Chicano culture help

Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

The mother culture of Mexicans is its indigenous history-a history that has often been disrespected by non-Mexican scholars. Mesoamerican civilizations rival other great civilizations with which they share many features. They all had a staple food source-whose cultivation provided more food and led to a population explosion. In the Old World, the basic grains were wheat, rice, rye, oats, millet, and barley. In North America, corn was invented at least 9,000 years ago in what is today central Mexico, spreading to what is now North American and the Andean regions of South America. So essential was corn to the evolution of indigenous civilizations that indigenous peoples attributed divine properties to it. Corn drove the evolution of the mode of production, mobilizing labor to meet the challenges of population growth and environmental change. Corn like the pyramids was a product of human labor and ingenuity.1

THE CRADLES OF CIVILIZATIONS A civilization is where people live in large complex agricultural groups which eventually develop urban centers where fewer people are engaged in agriculture. People worldwide had begun developing sedentary societies around 8000 BC when agriculture became more common. Groups of people formed laws in the shape of mores and folkways. Slowly six cradles of civilization formed in China: the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, the Nile, Andean region of South America, and Mesoamerica.2 Food surpluses made possible "specialization of labor" and the development of complex social institutions such as organized religion and education. Trade and a writing system evolved as well. The interactive map in the following URL shows the formation of such civi- lizations: http://weber.ucsd.edu/-anthclub/ quetzalcoatl/map2.htm (accessed April 7, 2009 ).

Time is very important. It determines the questions we ask. Time represents the knowledge a people have accumulated. To help the reader understand the science of time, go to the end of the book, read "Creating a Timeline;' and correlate this discussion with the online maps and the timeline below, which shows the stages of human evolution .

.4QOOOBC 20001,}C Al}200 AD1512

2 Chapter l • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

Stages of Evolution

40000 BC-8000 BC Paleoindian

8000 Bc-2000 BC Armchaic

2000 BC-AD 200 Formative Precfassic

Ao 200-900 Classic

AD 900-1519 Postclassic

Hunting and gathering. Characterized by bands of hunters and by seed and fruit gatherers. Incipient agriculture. Domestication of maize and other plants. Earliest corn grown in Tehuacan circa 5000 Be. Intensification of farming and growth of villages. Olmeca chiefdom stands out. Reliance on maize and the spread of a religious tradition that focuses on the earth and fertility. Organizational evolution, 120o-400 BC: numerous chiefdoms evolve through Mesoamerica. The Maya appear during this period. Monte Alban is established circa 400 BC-AD 200. Rapid population growth, a market system, and agricultural intensification occur. Development of solar calendar. Villages grow into centers. The Golden Age of Mesoamerica. The evolution of state-level societies. The emergence of kings. Priests become more important. Complex irrigation, population growth, and highly stratified society. Excellent ceramics, sculpture, and murals. Building of huge pyramids. Teotihuacan had more than 150,000 people, the largest city outside China. Growth of Qty-states and Empires. Civil, market, and commercial elements become more important. The Azteca and Tarascan empires emerge as dominant powers. Cyclical conquests. Use of metals, increased trade, and warfare.

Sources: Robert M. Carmack, Janine Gasco, and Gary H. Gossen, The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 48-49; also see Michael C, Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The Course of Mexican History, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford Press, 1998), 4.

The Corn People: An overview When the first people migrated to what are called the Americas is not known. Until recently, the common sense was that the Old-World people, meaning Europeans, "discovered" Europe in 40000 BC-30000 BC. By some accounts, the New World was inhabited in about 15000 BC. However, current scholarship suggests that Native Americans arrived much earlier, migrating from Asia 30,000 to 50,000 years before contact with the Spaniards.3 There is also the probability that some of these early people may well have migrated back to Asia from the Americas, with the last migrations probably ceasing when the Bering Strait's ice bridge melted around 9000 BC.

The earliest known villages appeared along the coasts of the Americas as early as 12,500 years ago. 4 But it was not until around 7000 BC, when the hunters and fruit gatherers began to farm, that they began to alter or control their environment. In the Valley of Mexico, the climate had changed, and water sources, game, and flora diminished. As the population grew, the people had to tum to agriculture or perish. What made "the evolution of this civilization possible was the development of mai7.e (corn). First domesticated and cultivated in the cen- tral valley of Mexico as early as 9,000 years ago, it became the primary dietary staple throughout Mesoamerica and then spread northward and southward. 5 Native Americans commonly planted maize, beans, and squash, which formed the basis of their diet.

Maize unified Native American cultures. Recent findings show that people traveled with the seed to various places in the Americas. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the largest human settlement in the American Southwest dating from 760 BC to 200 BC, which included evidence of maize farming. The completeness of the maize culture supports the theory that agriculture was brought into the Southwest by Mesoamerican farmers.6 Corn spread a culture that extended along what today is U,S. Highway 10 into the eastern half of the

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United States, eventually becoming a staple throughout much of North America.7 Archaeological findings show the symbolic significance of maize and its role in ceremony and ritual in Mesoamerica and the Southwest. Maize is also said to have existed in what is modern-day Peru as early as AD 450. 8

The European invasion put the corn cultures in danger of extinction. This threat continues today in places like the remote mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, where genetically modified organisms (GM Os) have been found in the native corn. Mexico, which banned the commercial planting of transgenic corn in 1998, imports about 6.2 million tons of com a year, mostly from the United States. About a quarter of the U.S. commercial corn crop contains GMOs, and after harvest it is mixed with conventional corn. As a result, much of the corn in Mexico is now considered to contain at least low levels of"background" GMOs. This concerns Mexicans since GMO foods and seed are an environmental threat to wild plants and species such as the monarch butterlly.9

The Olmeca 1500 BC-500 BC Around 3000 BC, a qualitative change took place in the life of the corn people. The agriculture surpluses and concentratiOn of population encouraged specialization oflabor. So-called shamans became I}llOre important in society. Tools were more sophisticated and pottery more complex. History shows the development of civilization occurring at about the same time as in North Africa and Asia, where the "cradle of civilization" is traditionally believed to have been located. Mesoamerican identity had already begun to form, revolving around a dependence on maize agriculture and a growing population. 10

Because the Olmeca civilization was so advanced, some people speculate that the Olmeca suddenly arrived from even from outer space! Most scholars, however, agree that Olmeca, known as the mother culture of Mexico, was the product of the cross-fertilization of indigenous cultures that included other Mesoamerican civilizations and cultures.1' The Olmeca "built the first kingdoms and established a template of world view and political symbolism the Maya would inherit." 12

One of a few known primary civilizations in the world-that is, state-like organizations that evolved without ideas taken from other systems-the Olmeca culture is one of the world's first tropical lowland civilizations, an antecedent to later Mayan "Classic" culture. The Olmeca settled villages and cities in the Gulf Coru.1 lowlands, mostly in present-day southeastern Veracruz and Tabasco, and in northern Central America.

