Centro's Four Indigenous Quarters | San Pablo Teopan-Zoquipan Part IV: Island of Tultengo

When we began our exploration of the original indigenous villages that, over five centuries, have been incorporated into Mexico City, we started with the four parcialidades, quarters, around the center of the Tenochtitlan assigned to indigenous groups by Hernán Cortes after the Conquest. Together, they made up the Indian Republic of San Juan Tenochtitlan.

The second of the quarters we investigated was San Pablo Teopan-Zoquipan, in the southeast of the Centro. We found it to embody such complex and revealing dimensions of the history of the City's transition from its original Mexica to Colonial Spanish incarnations that we made several forays into the area. These forays resulted in three posts:

• Core of the district, centered today around Pino Suárez Market and the old and new San Pablo churches; 
• Area to the south, where a number of churches near the former causeway, now the Calzada de San Antonio Abad, which becomes Calzada de Tlalpan, point to its function as a major entry point into both the Mexica and Spanish cities; and the 
• Area north of athe Pino Suárez Market, now known as La Merced, an area of markets from indigenous times to the present.   

Islands Natural and Man-made

In the second phase of those ambles, to the south, we investigated three churches:

• Chapel of the Holy Conception, popularly called Conception Tlaxcoaque;
• Church of San Antonio Abad; and the
• Church of Santa Cruz Acatlán.

Seeking answers to the question of why there were so many churches in the core of the district and along the southern gateway, we discovered research that revealed the geographic foundations of Tenochtitlan and the particular geographic and man-made complexity of this particular quarter of the City. 

Map 1: Características edáficas y ecológicas presentes en la isla de Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco.
Soil and ecological characteristics of the Island of Tenochtitlan-Tlatlolco

(based on data from Calnek 1972, 1976; González Aparicio 1980,
Reyes García et al. [eds.] 1996, Filsinger 2005, Sánchez Vázquez et al. 2007)
from:
SAN PABLO TEOPAN: PERVIVENCIA Y METAMORFOSIS VIRREINAL 
DE UNA PARCIALIDAD INDÍGENA DE LA CIUDAD DE MÉXICO
by ROSSEND ROVIRA MORGADO
San Pablo Teopan: Survival and Metamorphosis 
of an Indigenous Quarter of Mexico City
During the Viceroy Period
by Rossend Rovira Morgado

It turns out that Tenochtitlan or, more accurately, the island on which it was built over a two-hundred year period (1325-1520), was not one island but a group of five islands (yellow circles) which the Mexica, you might say, cobbled together with mud from the lake and their sweat.

• Pile-driving: Starting from the largest island (central yellow circle, above), they extended their land and connected it to two other islands by cimentación por pilotaje, driving log pilings into the lake-bed and filling the space with packed mud taken from the lake (light orange). 

• Chinampas: Using the same method of driving piles and filling the created space with soil, chinampas, "islands", were created and used to grow fruits and vegetables. The lake's water became canals between the man-made "islands." This method continues to be used in the southern delegación, borough, of Xochimilco, but it was ubiquitous around Tenochtitlan, the other islands in the lakes and along the lake shores. From the map above, it can be seen that chinampas (dark-orange) constituted the majority of Tenochtitlan's "land."

Yet Another Island

Our exploration of the southern portion of San Pablo Teopan-Zoquipan ended at the Church of Santa Cruz Acatlán, in what is now the Colonia Tránsito. At the time, we were aware from our research that farther south in what had been the parcialidad, there were two other churches from the early Colonial period. These churches were part of the Spiritual Conquest carried out by the Franciscans and other religious orders to convert the indigenous people to Catholicism and Spanish culture. However, to be frank, tired from our amble, we did not continue south to find them. 

Recently, we were able to rectify that omission. While searching for the site of the Paseo de la Viga, a Colonial-era promenade along the former Royal Canal, informally called La Viga, The Beam, we realized that we were very near these other two churches. So after locating the southern end of the Paseo at what is now Parque La Viga at the intersection of Calzada de la Viga and Calzada Chabacano, we headed northwest, up the nearby, diagonal Calle José T. Cúellar.

Map 2: Tenochtitlan with original islands incorporated into it.
Teopan-Zoquiapan quarter is the lower-right section.

El territorio excluido: Historia y patrimonio cultural de las colonias al norte del río de La Piedad, 
The Excluded Territory: History and Cultural Patrimony of the Colonias North of the River of Piety 
(Delegación Cuauhtémac), María Eugenia Herrera, Editor © Palabra de Clío, Aug. 2015

On Map 2 we locate:

• Calzada: Mexica causeway, now Pino Suárez and Calzadas San Antonio Abad andTlalpan. 
•  Royal Canal:  (Later, the National Canal or "La Viga", "The Beam") is the long canal running South to North, parallel to Calzada, up the middle of Teopan-Zoquipan and turning West to meet the Calzada in the Templo Mayor district, now the Zócalo.
• Xoloco Canal: (Sho-LO-ko) runs West to East, crossing the Calzada to meet the Royal Canal. It is now Calle Chimalpopoca, just south of Pino Suárez Market.
• Xocongo Canal: short canal, runs South to North, just East and parallel to Calzada, connecting with Xoloco Canal. Today it is Calle Xocongo in Colonia Tránsito.
• Temple to Huitznahuac, razed by the Franciscans to build San Pablo Viejo Church: black rectangle and triangle between Calzada and Royal Canal, north of Xoloco Canal, in the area we  explored in our first post on Teopan-Xoquipan;
• Conception Tlaxcoaque Chapel: small, black square just West of the calzada and just North of Xoloco Canal; location of a prior Mexica edifice.
• San Antonio Abad and Santa Cruz Acatlán churches: South of Xoloco Canal, between Calzada and Xoncongo Canal, another rectangle indicates a Mexica edifice that matches the later locations of the churches. We visited these three churches in our second post on the parcialidad.
• Calzada Chabacano, unnamed on the map, follows what was once the southern boundary of the chinampas of Teopan-Zoquipan and hence, the southern boundary of Tenochtitlan on the east side of the Calzada San Antonio Abad and Tlalpan. 

Walking up Calle José T. Cúellar, we recall the maps (1 and 2) which told us the geographic history of Teopan-Zoquipan. On both maps, at the southern end of the parcialidad, another island appears:

• Map 1: It appears as a small, isolated yellow circle surrounded by chinampas.
• Map 2: It is represented as an "isla primativa", with the date 1325, the date the Mexica "landed" on the island/s on which they built their city; and it is given the name Tultenco. 

In a few blocks, we arrive at the heart of this now-invisible island, in front of a small, quite modern church. It is the Church of San Francisco de Asis Tultengo.

Although the current stucture was built in the late 20th century, it sits on the site of the original church built on the island by the Franciscans in the early 16th century. So the parish has a nearly five hundred-year-long history.

St. Francis of Asisi, showing the stigmata of Christ's crucifixion.
Mosaic mural in the entrance by Elio Carmichael (1935-2014),
a graduate, like many of Mexico's famous muralists, from the Academy of San Carlos.

Sanctuary of San Francisco de Asis Tultengo
during Sunday Mass

Leaving San Francisco Asis Tultengo, we head straight north to seek the second landmark church on this former island. A couple of short blocks along the way, our eye catches sight of one of those street murals we frequently encounter in our ambles around the City. It reminds us of ones we saw in the indigenous Pueblo of Culhuacán, far to the south in Delegación Iztapalapa.

Mexica "Aztec" God
Perhaps, Coatlicue, mother goddess who wore a skirt of snakes
or Malinalxochitl, goddess of snakes

Tezcatlipoca
god of the night, dark forces, conflict and 
the cardinal direction of north, from whence cold comes

So here we are, on a Sunday morning, with a Catholic Mass being celebrated just blocks away, on what was an island occupied by Nahuatl people, and we run into some of the gods they worshipped before the arrival of the Spanish with their trinitarian God (and Mary, the Virgin Mother).

Continuing up the street, we come to the intersection with Avenida del Taller, Workshop Avenue, where Google Maps tells us we should find the second church. At first, we see nothing that looks like a church. Across the street, we see the side of a small, square, white, stucco-covered building, facing west. Then we see a small belfry and a cross on top.

Parroquia de la Santa Cruz y la Preciosa Sangre de Cristo
Parish Church of the Holy Cross and the Precious Blood of Christ

The Parish Church of the Holy Cross and the Precious Blood of Christ, familiarly known as Santa Crucita, the Little Holy Cross, and also Santa Cruz Tultengo, was also built by the Franciscans in the early years of the 16th century. Why they built two churches so close together on what was a small island is one of our many unanswered questions.

Sanctuary during Mass
We wish we could get a close look at the unusual mural behind the altar.

In crossing Avenida Taller we have entered what is now Colonia Tránsito, which extends from this former island of Tultengo all the way north to just south of Pino Suárez Market, where we began our exploration of San Pablo Teopan-Zoquipan some time ago.

In this latest amble, we have reached the southern-most point of the parcialidad, and thus of the original city of Tenochtitlan. We have discovered (for ourselves) a lost island and, once again, encountered both the physical and mental space, the imaginario, where the indigenous world was confronted by the "Western", i.e., European, world of Spanish Catholic Christianity nearly five hundred years ago. It is the space where the indigenous Mexica people found the pathway to their survival as a community—transformed as it may be—up to the present day.  

Southeast Delegación Cuauhtémoc. 

The former Parcialidad of San Pablo Teopan-Zoquipan lies
east of Calazada San Antonio Abad and the Colonia Obrera (gray rectangle)
Its southern end was at the bottom of the red triangle, Colonia Vista Alegre (Happy View), 
now the Calzada Chabacano. 

Starting from the south, the stars mark the sites of:
Church of San Franciso Asis Tultengo (red and yellow)
Church of Santa Cruz y la Preciosa Sangre de Cristo (green and yellow)
Churches of Santa Cruz Acatlán and San Antonio Abad (purple and orange)
Chapel of the Holy Conception, aka Conception Tlaxcoaque (green and blue)
Pino Suárez Market, site of Mexica Temple to Ehécatl, God of Wind (green and green)
Churches of San Pablo Antiguo and Nuevo (purple and red),
which are in Centro Histórico East