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Spain’s occupation of Mesoamerica violently disrupted the latter’s evolution, destroying Mesoamerican social institutions, religion, and infrastructure. Within 80 years, 1519–1600, the native population fell from at least 25 million to about a million. What followed was 300 years of colonial rule, accompanied by political and economic exploitation, the categorization of people by color, and the projection of the dominant class’s worldview. It pulled Spain and, ultimately, all of Europe out of the dark ages.

The Spanish Conquest

In 1492, Columbus landed in what are now the islands of the Caribbean. When he could not find sufficient gold and wealth, he turned to trading in slaves.

By the early 1500s, sugar-growing plantations emerged on the islands.

On his second voyage of 1493, he introduced sugar cane plants to the Caribbean. Columbus knew that sugar and slavery were inseparable and that tremendous profits could be gotten from sugar.

Columbus himself justified the enslavement of the indigenous people, claiming they were cannibals. The Spaniards repeated this pretext throughout the colonial period.

Faith versus Rationality

The Laws of Burgos were almost never enforced.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda based his arguments on Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery: “that one part of mankind is set aside by nature to be slaves in the service of masters born for a life of virtue free of manual labor.” Sepúlveda wrote a treatise justifying war against the natives. According to him, the Spaniards had the right to rule the “barbarians” because of their superiority. He compared the natives to wild beasts.

The Spanish Invasion of the Mexica

The Spaniards slowly explored the Caribbean coastline of Middle America, gathering information. In the late 1510s, Hernán Cortés landed on the mainland that was to become Mexico. On the island of Cozumel, Cortés encountered the Maya. In 1519, Cortés sailed to what today is Veracruz, and within two years Cortés’s forces conquered the great Azteca Empire and began the colonization of what they later called New Spain.

Throughout the advance to the Azteca capital of Tenochtitlán, the Azteca would stop fighting periodically to remove their dead and wounded from the battlefield. At close range, the Native Americans used wooden clubs ridged with razor sharp obsidian.

The Azteca were not immune to smallpox and other European diseases, so outbreaks of these diseases had the effect of germ warfare. At a critical moment, when it seemed as if the Azteca might drive out Cortés’s men, a smallpox epidemic ravaged the native population.

The Colonization of Native Mesoamerica

After the conquest of the Azteca, the Spaniards—through looting and torturing conquered the Tarasco; they executed the Cazonci, the Tarascan ruler, by dragging him through town behind a horse and burning him at the stake. Cortés’s men also subdued the natives of Oaxaca, but the conquest of the Maya proved more arduous. Many Maya fled to the dense forests and remained out of the control of the Spaniards for 200 years.

Smallpox and Other Plagues

The distinguishing characteristic of the subjugation of the Mesoamerican native populations was its genocidal proportion. The term genocide is used here because when people lose 90 plus percent of their population, millions of lives, an explanation must be forthcoming. As with a nuclear disaster, saying it was accidental is no excuse. After the conquest of Tenochtitlán, smallpox and other epidemics spread throughout the countryside, subsiding and recurring, until eventually as many as 24 million died in what is Mexico. Certainly, the smallpox, measles, and influenza outbreaks hit urban areas hardest because of the population concentration. (These three diseases are highly communicable, being transmitted mainly by air.)

There were four major epidemics in the first 60 years of Spanish occupation. Smallpox caused the first epidemic of 1520–1521, the second year after Spanish contact and untold thousands died. The second epidemic of smallpox (possibly combined with measles) broke out in 1531. The Azteca called it tepiton zahuatl, or “little leprosy.” The third epidemic began in 1545 and lasted three years. The Azteca called this cocoliztli, or “pest,” thought today to have been hemorrhagic fever. A fourth epidemic, again named cocoliztli, lasted from 1576 to 1581, and an estimated 300,000–400,000 Native Americans died of it in New Spain.

Apologists argue that it was the indigenous’ predisposition to diseases that made them vulnerable to European diseases. A plausible explanation is that the lack of larger-sized domesticated animals shielded the natives from diseases carried by animals. The introduction of domestic animals, accordingly, contributed to the spread of diseases to the natives.