Around 2000 BC, the production of maize and other domesticated crops became sufficient to support whole villages. A second breakthrough occurred with the introduction of pottery throughout the region. The earliest pottery came from the Oco, who populated the Pacific coast of Chiapas and Guatemala. Although not much is known about the Oco, their pottery is found from Veracruz to El Salvador and Honduras. The development of pottery allowed the storage of food surpluses, encouraging the Olmeca and other Mesoamerican people to form small villages. Little evidence of social ranking and craft specialization has been found in the early villages, which evolved from an egalitarian community into a hierarchical agrarian society of toolmakers, potters, and sculptures. As they evolved, the Olmeca became more patriarchal, and they probably excluded women from production outside the home.

The Olmeca began to build villages on the Gulf Coast as early as 1500 BC. By 1150 BC the Olmeca civilization had formed settlements of thousands, constructed large formal temples built on earthen mounds, and carved colossal nine-feet-high stone heads. San Lorenzo was one such settlement, an urban center with public buildings, a drainage system, and a ball court.

La Venta (18,000), a major ceremonial site in Tabasco, eclipsed San Lorenzo (2,500) as the center of the Olmeca civilization in about 900 BC.13 Tres Zapotes ( 3,000) would eventually overtake La Ven ta. By the Middle Formative period, other chiefdoms emerged throughout Mesoamerica. Trade networks linked the Olmeca with contemporaries in Oaxaca and Central Mexico. In the Valley of Oaxaca, San Jose Mogote functioned as a primary center, as did Chalcatzingo in the present-day state of Morelos. A priestly elite dominated the primary Olnieca settlements. As time marched on, the shaman class was transformed playing an ever-increasing role in the lives of the people. From these centers, they ruled dispersed populations of farmers, who periodically assembled at the ceremonial and trade sites to meet labor obligations, attend ceremonies, and use the marketplace. The elites had greater access to valuable trade goods and occupied larger homes than did the common people. The elites even had larger tombs.

4 Chapter I • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

The Olmeca left behind archeological evidence of their hieroglyphic script and the foundations for the complex Mayan and Zapotecan calendars. Basically, the Olmeca developed three calendars: a ritual calendar with a 260-day cycle that was used for religious purposes; a solar calendar with 18 months of 20 days, plus 5 days tacked on (corresponding to our 365-day calendar}; and a combination of the two calendars in which religious days determined tasks such as the naming of a newborn infant.14

The development of the calendar required a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics. Considerable discussion has taken place about whether the Olmeca or the Maya discovered the concept of the number zero circa 200 BC. (The Hindus discovered the zero in the fifth century AD, and not until AD 1202 did Arab mathematicians take the concept to Europe.) Notwithstanding, the fact is that before the time of Christ, the Olmeca were using a more accurate calendar than that used in the West today. Pre-Columbian astronomy, too, was far ahead of Europe's. The writing system of the Olmeca is still being deciphered. These hieroglyphic texts represent more than a history; they also constitute literature.15 Other Olmeca legacies were the ballgame and the feathered-serpent cult of Quetzalcoatl that they shared with most Mesoamerican cultures.

With the growth of agricultural surpluses and increased trade, the Olmeca had the luxury of developing advanced art forms. Although they are best known for the massive carved full-rounded heads, they also crafted smaller figurines of polished jade. Religion and the natural world inspired the subject matter for Olmeca art.

Azteca societies. About 300 BC, Olmeca civilization supposedly mysteriously vanished. In truth, it continued to exist from 150 BC to AD 450, in what some scholars call the Epi-Olmec period.16

THE MAYA Mayan agricultural villages began to appear about 1800 BC. The Maya eventually formed a trade network that interacted with other chiefdoms in the Gulf Coast, Oaxaca, and Central Mexico. Merchants from Teotihuacan lived in Maya centers such as Tikal at least from the first century AD. 17 The Maya experimented with intensive forms of agriculture, dug irrigation canals, and reclaimed wetlands by constructing raised fields. As their population increased, they built larger ceremonial centers. At this point, as in the case of other Mesoamerican societies, rulers took control of religious rituals and the belief system.

From AD 250 to 900, the Maya lived in an area roughly half the size of Texas (today the Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, part of Chiapas, Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador). The divine ahauob, the "divine lord;' ruled millions of farmers, craftsmen, merchants, warriors, and nobles and presided over capitals studded with pyramids, temples, palaces, and vast open plazas serviced by urban populations numbering in the tens of thousands. 18 Agriculture and trade produced prosperity and gave the Maya the ability to build temple-pyramids, monuments, and palaces of limestone masonry in dozens of states. They also used their astronomy skills to link earthly events to those of the heavens. Their calendars were a product of time science.19

In the ninth century AD, the Maya Classic culture began to decline, probably because of revolts, warfare, disease, and/or crop failure. Overpopulation explains the internal strife and dissatisfaction with their leadership and a possible factor in their decline. But the Maya left many examples of their accomplish- ments. In a limestone cavern in northern Guatemala, through narrow tunnels frequented 12 centuries ago, there are black carbon images of a sacred ball game, musicians, dwarfs contemplating shells, homosexual lovers locked in embrace, and columns of intricately entwined hieroglyphs.

The decipherment of the glyphs raises many questions. For example, there is little doubt that homo- sexuality existed; the question is how society formed attitudes toward homosexuality.20 Research in this area is just beginning and, like past literature on the subject, it comes from highly political sources. One of the most interesting accounts is by Richard Trexler, who argues that Spaniards would often feminize their enemies in warfare, calling them sodomites and pederasts. Trexler says that European notions form much of what we know about homosexuality. In the case of the invasion and subjugation of the Mesoamericans, the Spaniards' homophobia suggested their moral supremacy. Sodomy "was seen as either a sign of insufficient civilization or a sign of moral decay:'21

Maya Hieroglyphic Writing The current decipherment of hieroglyphic writing is leading to a greater understanding of the Maya culture, including the identification of dynasties of rulers and an understanding of how the various people interacted. 22 Direct evidence from bones of the ancient Maya suggests that the common' people seldom lived beyond the age of 40--many died in infancy and early childhood. Men and women in the ruling class were physically larger than others-as much as four inches taller. Furthermore, evidence from bones and inscriptions shows that the ruling class sometimes lived remarkably long lives. Olle of the greatest rulers of the ancient city ofYaxchilan, Shield Jaguar, lived almost 100 years.

