Exploring Colonial Mexico©
Exploring Colonial Mexico©
Tlatelolco, now a barrio of Mexico City, has always been at the center of Mexican history: an eventful and often violent history.
At the time of the Spanish conquest Tlatelolco was the second most important Aztec center after the capital Tenochtitlan. It was the location of ancient Mexico's largest marketplace as well as the enormous temple of the Aztec war god Huitzilipochtli
In 1521, Tlatelolco saw desperate fighting between the Spaniards under Cortés and the Aztecs under Cuauhtémoc, the lord of Tlatelolco and briefly Emperor of Mexico. The Aztecs were eventually routed and the temples burned.
Santiago, the militant patron saint of Spain whose mythic crushing of the Moors was frequently portrayed in art, was widely credited with the victory and the success of the Conquest.
Later, the church dedicated to Santiago rose from the ruins of the razed temples. A vivid relief showing the saint trampling his foes underfoot, some pointedly in indigenous headdresses, remains in the church to this day.
Santiago Tlatelolco among the Aztec ruins
Tlatelolco:
relief of Santiago Matamoros
The College of Santa
Cruz
The extensive convento beside the church was also the seat of the College of Santa Cruz, a Franciscan seminary founded to educate the native elite for the priesthood. However, because of their mixed loyalties and considered unsuitability the native students were denied that privilege. Ironically the educated indigenous eventually became teachers to the Spanish elite.
The 1968 massacre
In more recent times, Tlatelolco was the scene of an infamous and still controversial 1968 student massacre by the city authorities. After years of denial this incident has now been acknowledged in a public monument, although some of the perpetrators still elude justice.
And in 1985, a severe earthquake shook Mexico City, during which many highrise buildings around the church were heavily damaged. Built on more solid ancient foundations, the colonial church withstood the tremors virtually unscathed.
A new cultural
center will open in November 2007 in an annex to the convento
with galleries and conference facilities. To be known as El Centro
Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco (CCUT) the center will house
permanent and traveling exhibits as well as educational seminars.
One of the exhibits will document the events of 1968, hopefully
pulling no punches.
Most recently, what may be the earliest and largest 16th century mural in Mexico has been uncovered in the convento. During excavations of the former college and convento, archeologists exploring an ancient water channel and cistern were amazed to discover that the surrounding walls had been covered with extensive painted scenes of human figures, plants and animals. While the figures were modeled in the European grisaille style of many early colonial frescoes, the native flora and fauna were portrayed more in the manner of prehispanic murals and codices.
Sections recovered indicate that the murals measured some 2 meters high and at least 15 meters long. Repositioning of the more than 25,000 fragments recovered reveal that part of the mural portrayed an idealized lakeside scene,* a peaceable kingdom teeming with birds, fish, native animals and plants and human figures - including fishermen, jaguars, eagles and turtles, as well as terrestrial and aquatic plants.
In contrast to the smoky monochrome of the figures and a monumental black and white cross in the center, other pictorial elements are painted in subtle shades of red, green, ocher and blue. While the artists are unknown, it seems likely that skilled tlacuilos - scribes and painters drawn from the ranks of the Aztec nobility - were the authors of these extraordinary frescoes, a fact that seems to signify acceptance by the native elite of their new Spanish masters and the Catholic religion. The scale and placement of the mural also serves to emphasize the continued importance of Tlatelolco in the years after the conquest.
This spectacular early example of hybrid tequitqui art, buried for 400 years, is believed by archeologists to date from the 1530s. Despite its idyllic setting - a theme that seems, perhaps intentionally, to fly in the face of Tlatelolco's turbulent post-conquest history - the mural gives poignant and tangible form to the sentiment inscribed on the commemorative plaque erected in front of the church:
Mural fragment with mask
Mural fragment
Mural fragment with face
Jaguar
Eagle
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