On Shaky Ground: Hydraulics, State Formation, and Colonialism in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

[L]a historia del origen y fundamento, de cómo empezó y principió la gran ciudad de México Tenochtitlan, que está adentro del agua . . . nunca se perderá ni olvidará lo que hicieran, lo que asentaran en sus escritos y pinturas, su fama y el renombre y recuerdo que de ellos hay, en los tiempos venideros, jamás se perderá ni olvidará; siempre lo guardaremos nosotros, los que somos hijos, nietos, hermanos menores, biznietos, tataranietos, descendientes, sangre y color suyos.

—Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica Mexicayotl

The Mexicas founded Tenochtitlan on a small island in 1325, creating over time a very complex hydraulic system that allowed them to manage their aquatic environment. This article analyzes the technological and epistemological imperatives that this geographical contingency would impose on the future development of a Spanish colonial state. In the transition from violent conquest to the establishment of hegemony through urban development and institutions such as the university, Spanish sovereignty is paradoxically both sustained and undermined by the Spaniards’ disavowal of indigenous forms of knowledge. In Francisco Cervantes de Salazar’s México en 1554, urbanism, knowledge, and aesthetics are linked to political dominion, but several blind spots in the text, namely, references to Nahuatl history and technology, signal the impossibility of complete hegemony and, on the contrary, demonstrate that the Spaniards’ presence in Mexico cannot be guaranteed except through violence.