Maya glyphs suggest that a ballgame, played throughout Mesoamerica, served as a means to commu- nicate with the gods. It also enhanced social and economic organization and was a substitute for war.23 Revered by both the Maya and the Azteca, the game possessed deep religious significance. The object of the game, which was played by small groups in an outdoor stone court, was to pass a large rubber ball through a stone ring at opposite ends of the court.24

The Maya based their numerical system on counting on the fingers and toes; for example, in Quiche, a branch of Maya culture, the word for the number 20 symbolized "a whole person." This method of count- ing is also reflected in the decimal divisions. The Maya used a system based on the number 20, with only three symbols: a bar for five, a dot for one, and a stylized shell for zero. As we have discussed above, the Maya, if not the Olmeca, were probably the first people to develop the mathematical concept for zero.25

Their knowledge of mathematics allowed the Maya to use an advanced calendar. The astronomy of the Maya was not limited to observation of the stars and approximate predictions of the movements of the heav- enly bodies. Using their sophisticated numerical systems and various tabular calculations in conjunction with the hieroglyphic script, Maya astronomers were able to calculate with figures running into millions.26

At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Maya still wrote glyphs-not only on stone slate but in handmade books. In 1566 in the Yucatan, Friar Diego de Landa read a great number of Maya books. According to him, because the books were aJ?out the indigenous antiquities and sciences, which he believed were based on nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil, he burned them. However, not all of the Maya books were burned; some were sent to Europe as part of the booty seized by Cortes from the Native Americans. The Spaniards could not decipher them, and over the years, most crumbled into dust or were thrown out as trash.

Maya Society Like other Mesoamerican societies, the Maya lived within the matrix of the community. They organized themselves into extended families in which there was a patrilineal descent. Multiple generations of a clan that had a common ancestor resided in one household compound. The inheritor of supreme authority was established through primogeniture, which resulted in the rule of clan elders. Kings also based their legitimacy on their membership in a clan. The kings erected monuments to commemorate their victories and to record their lineage. 27

During the Late Classic period, Tikal, a kingdom of around 500,000 people, was the largest known Maya center. It covered about 14 square miles and included more than 3,000 structures. It made alliances with other city-states but also often used force to expand their territory.28

The glyphs on a prominent Tikal building reveal the names of prominent women such as Bird Claw, Jaguar Seat, Twelve Macaw, and the Woman of Tikal.29 These women, although buried in honored places, were present only through a relationship with a prominent male. But the differences between males and females changed with time. Scholars suggest that there was more equality before AD 25 than after. As in most advanced .civilizations, class differences were striking and with time, one's position in society became hereditary. Therefore, a distinct divide between high-ranking members ofTikal society and the poor existed, and widened over time.

The glyphs reveal few actual woman rulers among the Maya. In Palenque during the sixth and seventh centuries, there were only two woman rulers, Lady Kanal-Ikal and Lady Zac-Kuk. Both were the descendants

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of kings and thus legitimate rulers. Both inherited the throne and passed it onto their children. Lady Zac-Kuk was the granddaughter of Lady Kanal-Ikal and was the mother of the Great Pacal, who built grand buildings as testimony to her greatness. Indeed, Pacal got his legitimacy through his mother's line of ancestry. She enjoyed great prestige because she lived for 25 years into his rule. Pacal died in his nineties.30

The Decline of Mayan Civilization After AD 909 the Maya built few new temples, and even fewer cities, except in the northern Yucatan, at such sites as Chichen Itza and Tulum. Chichen Itza was first founded about AD 400 and was governed by priests. The architecture reflects this religious dominance and there are many representations of the god Chaac, the Maya rain god, on the buildings. With the arrival of the Itza from Central Mexico about AD 850, the city was rebuilt and images of the god Kukulcan, the plumed serpent, became numerous. The Itza were politically and commercially aggressive rulers. 31 Chichen Itza, the dominant Maya center in the Yucatan Peninsula during the early Postclassic period, was closely linked to the Tula people in the north, and was greatly influenced by that culture. The center declined in importance after the late-twelfth century, when a rival Maya group sacked it. Tulum and other coastal cities were important centers for sea-based commerce.32

Glyphs may someday reveal the many unanswered questions about the Maya, who built their civilization in a hostile and fragile rain forest. How did six million Maya coexist in this difficult environ- ment? For a time, these civilizations answered the challenge, and they developed a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and mathematics that allowed them to increase production of food and other necessities. They constructed a mosaic of sunken gardens, fruit trees, and terraces-a system that used the rainfall, fertile soil, and shade of the jungle to its advantage without permanently harming it. Maya farmers dug canals and built raised fields in the swamps for intensive agriculture.33 Until recently, archaeologists assumed the Maya used a slash-and-burn method in which farmers cut and burned the jungle-planted crops for a few years and then moved on when nutrients were depleted.34 A true slash-and-burn method would have supported only about 65 people per square mile. The Maya population density had already reached about 125 per square mile by AD 600.

We can speculate that engineering projects like canals, reservoirs, and the terraced fields came about at the cost of human labor. After hundreds of years of relative prosperity and power, the urban infrastruc- ture of many Maya cities broke down. The drop in the food supply caused feuds between the lower and the elite classes and between city-states. Today, Mesoamerican scholars generally agree that no single factor caused this fall. During the Late Classic period, populations suffered from malnutrition and other chronic diseases. The environment simply could not support the large population indefinitely. 35

Surely, class oppression and war played a role in the decline. The common person labored in the fields, maintaining a complex agricultural network, while priests resided in empty ceremonial centers. The nobles plainly oppressed the commoner-the warrior, temple builder, and farmer. The Maya organized construction crews of corvee, or unpaid labor, and the growth of this system magnified class hostilities over time. In addition, evidence shows a sharp decrease in rainfall between the years AD 800 and lOOO-One of the most severe climate changes in 10,000 years-at roughly the time of the Maya decline in the ninth century. The drought supposedly caused tensions: Cities, villages, and fields were burned and wars increased.36

Although the cities of the Maya lowlands shared a common culture, they were never politically unified. Each region had a capital city and numerous smaller subject cities, towns, and villages. Furthermore, increased trade and competition led to warfare. The Maya civilization, however, had endured for more than 1,000 years during what is known as the "golden age of Mesoamerica." In the Postdassic period, the Maya did not disappear but experienced a gradual breakdown of its social structures, marked by a decline of the priest class and the growing political and cultural influences of a rising merchant class. 37

Until recently, scholars described the Maya society as peaceful, but the decoded glyphs suggest another perspective of the Maya, revealing their practice of human sacrifice and bloodletting. 38 The Maya believed that the gods controlled the natural elements, and had to be pleased by bloodletting. Human sacrifice was mostly limited to prisoners, slaves, and orphaned or illegitimate children purchased fur the occasion. Generally, it was more common to sacrifice animals. This bloodletting and human sacrifice assured the Maya that their crops

would grow and their children would be born healthy. As drought and a drop in the food supply took its toll, there was a corresponding increase in both human sacrifice to appease the gods and warfare.

