comprised little more than the
area around the Zócalo and
Alameda. Chapultepec Castle,
Coyoacán, San Ángel, and the
Basilica of Guadalupe - areas
now well within city limits -
were then surrounded by fields
and the last of the basin's
former lakes. Nonetheless, the
city was beginning to take its
present shape: the Paseo de la
Reforma already linked
Chapultepec with the city, and
the colonial core could no
longer accommodate the
increasing population. From
late 1870 through to 1911 the
dictator Porfirio Díaz
presided over an
unprecedented, and
self-aggrandizing, building
programme which saw the
installation of trams, the
expansion of public transport
and the draining of some of
the last sections of the Lago
de Texcoco which had
previously hemmed in the city.
Jointly these fuelled further
growth, and by the outbreak of
the Revolution in 1910, Mexico
City's residents numbered over
four hundred thousand.
The modern city
As many as two million
Mexicans died during the
Revolution and many more lost
their property, livelihood or
both. In desperation thousands
fled to the rapidly
industrializing capital in
search of jobs and a better
life. Between 1910 and the
mid-1940s the city's
population quadrupled and the
cracks in the infrastructure
quickly became gaping holes.
Houses couldn't be built
quickly enough to cope with
the seven-percent annual
growth, and many people
wouldn't have been able to
afford them anyway, so up
sprung shanty towns .
The city became surrounded by
shacks cobbled together from
whatever scraps of metal and
cardboard could be found. Most
had little or no water supply
and sanitation was an
afterthought. Gradually, civic
leaders tried to improve the
lot of its citizens by
improving the services and
housing in shanty towns, but a
new ring of slums mushroomed
even more quickly just a
little further out. As the
city expanded, transport
became impossible and the city
embarked on building the Metro
system, an ongoing process
since the late 1970s.
Urban growth continues
today: some estimate that
there are a thousand new
arrivals each day, and the
city now extends beyond the
limits of the Distrito Federal
and out into the surrounding
state of México. Despite the
spread, Mexico City remains
one of the world's densest and
most populated cities with an
unenviable list of major
social and physical problems,
and no sign of major
improvement in the near
future.
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