was 1529, and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, who would soon launch a war of conquest in the west of Mexico, had just been named to preside over the governing high court in Tenochtitlan.47 Cortés was absent in Spain, and it was not yet clear who would be named viceroy, the representative of the king. In the meantime, Guzmán was in charge. He made the decision to arrest Ixtlilxochitl, the Texcocan nobleman whose family line had benefited from the arrival of the Spaniards. Throughout the 1520s, he had made the most of his alliance with Cortés and waged war against his neighbors when he deemed it
...more