TEOTIHUAcAN Teotihuacin, the "city of the gods;' located in the Valley ofTeotihuacan in a pocket-like extension of the Valley of Mexico, became the primary center of Mesoamerican civilization around 200 BC. Like the other city-states, by the end of the Formative Preclassic period, it amassed the central authority and technology necessary to make a quantitative and qualitative leap from a loose collection of settlements to a unified empire.39 The civic- religious complex laid the foundation for this development At its height, at the end of the sixth century AD, it covered about eight square miles. It may have housed more than 150,000 inhabitants, making it the largest city in the world outside China.

In the Early Classic period, the people of Teotihuacan lived in apartment compounds, with some larger than others. There were more than 2,000 separate residential structures within the city. Built by the rural peasants, the outlying villages were linked by commerce to the core city. As with peasants of other societies, these workers provided labor, food, and other products for urban elites and state institutions. Teotihuacan was ruled by a strong central government whose administrators presided over peasants in the city and countryside, treating them as subjects. The ruling elite forcibly moved the rural peasants into the city during the Early Classic period, leaving some scattered villages. Teotihuacanos, aided by a highly centralized state, conquered an empire that covered most of the central Mexican highlands.

Urbanism and Trade Teotihuacan was a major manufacturing center of the Early Classic period. The products of its craft workers spread over much of Mesoamerica, as far south as Honduras. The pottery, especially, represents Teotihuacan's highest achievement as a city and empire. Its hallmark feature is the cylindrical vessel with three slab legs and a cover. Vessels shaped like modern flower vases and· cream pitchers graced the city. Artifacts from other civilizations were also present, adding to the city's splendor. So fabled was Teotihuacan that Azteca royalty annually made pilgrimages there. 40

Teotihuacan civilization was contemporary with the Maya Classic period and acted as the hub of trade networks from Central America to today's southwestern United States. Without its influence, Maya culture would have remained at the chiefdom stage, instead of evolving into a sophisticated world system that stressed material production and common ideas. It grew to a population of 100,000-200,000.

Teotihuacan suffered from internal civil strife in the seventh century, and again at the beginning of the tenth century. In about AD 600-650, unknown invaders burned the civic ceremonial center of the city marking a turning point in its history. Teotihuacan was truly magnificent; from there emanated a network of societies such as in the city of Xochicalco, later associated with the Tolteca people. It also remained a center of long- distance trade, continuing its history of robust mercantile contact with other regions.41 Even after its decline, Teotihuacan continued to be a great city of 30,000 inhabitants until about AD 950. However, without its authority, Mesoamerican societies were less centralized, breaking up into dozens of city-states, which competed for trade and influence.

The Tolteca The Postclassic period is characterized by a secularization of Mesoamerica. Although religion remained important to the Mesoamerican peoples, the civil and commercial elements of society became more important, and their rise led to the expansion of market systems and long-distance exchange. A Toltec Empire emerged in what is today Central Mexico in about the tenth century AD.

The Tolteca emerged as a dominant force during this period (from about AD 900 to USO). A subgroup of the Chichemeca, a Nahua-speaking people from the northern desert, the Tolteca controlled the Valley of Mexico.42 Their capital was Tula (Tollan), about 40 miles north of present-day Mexico City. Founded in the

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ninth century, Tula incorporated part of the heritage of Teotihuacan, although it is generally associated with Tolteca culture. Earlier Tolteca refugees migrated there from the northern Teotihuacan culture after its fall in AD 700. Notably Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl (Our Prince One-Reed' Feathered Serpent), who may have been mythicized, ruled Tula from AD 923 to 947. Ce Acatl is often confused with the Azteca deity Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent who for a l ,000 years had been part of Mesoamerican culture.

The Tolteca developed a system of cosmology, practiced religious rites, including human sacrifice, and built grand temples to their gods. In the courtyards of Tula, supporting the roof of the great Temple of Quetzalc6atl, stood 15-foot columns in the form of stylized human figures. Enormous statues of warriors standing stiffly under the weight of their weapons and wore rigid crowns made from eagle feathers. Processions or military marches, and eagles and jaguars devouring human hearts are portrayed. The Plumed Serpent, formerly interpreted in Teotihuacan as the benevolent divinity of agricultural plenty, in Tula became a god of the Morning Star, the archer-god with fearsome arrows.

There is little evidence that the Tolteca built an empire. Tula, for instance, was not at the crossroads of the international trade networks of the time. In the mid-1 lOOs, the Tolteca collapsed, perhaps under attack by nomadic tribes, and Tula was abandoned. By that time, however, the Tolteca had extended their sphere of influence into what is now Central America. This culture was transposed to Yucatan, where it was superim- posed on Maya tradition, evolving and becoming more flexible and elegant. A hybrid art form of dazzling brilliance developed and lasted for two centuries. The Tolteca influence can be seen in a cross-cultural fusion of deities depicted in Mayan glyphs, frescos, and designs.

Tula was the axis of the Tolteca civilization. It controlled most of central Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Gulf Coast, and it is speculated that it had interests in Chiapas and the Pacific coast. The Tolteca also extended trade with people as far away as Zacatecas, Veracruz, and Puebla; New Mexico and Arizona; and Costa Rica and Guatemala. They assimilated with many of the peoples that they cultivated ties with. An example is the important Mayan ceremonial center of Chichen-Itza. By the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century, the Mayan culture was in decline. The ltza stepped into the void and began to substitute their gods and architectural styles. The Toltecas added the Observatory, Kukulcan's Pyramid, the Temple of the Warriors, The Ball Court, and The Group of the Thousand Columns. Based on the architecture and artifacts, there was considerable cross-fertilization between the two cultural areas.43

OTHER CORN CIVILIZATIONS The Zapoteca people were the original occupants of the Valley of Oaxaca. About 4,000 years ago, Oaxaca's people settled in agricultural villages. Interaction with common ancestors played an important role in integrating autonomous villages. Between 500 BC and l 00 BC, a highly centralized, urbanized state emerged, with Monte Alban as its principal center.44 Great plazas, pyramids, a ball court, and underground passage- ways graced the city. Some evidence exists that the Zapoteca and the Olmeca engaged in long-distance trading that dates to the time of San Lorenzo, and that the Zapoteca later enjoyed good relations with the city of Teotihuacan.

As with the Maya, Zapoteca society was dominated by religion, which held that a supreme being created everything, although not by himself, and there was no beginning and no end of the universe. Like other Mesoamerican societies, the Zapoteca wrote in hieroglyphics and were obsessed with astronomical observation. Their 365- and 260-day calendars set a rhythm for their lives, with the latter serving as a religious guide and marking the birthdays of its adherents.