The Columbian Exchange refers to widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations that included slavery, communicable disease, and ideas between Spain and the New World. This exchange cost lives and the destruction of cultures. It brought the Atlantic slave trade, the enslavement of indigenous populations, and the diseases that killed millions of Native Americans. The Americas as part of the exchange sent corn, the potato, the tomato, peppers, pumpkins, squash, pineapples, cacao beans (for chocolate), and the sweet potato and animals such as turkeys. The Europeans brought smallpox, influenza, malaria, measles, typhus, and syphilis. The exchange wiped out the indigenous peoples’ religions, submerged their languages, and tried to blank out their history. It introduced a European construct of race that lasts to this day.

The Conquest of Race and Labor in Mesoamerica

The invaders practiced a “scorched-earth” strategy, causing widespread environmental destruction and social disorganization. Large numbers of displaced, disoriented, and depressed refugees roamed the countryside, suffering severe nutritional deficiency and often starving to death. Illness often prevented many natives from caring for their crops or from processing corn into tortillas. The acute food shortage resulted in starvation, and contaminated food and water spread other diseases. Meanwhile, the Spaniards forcefully herded natives into new farming schemes. Alcoholism took an additional toll with the distilling of native drinks. Before the invasion, pique, which was low in alcoholic content and rich in vitamins, was used for religious purposes. When the Spaniards introduced distilled alcohol, addiction became common. Urban resettlement plans only reinforced substantial crowding and lack of hygiene, and native centers became breeding grounds for epidemics.

Indigenous Labor

The crown gave former conquistadores (meaning “leaders of the crusades”) encomiendas, large tracts of land with native subjects which was also used in the Caribbean islands. The encomendero received tribute from a village along with indigenous labor. The invaders often maltreated and abused the natives, keeping them in a state of serfdom.

Indigenous slavery and the encomienda flourished on the peripheries and frontiers of New Spain well into the nineteenth century. Employers often ignored giving indigenous populations wages for their labor. The repartimiento included the requirement that natives purchase goods from Spanish authorities.

Structural Controls

In order to control them, colonial authorities grouped native communities into municipios, townships. The largest town of the municipios was the cabecera, or head community. It strengthened colonial control of the native village. The purpose was to isolate natives in order for them to identify with the local village rather than forming class or ethnic identities. This division made it difficult for the different communities to unite against Spanish rule, destroying intercommunity regional networks and the pre-invasion world system.

Spanish was the official language. All official government business was conducted in Spanish. If the native or the casta, of mixed race, spoke Spanish, he or she was considered superior to those who did not. The Catholic Church was the state religion, and the Christian God supplanted the indigenous gods. The paternalism of the Spanish friars was racist, and they saw the natives as being childlike.

Influenced by the Spanish Reconquista, they were intolerant and hostile toward any person who was non-Catholic. To hold office or be a noble, the nominee was required to prove a limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), that is, that they were not of Jewish or Moorish blood. The intolerance extended to Spain’s colonies. To further consolidate its power, Spain imposed a caste system based on race that designated an individual’s rank according to color. There were four main categories of race: the “peninsular,” or Spaniard born in Spain; the “criollo/a,” a person of Spanish descent born in Mesoamerica; the “indio/a,” or native; and the “negro/a,” of African slave descent. Innumerable subcategories of hybrids developed over time. This system, used for social control, lasted in various forms throughout the colonial period, although it became more difficult to keep track of one’s class position as the castas (those of mixed race) moved north. The advantage of moving up in race is obvious: The more Spanish one looked and claimed to be, the more privileges the person enjoyed.

Women in Colonial Mesoamerica

From riches extracted from the labor of the indigenous, colonial society could afford to produce literature and the arts.

The social and economic roles of women varied between pre-colonial and colonial societies. Women were the victims of rape, the ultimate symbol of subordination, and the economy opened only limited opportunities for them. In Yucatán the introduction of sheep led to the commercial production of wool. Women were generally responsible for making woolen goods. The repetitive motions in textile work resulted in physical ailments.

Azteca women were recognized as adults. They had rights before the law and society. Under Spanish rule, their standing was weakened. Native women were not always recognized as hijas del pueblo, daughters or citizens of the town, with communal land rights. Women’s rights to property narrowed under colonialism, and their participation changed as commercial agriculture put pressure on los de abajo (the poor and powerless) to abandon or sell their land.

