The elusive Petronila de Moctezuma document

I took another look at what Chipman says in "Moctezuma's Children" concerning the litigation concerning Tacuba and Ecatepec in an attempt to focus research efforts in the search for documents naming Petronila de Moctezuma.

The Tacuba litigation was in the early 1550s (Chipman is not more specific), with Diego Arias de Sotelo apparently being the primary litigant attempting to get the revenue from Tacuba for Leonore de Moctezuma (his mother-in-law). He was unsuccessful. The current estimate for the birthdate of Petronila is about 1558, thus it seems unlikely that the Tacuba litigation would name her.

Certain territories were included in the Ecatepec grant by Cortes, which resulted in litigation by the indian officials of Tenochtitlan and Tlalteloco. The litigation covered the period 1531 to the early 1560s. There were mixed results. The heirs of Leonore de Moctezuma won a victory with regard to Acalhuacan in 1553, the indians of Tlalteloco appealed/protested, the litigation continued for almost another 10 years before being decided in favor of Moctezuma's heirs in 1561. Petronila de Moctezuma may have been born near the end of this period (1558?) and thus might be named in the record.

Documents concerning the Avila-Cortes conspiracy, in which Diego Arias de Sotelo was implicated, could also name his family members: we did learn things about his second wife, and the his parents. Petronila would have been alive during this time.

Unfortunately, Chipman does not cite primary sources in this part of the history which makes it difficult to go directly the original records. His primary citation seems to be Charles Gibson, "The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810." This seems to be available in many libraries according to Worldcat (although I have not seen it yet). He also cites some of the works of Amada Lopez de Meneses (which I've also not found in a library yet), and "Noticia historica" by Orozco y Berra which was cited in detail in the recent Petronila de Moctezuma discussion (available from Google books as a free download).

Thus perhaps some of the files of this litigation and the Avila-Cortes conspiracy proceedings would be the place to look.

These files in the aggregate are possibly thousands of pages.

I do not know how much, if any, of these documents have been digitized and are available through PARES. I took a quick look, but with no real success ... hits in numerous files, but often not digitized. I have looked at some documents from the mid 1500s, and I find them rather difficult to read, the handwriting is a real challenge (and I admit my Spanish is very limited): the handwriting is quite different than that of the church records 1600s.

Does anyone have ideas on how to proceed?

George Fulton
Pleasanton