UNESCO Courier, Nov 1996 p14(3)
Tlatelolco, shop window of the Aztec empire. Maria Rebecca Yoma Medina; Luis Alberto Martos Lopez.

Abstract: Traders and consumers in the Aztec empire of pre-Spanish Mexico gravitated towards the city of Tlatelolco to barter, sell and buy produce. The city's market was one of the great centers of mass activity in the empire. People used cacao beans and gold dust as currency for non-bartered goods.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1996 UNESCO

In pre-Columbian Mexico a great market was held in the Aztec city of Tlatelolco. Its size and organization amazed the Spanish conquistadors, who had seen nothing like it in sixteenth-century Europe.

Tlatelolco was a part of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan which, so legend has it, was founded on an island in Lake Texcoco in 1325. The site was ideal for exploiting the lake's resources, but seed, fruit, vegetables, building materials and many other essential goods had to be brought in from outside. In 1337, an Aztec splinter group founded an independent city, Tlatelolco, on an island north of Tenochtitlan. The two cities soon became rivals. Tlatelolco's strategic position and the extraordinary business acumen of its inhabitants were such that it acquired a formidable commercial reputation.

A market suburb

At first the market of Tlatelolco dealt exclusively in primary products, but economic and social development slowly encouraged the growth of trade in luxury goods. This became so important that an institution specializing in long-distance trade was set up. It was known as the Pochtecayotl and set up a trading network that reached as far as the provinces of the Mayan empire.

In 1473, after a war in which no quarter was given, Tlatelolco was defeated in battle by an army from Tenochtitlan. Overnight the proud city became a suburb of Tenochtitlan. In view of the market's reputation and size, however, the victors decided to encourage its expansion by transporting to it a wide variety of rare products from other cities and regions of the Aztec empire.

The conquistadors' amazement

When the Spanish conquered Mexico, the market of Tlatelolco was at the height of its prosperity. Contemporary Spanish chroniclers describe how the market place was located to the east of the city's great ceremonial enclosure on a vast square esplanade with sides 200 metres long, fully paved and level and surrounded by arcades housing shops. At the centre of the square was the momoztli, a kind of truncated stepped pyramid which was used for celebrations, ceremonies and other public events.

Hernando Cortes, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, wrote that "This city has many squares where trade and commerce go on all the time. One square is twice the size of Salamanca and surrounded with arcades that more than 70,000 people pass through every day, buying and selling."

Admirably sited near the quay of La Lagunilla, where boats laden with merchandise tied up, the market was also joined to the mainland by three causeways.

As the shop window of the Aztec world, Tlatelolco market offered its customers an amazing variety of exotic products from the four corners of the empire - fruit, animals, medicines, cloth, hides, pottery, instruments, tools and materials of all sorts. It also provided many services: public baths, cafes, barber shops, porters and slave markets.

Cacao currency

The merchants, known officially as tlamacaque, were generally also the producers. Middlemen known as regatoneria, who bought cheap and sold at a profit, did not appear until the colonial period.

Barter was the normal practice, but some commodities also served as currency. Cacao was grown for this purpose in certain parts of the empire, with the consequence that its production was strictly controlled by the government. The basic unit was the bean for inexpensive items and the sack of 8,000 beans (xiquipiles) for expensive items.

Handkerchief-sized squares of cotton known as quachtli were also used as currency. They came in three sizes, equalling 65, 80 and 100 cocoa beans respectively. A canoe was worth a quachtli of 100 beans. A slave who could sing was worth 30 quachtlis, and an excellent singer and dancer could fetch 40 quachtlis, or 4,000 cocoa beans.

Gold dust was another form of payment. It was poured into feather quills, whose value was based on their length and diameter. Small change came in the form of small, thin, T-shaped copper coins, nuggets of gold, copper or pewter, chips of jade and even the red shell from a mollusc now known as the spondylus.

These trading activities obeyed well-established laws and rules, for the market, like other institutions in pre-Columbian Mexico, functioned on a "correct and fair" (in qualli, in yectli) basis. No business could be transacted outside the market area, where each merchant was allotted a place corresponding to the nature of his wares. Lengths of rope and receptacles of various capacities were standardized and used to measure quantities. The price of each article was fixed in advance, and any merchant caught cheating on measures or price was severely punished.

There was a chamber where twelve judges sat in permanent session to ensure fair dealing and settle differences. Superintendents regularly went on rounds to maintain security and prevent fraud.

When they founded Mexico City, the Europeans created two new markets but neither ever attained the size or the splendour of Tlatelolco. But Tlatelolco did not survive the Spanish conquest.

MARIA REBECA YOMA MEDINA and LUIS ALBERTO MARTOS LOPEZ are Mexican archaeologists.


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