Institutionalizing Inequality

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, women generally married when they were about 20 years of age. After the arrival of the Spaniards, however, Church friars encouraged females to marry at 12 or 14. Early reproduction often resulted in health disorders, including anemia. Society was patriarchal, and men received preferential treatment in nutrition. Even in death, men received favored treatment. In sum, the colonization worsened the status of women and increased violence toward them.

The family structure also changed during the colonial period. For a time, the native nobility kept much of their prestige. But the colonization led to the breakdown of the traditional indigenous family framework, which was based on an extended family rather than the highly patriarchal nuclear family that the Spaniards favored. This not only reduced the authority of the elders but also removed the support network for women within the clan.

Early marriage also influenced gender relations and increased the power of the male within the nuclear family, reducing the authority of native women within the clan. The age difference between male and female spouses favored the male.

The Assimilation of Native Women

The Catholic Church promoted rigid attitudes toward women, making women the scapegoats for its failures in converting the natives. Priests blamed indigenous mothers for not assimilating their children, although little attention was paid to educating indigenous women and children. By contrast, during the pre-conquest period, women worked as marketers, doctors, artisans, and priests, and perhaps occasionally as rulers.

The Virgen de Guadalupe is the symbol of Spanish social control, representing a passive female role model, subservient to male authority. The supposed appearance of the Virgin Mother to Juan Diego at Tepeyac in 1531 is an example of a substitution by church authorities of the Virgin of Guadalupe for the indigenous goddess Tonantzin, mother of gods.

Al Norte

The Spaniards sent expeditions from Colonial Mexico in every direction searching for riches. Meanwhile, a viceroy sent scouting expeditions from central Mexico to investigate rumors of another Tenochtitlán to the north. In 1533 Diego de Guzmán, a slave trader, penetrated as far as Yaqui Valley, in what today is Sonora, Mexico.

The northern tribes resisted the Spanish encroachments, and the Spaniards called them indios bárbaros, or barbaric Indians. In short, the invaders felt entitled and were offended that the indigenous people did not meet them with open arms.

Meanwhile, the Spanish named the colonial administrative region in western Colonial Mexico “Nueva Galicia”; it made up roughly the present states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and south Sinaloa. Guadalajara was its administrative capital and base of operations for expeditions into the northwestern frontier. An expedition led by Nuño de Guzmán left a trail of depredations, enslavement, and mistreatment of natives as the Spaniards moved through the area as far north as Sinaloa. The most notable of the native rebellions were those of the Tepeque and Zacatecos indigenous at Tepechitlán.

The move to the north was not easy, as the northern tribes resisted the encroachment.

The Chichimeca, sometimes called Otomí or Zacatecos, and their allies fought the advance of the Spaniards throughout the 1560s and 1570s, with Spanish settlements forming a large triangle between Guadalajara, Saltillo, and Querétero.

The Decimation of the Indigenous Population

The Spaniards’ arrival on the northern frontier and domesticated animals, devastated the native ecology and intensified competition for rivers and valleys. They pushed the native peoples off their lands. The Spanish authorities responded to native resistance by organizing presidios, forts. As with the Mesoamerican civilizations, the numbers of natives fell drastically during the Spanish occupation.

The Living Patterns of the Northern Corn People

Most natives lived in rancherías, semi-fixed farming settlements. Three-quarters of all indigenous ranchería natives were Uto-Aztecan. But they varied greatly as to their population density, mode of living, and organization, depending on rainfall and the flow of rivers. For example, at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, fixed villages did not exist in Chihuahua; instead, natives moved in search of water. In the spring they would travel to the headwaters in the sierras, farm, and live there for the summer, and then migrate east to the deserts during the winter where they would subsist on desert vegetation. This pattern of migration meant that the size of the ranchería was smaller than a traditional native village, numbering between 30 and 50.

The Tarahumara people of modern Chihuahua/Durango lived over a large area; they would come together at tesgüinadas, festivals. In Sonora, the Pima and the Yaqui lived in areas that were more compact. Their rivers, such as the Great Rio Bravo or Grande, gave life to villages of thousands and complex social and political systems.

