| Resumo: | In Mesoamerica, during the Late Postclassic, most Indigenous people were subject to a “lord,” or tlahtoque. Together, they constituted a political unit, known as an altepetl, in which all members were connected through historic ties and collective interests, which allowed for the survival and reproduction of their social and economic system. The objective of this article is to examine the logic that Hernán Cortés followed when petitioning the king for encomiendas through the identification of pre-existing Indigenous lords and some of the major pre-Hispanic economic and residential centers. At the same time, it emphasizes the fact that these Indigenous settlements were based around the tlathoque-altepetl relationship, which allowed for the creation of the system of indirect domination on which New Spain was built.
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