Monte Alba.n's decline began after AD 650, which saw the rise of other strong city-states in the valley, such as Mitla, in the eastern part of the Oaxacan valley.45 Mitla became the best-known Postdassic site, continuously occupied since the Early Formative period, and is thought to have been a Zapoteca religious center. Despite the growth of other societies, the Zapoteca remained a major player in the region.

Meanwhile, in the highlands, the Mixteca increased their influence, and by the eleventh century they interacted with the Zapoteca-speaking people of the valley. There was a high degree of assimilation and

intermarriage between the Mixteca and the Zapoteca nobility. The Mixteca, like the Azteca, fought a highly ritualized form of war and were known for military prowess. Despite this intluence, the Mixteca, like the Zapoteca before them, were not a dominant imperial power. They established the kingdom of Tututepec on the coast, which was important enough to garner tribute from other kingdoms. The Mixteca spread their power and created strong bonds with other city-states through extensive intermarriage and war.46

The Mixteca developed their own particular art style, intluenced by the Zapoteca, and the two cultures created a synthesis. The creations of their goldsmiths and their manuscript illuminations are exceptional. Mixteca manuscripts or codices constitute an illustrated encyclopedia, reflecting religious beliefs and rites and the history of the aboriginal dynasties and national heroes. The style and color range of the illustrations, as well as the symbols linked to the ritual calendar, are also found in their murals. 47 The history depicted in the codices is a holy history, displaying an abundance of deities and rituals. The Mixteca also excelled in ceramics, which became the most highly prized ware in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Mexico.

The Tarasco By the twelfth century, the Tarasco people, also known as the Purepecha, ruled over a vast territory in West Mexico, centered in present-day Michoacan. Their exact origin is unknown. Most probably, they were part of the Chichimeca migration. The Chichimeca were supposedly uncivilized natives from the north that the Tolteca were once part of. Nomadic groups along the northern frontier of civilization migrated to what is today Central Mexico. The Azteca were part of the later wave of Chichimeca. They, along with the Tarascans, formed the Nahuas. The Tarascan civilization was originally formed through political unification of some eight city-states located within the Parzcuaro basin.

The Tarasco natives continuously occupied the region for more than 1,600 years (150 BC-AD 1530). Their development resembled that of other Mesoamerican cultures. Ceramic artifacts link the Tarasco to the old traditions of Chupicuaro (present-day Guanajuato ). Their pottery and metalwork styles are unique, although they borrowed heavily from surrounding societies. This borrowing was common. For example, ceramics found in the present-day northern Mexican states of Zacatecas and Durango bear resemblance to the Hohokam ceramic found in what today is Arizona.

The capital city of the Tarasco was Tzintzuntzan, built on the shores of Lake Patzuaro and domi- nated by a huge platform that supported five round temples. The Tarasco raised a well-trained army and from Tzintzuntzan forged an empire. However, Tarasco military prowess did not tell their whole story. Their language and culture almost totally dominated the region, with many of the surrounding villages assimilating into it. They were excellent craftspeople, and they invaded other peoples for honey, cotton, feathers, copal, and deposits of salt, gold, and copper. Tarasco lords were placed in conquered lands and collected tributes in goods.

Unlike other Mesoamericans, the Tarasco were not renowned traders. Nevertheless, it is speculated that they did engage in some long-distance trading, even by sea, reaching South America. Tarasco society was socially stratified, with nobility, commoners, and slaves. The capital city dominated the area, although most people lived in rural settlements.

The Tarasco had many deities who, among other things, were associated with animals and calendrical days. Ceremonial dances affirmed their connection with ancestral gods. Enemies of the Aztecs, the Tarascans flourished from AD 1100 to 1530. The Azteca attempted to conquer the Tarasco but failed. In AD 1478, 24,000 Azteca retreated in the face of a Tarasco army of 40,000 warriors. But because the Tarasco did not leave a written language, scholars know relatively little about them.

The Azteca Between AD 1325 and 1345, the Azteca founded their capital of Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco Oater drained to build Mexico City). The Azteca confederation of city-states reached a population of more than 350,000. Part of the Chichimeca 48 migration from the north, their people came from a mythical place today called Aztlan.49 (Some Chicanos say that it was in what is today the southwestern United States;

10 Chapter I • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

others, in northern Mexico, in the area of Zacatecas.) A network of trade routes linked the high plateau of central Mexico with Maya territories, reaching a:s far as the most remote northern districts of the empire, in what is now the southwestern United States.so

The Aztecas' surplus agricultural system underwrote its highly advanced craft-manufacturing industry. The Azteca excelled in the building arts and supplied food for large cities. The growth of market systems gave the Azteca more opportunities to exchange their goods as well as to access them. The society was stratified, with the elites taking tribute and the commoners paying it. The peasants seem to have fared better under the Azteca than in Teotihuacan. They lived in small adobe houses with stone roofs and had more access to material goods.

The Azteca benefited from a highly productive agricultural infrastructure. They farmed on raised fields, or chinampas, created by piling earth over the natural growing surface, as a way of reclaiming swampland for cultivation.SI They built flat mounds of fertile river sediment and then deepened the ditches or canals around them to create a waffle-like pattern. The advantage of raised fields was that they collld be cultivated year-round, even during the dry season, because swamp water percolated up into the nutrient-rich soil. Five hundred acres of fields could have fed up to 5,200 people. s2

The Azteca absorbed the cultural strengths of generations of native peoples. For example, Mixteca art played an important role in Azteca artistic development. Azteca sculpture displayed technical perfection and powerful symbolism. The Azteca knew and appreciated the masterpieces of the civilizations that preceded them and those of contemporaries such as in Monte Alban. They had a well-defined literature, some of which has been preserved through oral testimony. Much of this tradition has also been conserved in codices, which consist of a combination of pictographs and ideographs. Religious and cosmological themes dominate the codices.

They also had two kinds of schools--One for commoners, the other for nobility. In both, boys and girls were taught rhetoric, history, ritual dancing, and singing; in the Calmecac school for future leaders, the curriculum included law, architecture, arithmetic, astronomy, and agriculture. The poets were frequently kings or military captains from satellite principalities.53

Although a lot is known about the work performed by women, relatively little is known about cultural attitudes toward them. Some scholars assume that Azteca society was rigidly patriarchal, made increasingly so with the militarization of society. Another viewpoint is that the "prehispanic Azteca gender system appears to have combined gender parallelism (where men and women played different but parallel and equivalent roles) with gender hierarchy. Gender parallelism was rooted in the kinship structures and in religious and secular ideology. Men and \_'VOmen were genealogically and structurally equivalent:'54

The lower classes, as in other societies, bore the burden of class oppression. Lower class women did embroidering, which they often sold in the mercado (marketplace). Generally, a woman's caste determined her occupation, and she was schooled to play that role. Women could enter the priesthood; however, although there were female goddesses, women could not become the musicians or poets who honored goddesses in public. Furthermore, they could not engage in violent activities or participate directly in mercantile caravans. Women had few options, and circumstances often forced them into prostitution. The woman who worked outside the sphere of male control was suspect. According to Irene Silverblatt, "class and social standing critically shaped the social experiences of Mexica men and women:'55

Anthropologist June Nash's "The Aztecs and the Ideology of Male Dominance"56 describes the transfor- mation of the Azteca society from a kinship-based society to a class-structured empire, claiming that there was a diminution of the power of women beginning in AD 830 and continuing to the fifteenth century. Despite this, women had equal rights under the law and could participate in the economy. According to Nash, women were active producers as well as vendors. They could hold property-but whether they did and how much depended on social class.