The Changing Order

With the arrival of European invaders in Zacatecas, near the mines, haciendas for cattle raising sprang up, which caused tensions with the native populations in these valleys as the invaders usurped the best land and believed themselves entitled to native labor. As in the south, the Spanish elites considered themselves entitled to encomiendas of natives.

Slowly, the Spanish imperial system moved up the Pacific coast to Culiacán, and, simultaneously, up the Zacatecas trail to Durango and Chihuahua. Because of the lack of population and capital, Catholic missions played an essential role in extending the empire’s borders and congregating a religious presence on the frontier. The growth of the mining industry increased the need for food production, forcing the natives to work longer hours, while the mines and the haciendas pressured the missionaries to provide more native workers. These demands, along with the frequent droughts and epidemics that depopulated the region, made the natives restless. Their frequent uprisings made the Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries, as well as the outside invaders, increasingly dependent on the presidios to maintain order by force.

Meanwhile, the missions profoundly changed the lives of indigenous people. For example, women always held strong roles in their communities. Females and males seem to have inherited wealth equally, and women were involved in the trades of weaving and pottery. Both men and women could marry multiple times before they found the ideal mate. A native woman had the choice of abortion, and women participated in ceremonies. Pre-conquest women shared these cultural memories and religious values; however, the missions ended these choices, as they imposed the attitudes and values of Spanish society on the natives. A hierarchical structure made clear distinctions between the male and female spheres. Finally, Spanish institutions such as the repartimiento shifted women to work that men had previously done.

The invaders uprooted Native Americans from their villages and destroyed their institutions. Consequently, natives caught in a work-or-starve situation formed a large sector of the wage earners.

The northern expansion did not come without cost as the indigenous resisted the encroachment as well as enslavement and other forms of forced labor. Due to war and epidemics, the indigenous populations of Chihuahua dwindled radically. Throughout the frontier, from 1560 to 1650 the population declined by 50 percent. The population fell 90–95 percent by 1678. In the 1690s, yet another epidemic of measles broke out. Droughts and labor shortages affected the supply of food.

Forced Labor

Coercion was part of the colonial process. Government officials in collusion with the agricultural establishment perceived the indigenous populations as key to production. Landowners and miners sought arrangements that bound natives without being required to pay wages or credit advances. In the mines and haciendas indigenous slaves were used.

Periodic bonanzas increased demand for labor. Mine owners and hacendados pressured the missions for workers. The encomenderos were in full control of the native population under their charge, often abusing the natives by renting “their” natives to mine owners and other hacendados.

The repartimiento, although primarily used for agricultural labor, was sometimes used for the mines.

The Northern Corridor

Nueva Vizcaya was the “heartland” of the northern frontier for some 250 years. It encompassed the area north of Zacatecas and included most of the modern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango, and, at different times, parts of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Coahuila.

The 1680 Revolt of indigenous people spread and affected the whole of Nueva Vizcaya and Sonora; it became known as the “Great Northern Revolt.”

When the Spanish army put down the rebellion, military authorities tried the rebels in Spanish courts and sentenced them to hanging, whipping, dismemberment of hands or feet, or slavery.

Most of the mestizo colonists were of humble birth, although they fashioned themselves Spaniards to distance themselves from the indigenous and other lower castas.

In 1688, the Tlaxcalán participated in the building of the presidio of San Juan Bautista near today’s Eagle Pass in Texas.

In the 1700′s Spain chose to invade the rich valleys of the upper Rio Grande and districts of Nuevo León and Coahuila to prevent French encroachment into this area. The incentive for this expansion was the need for more pasturage for their herds and cattle. The colony of Nuevo Santander included the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. As in other areas, the natives resisted Spanish invasion.

The Native American population in Nuevo Santander was estimated at 190,000 in 1519; by 1800 it fell to 3,000. The administrative structure of the colony was stratified into large landholders, high government officials, and merchants. The rancheros made up a middle group along with artisans, while the natives and servants lingered at the bottom of the social ladder.

