The initial moments of Mexico City's foundation in the XVI century was taken as a model to interpret, from practical and symbolic coordinates, the function of the archive or arca de tres llaves that the institution of the Cabildo, Justicia y Regimiento of the city was required to install by law. The bureaucratic tradition that the Spanish Crown transfers to the New World, establishes mechanisms that legitimize a new order and guarantee the adhesion of the population to the Hispanic administration from the design of the urban layout, the building of the cabildo and the functioning of the arca de tres llaves. We tried to analyze these mechanisms from the documentation that keeps the archives of the founding council, nowadays in the Historical Archive of Mexico City, and from a bibliography that provided us some interpretation guidelines.