The Azteca were the beneficiary of Tolteca culture, and many Azteca males took Tolteca wives, which quickened the assimilation process. According to Nash, polygamy "weakened the role of women in royal families since their sons were not guaranteed succession as in the past." "[The] division of labor by sex had been well established by the late fifteenth century. The codices show men teaching boys to fish, cultivate, and work metal and women teaching girls to weave, tend babies, and cook:' According to Nash, sacrificial ceremonies glorified· the cult of male dominance.57

Chapter I • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes 11

And, while Azteca society may have ignored forms of male homosexuality, lesbians were disdained as lower than prostitutes. Contradictorily, there were transvestite performers, who are said to have been bisexual, and they enjoyed access to both male and female. In short, Azteca culture appears to be highly puritanical, militaristic, and male-centered. Among men, power came with age, which brought privileges.

As with other Mesoamerican civilizations, human sacrifice and war were interwoven as part of the Azteca religious practice. The Aztec justification for human sacrifice was a cosmic view that encompassed the demands of their god Huitzilopochtli, lord of the sun and god of war. The Azteca had faith in their priests, who revealed that the sun and the earth had been destroyed four times; the present era was known as el quinto sol, "the fifth sun," the final destruction of which was imminent. Only special intervention through Huitzilopochtli would save them. 58

The religious system legitimized the authority and the tributary rights of its leaders. Blood sacrifice was necessary to preserve the sun, and the whole structure of the universe, from the threat of cosmic destruction. The logic was that the sacrifices appeased the Sun; it was based on the cyclical belief that the sun provided food and the sacrifices fed the sun. The need for sacrifices was made even more imperative after the drought of 1450 ravaged central Mexico. The Azteca and others believed that too few victims having been offered to the gods caused the calamities of 1450.59 The Azteca rationalized war, which was the result of politics and trade, in much the same way as the Christians and Muslims rationalized their holy wars.

Every aspect of Azteca life, from the birth of a young warrior to a woman's continuous sweeping of dust from the house, symbolized the intricacy of war as well as their advanced society. Azteca society was well-ordered and highly moralistic, treating commoners with "consideration, compassion, and mercy;'60 while also demanding from them moral conformity. Medical treatment was on a par with Europe's, and life was less harsh than it was in Europe at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards.

Los Nortefaos Mesoamerican culture spread beyond what is considered its traditional boundaries; defining these boundaries is arbitrary. Its influence spread from what is today Central America in the south to what are today northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.61 Corn is bound to the rise of Mesoamerica and provided for the northern people. Mexico's north had varied societies, most of which lacked sufficient water to sustain large populations. Nevertheless, the Southwest outside of Mesoamerica and northern Mexican (of which it was culturally part of) has the longest continuous habitation. The indigenous populations here shared an agricultural tradition revolving around corn and the use of ceramics. Unlike Mesoamerica, most of the Southwest is believed to have lacked state-level societies and urban centers.

People arrived in what is now the Southwest between 23000 BC and 10000 Bc.62 About 4,000 years ago, corn was brought into the region by Mesoamericans. Like what is present-day northern Mexico, many formed homes in villages or rancherias or remained hunters. Agriculture transformed the lives of the people and by 500 BC corn, squash, and beans were grown and pottery crafted. The cultivation of corn in the southwest is estimate to have occurred from 1100 BC to 500 Bc.63 Complex social and economic systems had already begun developing among these northern peoples, such as the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Anasazi, as well as the rancheria populations made up of the Opata of northern Sonora and Pimas Altos. Band tribes such as the Apache also struggled in proximity to these populations.

Carlos Velez-Ibanez writes, "a triad of complex agriculturally based societies that included the Hohokam of Southern Ariwna and Sonora, perhaps the Mogollon of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico, and to a lesser extent the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde who inhabited the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Ariwna, Utah, and Colorado, lived in the region:' One of the most successful civilizations was the Hohokam beginning their transformation about 300 BC, although, as with the Mesoamerican civilizations, the process began hundreds of years before this date. According to anthropologist Velez-Ibanez, the Hohokam were

12 Chapter 1 • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

During the Formative period, the Hohokam lived mainly in somewhat flask-shaped huts set in shallow pits, plastered with mud over a framework of poles and woven twigs. Early villages were loose clusters of houses separated by stretches of packed clay. 65 After about AD 1000 Hohokam villages took on a more urban aspect. Each contained several "great houses," typically three or four stories high, and numerous smaller dwellings similar to the early pit houses. One city stretched for a mile and included at least 25 compounds of buildings. A vast irrigation network consisting of more than a thousand miles of canals crisscrossed an area of some 10,000 square miles.66

Archaeologists estimate that at least 100,000 and possibly a million people lived in these ancient cities. They fed themselves by making the barreh desert productive with irrigation and by breeding a variety of drought-tolerant corn that would grow from planting to harvest on a single watering. In addition, they grew squash, beans, tobacco, and cotton. Acid-etched shells suggest that the Hohokam traded with tribes a thousand miles to the east.

By 1450, Hohokam civilization vanished. Legend has it that raiders from the east swept down on the Hohokam three times, destroying homes and fields. The invaders killed or enslaved the inhabitants of the great cities. Some Hohokam escaped, but upon returning they never rebuilt the cities or canals. Some archaeological authorities think the demise of the Hohokam came after a gradual transition influenced by other indigenous people. Possibly the Salado, a mixture of Anasazi and Mogollon cultures, simply migrated in and took over, blending with the Hohokam and diffusing them out of existence. Further evidence suggests that the long-term effects of irrigation contributed to the Hohokam demise. River water carries

·diSsolved minerals. As this water evaporates from irrigated fields, it leaves behind mineral residues-usually alkali salts that gradually make the soil unfit for plants.