The Occupation of Alta California

The colonization of Alta, or Upper, California began in 1769. Upper California had been one of the most densely populated regions in what is now the United States, with a native population of nearly half a million. The population fell to half that number during the Spanish colonial period. The Franciscans led the colonization of Alta California where they established 21 missions. At the height of their influence, the missions had 20,000 natives living under their control.

From south to north the missions housed tribes such as the Diegueño. Inhabiting the coastland, they were skilled artisans who fashioned sea vessels out of soapstone and used clamshell-bead currency. These tribes bore the brunt of missionary activity.

The Missions

Because of the friars’ puritanism and harsh treatment, they drove the indigenous populations to rebellion. Birthrates fell among the indigenous people during the mission period. Furthermore, work was associated with a complex system of punishments. The indigenous people in California were not used to the type of confined physical labor found in the missions.

Alongside the missions, presidios and pueblos were built to consolidate Spanish rule. Spanish officials granted many former presidio soldiers land, known as ranchos. Some received larger grants for haciendas. The California natives did most of the labor.

Father Junípero Serra told of how the indigenous people resisted missionization and sometimes became warlike and hostile “because of the soldiers’ repeated outrages against the women. Even the children who came to the mission were not safe from their baseness.” Evidence suggests that offenses against women were not remedied; rape and even murder went unpunished. Military officials assumed a “boys-will-be-boys” attitude.

On the Eve of the Mexican War of Independence

By the eve of the Mexican War of Independence, a new society had evolved on the northern frontier of New Spain. We should not romanticize this society as egalitarian. Though most of the inhabitants were non-European, the elites in these societies were recently immigrated and invading Spaniards and/or their criollo children. The vast numbers of subjects were castas, those of mixed race, which had limited access to land. Race established privilege, and the more Spanish the subject appeared the more privileges that person had.

Race by the nineteenth century was based more on sight. What would become the Mexican (and Central American) was a conglomerate of people whose racial identity could change from generation to generation—it went beyond the mestizo paradigm popularly portrayed. For instance, the 1810 census suggests that more than 10 percent of the population were Afromestizos, a classification that generally meant they looked mulato or more African than Spanish. Over generations, those who were originally native, and because of the hierarchy of race, wanted to look more like Spaniards.

As has been mentioned, forced labor, the wars, the enslavement of the natives, and droughts and plagues had taken their toll on the native population. Either they had become hispanicized, or they perished or were forced into exile. In some cases, like that of the Tarahumara, a large portion of them retreated further into the Sierra Madres.

On the eve of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico did not yet have a set national identity. The new nation was predominantly indigenous, and Africans were at least 10 percent of the population. Given the 300-year tradition of lying about race in order to gain category, it can be speculated that as many as 20 percent of the population had some African blood and less than stated were full-blooded Spaniards. The colonial mentality and racial ambivalence are a factor even today among the Mexican people. In 1810 the indigenous population fell from 60 percent to 30 percent.

The population of Mexico in 1810 consisted of 3,676,281 indigenous, which were 60 percent of the nation. In contrast, there were only 15,000 (0.3 percent) Europeans or peninsulares. According to estimates, criollos (Euromestizos) numbered 1,092,397 (18 percent). Mestizos (Indiomestizos) a mixture of Spanish and indigenous numbered 704,245 (11 percent), mulatos and zambos (Afromestizos) comprised 624,461 (10 percent); and pure-blooded blacks, 10,000 (0.2 percent). The problem with the data is that race was largely self reporting, and therefore the indigenous and black populations would be under reported because of the social stigma.

Three hundred years of mercantilism had left New Spain without its own commercial or manufacturing infrastructure. Spanish capital fled the country and the mainstays of its economy—agriculture, ranching, and mining—went bankrupt. The Spanish tightly ruled New Spain because it was Spain’s most valuable commodity.

Many of Mexico’s new leaders wanted a modern society based on reason rather than theology. However, Mexicans had to overcome 300 years of Spanish colonialism, which was no small order. The secularization and modernization meant not only the privatization of property belonging to the Catholic Church, but it also meant the privatization of indigenous land. The acceptance of the indigenous heritage, is a process that really did not begin until a hundred years later with the Second Mexican Revolution.

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