Seven Ways of Looking at a Mountain: Tetzcotzingo and the Aztec Garden Tradition

Abstract

Using the fifteenth-century imperial garden at Tetzcotzingo as its focus, this study underscores the absence of scholarly attention devoted to the highly evolved Mesoamerican garden tradition and the botanically sophisticated culture it grew out of. The geopolitics of pre-Columbian Mexico, specifically the complex relations of the central basin’s two major cultures, Texcoco and Tenochtitlan, are reviewed and Tetzcotzingo’s architect, the emperor Nezahualcóyotl, is introduced. In an effort to honor the synthesizing indigenous sensibility that conceived the space, the paper argues for a hermeneutics of multiplicity, urging that the site be studied holistically: as hedonist space, sacred space, agricultural space, political emblem, performance space, and earthwork. Addressing the question of whether or not the space qualifies as a bona fide botanical garden, the study briefly recaps the controversy, questions the appropriateness of applying that classification to a Mesoamerican space, and finally, ponders the various consequences of studying Tetzcotzingo (and by extension the entire Mesoamerican garden tradition) on its own terms.