TheAnasazi (meaning"ancient ones" in the Navajo language), who neighbored the Hohokam, settled in the Four Corners region in about AD 100-1300. Ancestors of Pueblo Indians now living in New Mexico and Ariwna, the Anasazi farmed and produced fine baskets, pottery, cloth, ornaments, and tools. Villages evolved in caves that consisted of an array of semi-subterranean houses. Houses in the open also consisted of chambers befow and above ground. Pit houses, .known as kivas, served ceremonial purposes; these were community structures with up to a thousand rooms. Multistoried pueblos like Chaco Canyon, and cliff dwellings like Betakin and Mesa Verde are examples. The Anasazi abandoned the cliff houses in the late-thirteenth century, possibly because of a severe drought between AD 1276 and 1299, and because of pressure from the Navajo and the Apaches. The Anasazi were the ancestors of today's Hopis, Zunis, and Rio Grande Pueblo peoples.67

The Mogollon lived in the southeastern mountains of Arizona and southwestern New Mexico between 200 BC and AD 1200. In all probability, the Mogollon made the first pottery in the Southwest. They depended on rain and stream diversions for their farming, a technique that influenced the Anasazi or Pueblan From about AD 700 on, the Mogollon in New Mexico were greatly influenced by the neighboring Anasazi. ·

According to Velez-Ibanez, Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, was a Mogollon city. Also called Paquime, it was a major trading and manufacturing center on the northern frontier within the Mesoamerican world system, from which Mesoamerican culture was dispersed. A link is made between Casas Grandes and the Mimbres culture of southwestern New Mexico, a branch of the Mogollon peoples, who produced painted pottery between AD 800 and 1150 similar to that found in the Casas Grandes area. Other scholars call Paquime an outpost.for Mesoamerican traders controlling trade between the Southwest and Mesoamerica, while still others link it with the Anasazi.

Present-day Casas Grandes is set within a vast network of ancient ruins that was once the heart of one of the Southwest's largest trading centers. The area is still being excavated, and much remains unknown about this center. Small villages surrounded the city of Paquime, which evolved into a sophisticated center with an irrigation system that included dams, reservoirs, and trincheras (stone ditches). It had warehouses, ball courts, ceremonial structures, plazas, and steam rooms. By the late-thirteenth or early-fourteenth century, the area began to stagnate. Climatic change, environmental degradation, sociopolitical conflict, and shifting trade patterns all took their toll on the Mogollan people.68

At this point, hundreds of tribes with different cultures and linguistic dialects in northern Mexico and the Southwest have been omitted because of the lack of space. For example, Texas natives lived in camps perhaps as early as 37,000 years ago. They went through the evolutionary cycle and at first survived primarily

Chapter l • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes 13

• wild game. In fertile East Texas, the tribes built permanent villages, and had well-developed farms and

litical and religious systems. These tribes formed a loose federation, known as the Caddo confederacies, to preserve the peace and provide mutual protection. This ancient culture originally occupied the Red River area in what is now Louisiana and Arkansas. Semi-sedentary agricultural people, these tribes grouped around ceremonial mounds that resembled temples. Some scholars speculate that these skillful potters and basket makers were linked to the Mesoamerican cultures of the South.69

Thousands of miles to the west, present-day Alta California had one of the largest concentrations of native peoples by the latter part of the eighteenth century rnnning between 300,000 and 500,000 indigenous folk. Dozens of tribes adapted to its varied climate and topography. Mostly California had a mild climate and an abundance of food. Like Hawaii, it had an abundance of game, wild frnits and 'plants, and fish, and most tribes. did not have to farm. They supplemented these by trade with the native people to the east and among themselves. Their habitation of central California began between 12,000 and 10,000 BC, and their evolutionary cycles resembled those of other native peoples. They left their artifacts, traditions, and their descendants.

Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, is one of the most important studies of the native peoples in northern Mexico who at one point were part of the Mesoamerican sphere of influence. 70 The Pima, Opata, and the Tohono O'odham did not have a border marking Mexico and the Southwest, building rancherias and in some cases small villages. They used the resources of the land to their fullest. Notable among the tribes were the Cahita, who spanned northern Sinaloa to Central Sonora. Among the Cahita were the Yaqui; they had a strong sense of identity with the Yaqui River, one of the great waterways of North America.71 Unlike other people of the desert, the fast flowing river allowed them to form villages of up to 3,000 villagers. Their lives differed from the Tarahumara (Raramuri) and the Conchos, who lived on the eastern slopes and to the east of the Sierra Madre. These tribes although they numbered in the tens of thousands traveled in bands of 30 or less people, farming, hunting, and gathering to survive. When the sun got blistering hot, they migrated to the headwaters of the sierras to farm; in the harsh winters they migrated to lower altitudes to hunt and gather.

The indigenous people to the north did not build great cities but like other peoples they were bound together by corn and they traded intensely. They endured frequent droughts, often warred with each other, and they endured.

Mesoamerica was an interconnected world that was integrated and in which events taking place in one social unit affected those in another over an extended region. Mesoamerica was composed of large towns and their dependent rural communities. The rural communities consisted mostly of patrilineal kinship groups; the nobles and other elites lived in the large centers, exercising authority over the commoners. The forms of government varied from chiefdoms to fully developed states. In the Valley of Mexico, there were about 50 city-states with rulers or joint rulers appointed by the "royal" lineage as the supreme authority. They called the supreme ruler a tlatoani, "he who speaks;' or in the case of joint rulers, tlatoque. In the highlands of Guatemala, the Maya called the ruler ajpop, "he of the mat." The Azteca Empire was a loose coalition of subject city-states that paid tribute to an imperial center.

Scholars are split on whether the Azteca attempted to impose their culture on their subject peoples. One thing is certain: There was considerable ethnic diversity among the

people of Mesoamerica. The dominant cultures influenced some, while others remained segregated as distinct cultures. Mesoamerica, although influenced by the dominant world systems of the Maya, Tolteca, and other cultures, was not under the political control of a single power.

,THE CORE ZONES Mesoamerica, meaning "Middle America,"-located between North and South America-was divided into multiple core zones, of which Central Mexico was the most prominent. The exchanges between the core, periphery, and semi-periphery were important in determining the flow of luxury goods-cotton garments, jade, cacao beans, hides, feathers, and gold ornaments. The core-through conquest, tributary demands, or trade activities--often obtained the goods that in great part were a product of its demands.

We have identified the core zones as Central Mexico, West Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya zone. Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Central Mexico zone, inhabited by some

14 Chapter 1 • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

200,000 persons. The Azteca Empire ruled over approxi- mately 300 city-states and over another 100 or so client states throughout the Central Mexico core zone. The Azteca appointed administrators to oversee the states and in other instances cemented alliances though marriage between Azteca and other elites. Considerable cultural and linguistic diversity existed within this core.

The Tarasco held sway over the West Mexico core zone. The Tarasco zone, more centralized and militaristic than the Azteca, held a tighter grip over its city-states. But, the Tarasco did not have the same impact that the Azteca did on Mesoamerica.

