They say that when the Spaniards entered the territory of Greater Tenochtitlán, there were “one hundred and twenty thousand houses and in each one, three and four and up to ten neighbors”, and they calculated that they added more than 300 thousand inhabitants. That the buildings were made of adobe and whitewashed on top, so that the water could not rain inside. The newcomers wrote that they were not very showy, nor did they look very bright and only served their inhabitants as shelter and protection from life. A protection that would not last long.
In a text by Motolinía, which Artemio del Valle Arizpe cites as “the epigraph of the tragic obituary of the Aztec families”, the following can be read: “God wounded and punished this land and those who were found in it, both natural and foreign, with ten laborious plagues… the seventh of them “the building of the great City of Mexico”. A great city that, by force of sword, cross and hammer, with stones already stoned, would change the appearance of the capital of the Aztec kingdom, all the time the protagonist of a painful history of glories, rubble and destruction.
No one better than Carlos Monsiváis when, ironically, in his book A ustedes les consta he writes about the founding of the city: “And the Aztecs who came from Aztlán arrived at Lake Tenochtitlan, and waited for the signs of the prophecy, and there next to the nopal and the eagle and the serpent, a crowd of reporters and chroniclers were already waiting for them”. More than the press, of course, it refers to those who gave a written account of their first impressions of the Great Tenochtitlan.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Hernán Cortés’ right-hand man and fighter who “did not get tired of anything” in his “History of the True Conquest of New Spain”, confesses that contemplating the great Valley of Mexico made him dizzy and a feeling of smallness. Somewhat horrified, for having witnessed the blood spilled from the sacrifice of that day, accompanied by Cortés and Moctezuma and from the top of a large teocalli, he describes the panorama as follows:
“I had not seen its great square, which from there I could see much better, so we were looking at it, because from that great and damned temple it was so high, that everything was dominated very well (…) We saw the three causeways that enter here, which It is that of Iztapalapa, which was where we entered four days there, and that of Tacuba, which was where we later fled the night of our great disaster (…) and also the fresh water that came from Chapultepec from which the city. After looking closely, we returned to see the great square and the multitude of people who were there, some buying and others selling, that only the rumor and buzz of the voices and words that were there sounded more than one language. Among us, the soldiers who had been in many parts of the world and in Constantinople and throughout Italy and Rome, said that they had never seen such a well-composed square and with such concert and size and filled with so many people.”
You already guessed it, dear reader: they were contemplating the Zócalo, the navel of the Moon, the center of all gatherings and manifestations of all voices: the second largest square in the world. That is why it is surprising that, fascinated and astonished by the greatness, the multitude and the diversity, they wanted to conquer everything.
In a terrifying but impeccable strategy, the Spanish army knew that it had to end everything: destroy buildings, government and administrative powers, education, religion, crimes and punishments, and all the art and culture of that town. Very quickly, they began the new layout of that surface, which covered nearly 46 thousand square meters, and they got to work. Once the Templo Mayor was completely razed, the Spaniards carried out an almost artisan work of violent efficiency.
They reoriented the plaza and used the same stones from the destruction to build the new architecture of New Spain. During the first colonial years, the plaza was surrounded to the north by the new church (now the Metropolitan Cathedral) and to the east by the new palace of Cortés, built on the ruins of the Moctezuma palace (now the National Palace). On the west side, the Mercaderes Portals were built; to the south, the Portal de las Flores and next to it the City Hall Palace, seat of the city government ever since.
Later —because the stone is accommodated to the toad— the great square changed its name many times: they called it Plaza de la Constitución, Plaza de Armas, Plaza Principal, and Plaza del Palacio. Despite this, our favorite name, the one we like the most, comes directly from the 19th century. Directly from the project of a monument that Antonio López de Santa Anna planned to build, to pay homage to his leg lost in battle: a great column that was going to rise in the center of the square of which only the base was built, that is to say the socket.
It goes without saying that the great work never came to fruition, that governments, vanities, spaces and places of power have changed, but that the Zócalo still summons and remains.
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