Within days of the wedding, don Luis sent emissaries to speak to key groups. The indigenous church painters and scribes who worked for the Franciscans received them with interest. Two elders came who presently were serving on the cabildo. The speakers used ancient metaphors to remind their listeners that they should remain devoted to the cause of keeping the Mexica polity alive and viable, speaking poetically and formally, just as their fathers had done in trying political times. “Does it not stem from here, the breath, the words of the altepetl, its years of blood sacrifices?”