The Oaxaca core zone was less integrated than the previous two zones. This zone consisted of 50 small king- doms in which the dominant languages were Zapoteca and Mixteca. However, as in the other zones, multiple languages coexisted with the dominant languages. At the time of the Spanish invasion the Mixteca states enjoyed considerable unity, forged by intermarriage between the ruling families. Trade took place within and outside the core. Intermarriage also occurred between the Mixteca and Azteca, who had significant cultural exchange.

The Maya core zone structurally resembled that of Central Mexico. Maya language and culture dominated the zone, although there was little unity between the highland and the lowland core states. Moreover, Maya had multiple dialects and non-Maya speakers also lived within the zone. The city-states competed with one another and some, like Quiche, incorporated approximately 30 tribute-paying provinces. The smaller zones within the main core zone were densely populated, and trade and warfare existed between them. Tensions also existed between many Maya and the Azteca cores.

THE SEMI-PERIPHERAL ZONES The semi-peripheral zones, regions that mediated between the core and the periphery, were important to the exchange network, especially when dealing among competing core states. They assimilated much of the trade and the religion of the core and the periphery. Casas Grandes, in what is now the state of Chihuahua, had been one such region (although it did not exist at the time the Spaniards arrived). The Mexican state of Tabasco on the Gulf Coast was also an important semi-peripheral zone. Many of these regions were port-of-trade societies, and centers such as Xicalanco were quite cosmopolitan. They organized the governing classes, comprised of merchants, info political councils, in which women could reach high positions of authority. The south Pacific coast region is less well known. The :2teca and Quiche Maya vied for control of the Xoconusco area, which ultimately became a tributary

province of the Azteca. The Caribbean coast, including the Yucatan Peninsula and the Central American isthmus, was another important semi-peripheral zone. Among the most important of these semi-peripheral centers was the island of Cozumel, which was run by merchants who invested in massive temples, shrines, and palaces. These port towns bordered the Caribbean all the way to Panama.

THE MESOAMERICAN PERIPHERY c ,,

The zones of the Mesoamerican periphery actively partici- pated in the economic, political, and cultural life of the Mesoamerican world. However, the people in the periphery played a subordinate role. They were unequal, and often subject provinces. The periphery should not be confused with frontier zones, from which the Azteca originally came. The periphery extended to Mexico's northwest, from Colima to Culiacan and well into Sonora. In the north- eastern part of what is now Mexico, the Huaxteca played a peripheral role. Its people had no writing system, and tension existed between them and the Azteca. Southeastern Central America was also a peripheral zone, occupied main- ly by people speaking Pipil, which is closely related to Nahuatl. The Lenca language was also spoken in this periph- eral zone. This peripheral zone was especially rich with diverse peoples, who interacted with the Maya and were organized into simple city-states or chiefdoms.

It is important to reiterate that contact also existed with what is now the U.S. Southwest. This contact varied, but was most intense with the descendants of the Hohokam and other sedentary populations. Distance played a role in how much influence the core had. Frontier people such as the Azteca were eventually integrated into the core. The main point is that the diverse peoples of Mesoamerica were unified under a vast, well-defined world system, in many ways more distinct than the European world system.

Although there has to be more research, it is highly probable that a trade structure existed that integrated the disparate regions. Exotic commodities from Mesoamerica have been found, and it is probable that they were circulated through local native trade networks.72 Turquoise was an important trade item, and long-distance trade betWeen the Zuni and Sonora existed. There was also a high use of turquoise in Mesoamerica. Trade . contributed to the evolution of the division of labor; it led to the evolution of state systems in Mexico proper, and it was a mechanism of economic integration. The population of what is today Mexico and Central American had reached 25-38 million on the arrival of Spain and because of the population explosion in what is the Mesoamerican region, it is probable that contact would have increased in the quest for water.

Notes 1. Brendan Borrell, "What's So Hot About Chili Peppers?"

Smithsonian, April 2009, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ science-nature/Whats-So-Hot-About-Chili-Peppers.html (accessed April 7, 2009). "Bolivia is believed to be the chili's motherland, home to dozens of wild species that may be the ancestors of all the world's chili varieties ... " The author makes the point that while chili may have originated in Bolivia; chili is generally associated with Mexicans. What does this tell you about American societies?

2. Scholars predispose that agriculture is essential for the development of village life and the evolution of civilizations. The following article describes building of a massive worship center 11,000 years ago, centuries before intensive farming. This discovery upends the conventional theory that agriculture was necessary before labor could be organized in this fashion. Andrew Curry, "Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?" Smithsonian, November 2008, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology I gobekli-tepe.html (accessed August 27, 2009).

3. "The First Americans," The Economist (February 21, 1998): 79. See also Virginia Morell, "Genes May Link Ancient Eurasians, Native Americans," Science 280, no. 5363 (April 24, 1998): 520. Ruben Bareiro Saguier, "The Indian Languages of Latin America," UNESCO Courier (July 1983): 12.

4. Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Mayan, 6th ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 4.

5. Louis Grivetti, Jan Corlett, and Cassius Lockett, "Food in American History, Part l: Maize: BOUNTIFUL GIFTS: AMER- ICA ON THE EVE OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION (ANTIQUITI TO 1565);' Nutrition Today, 36, no. I (January 2001): 20. Temma Ehrenfeld, "Prehistoric Farming (Origin of Maize)," Newsweek International (November 24, 2003): 59.

6. Mark Muro, "New Finds Explode Old Views of the American Southwest (Findings of a Primitive Culture);' Science 279, no. 5351 (January 30, 1998): 653-54. J. Brett Hill, Jeffery J. Clark, William H. Doelle, and Patrick D. Lyons, "Prehistoric Demography in the Southwest: Migration, Coalescence, and Hohokam Population Decline;' American Antiquity 69, no. 4 (October 2004): 689-707.

7. Kristen J. Gremillion, "Com and Culture in the Prehistoric New World," American Antiquity 60, no. 3 (July 1995): 553-54. Michael W. Diehl, "The Intensity of Maize Processing and Production in Upland Mogollon Pithouse Villages A.O. 200-1000," AmericanAntiquity61,no. l (Januaryl996): 102-15.

8. Sissel Johannessen and Christine A. Hastorf, "Com and Culture in Central Andean Prehistory;' Science 244, no. 4905 (May 12, 1989):

9. Claire Hope Cummings, "Risking Corn, Risking Culture;' World Watch 15, no. 6 (November-December 2002): 8-18ff.

10. Sharer, The Ancient Mayan, 58. Michael C. Meyer, William L. . Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The Course of Mexican History, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6-7.

Chapter 1 • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes 15

11. Some African American scholars say that there was African contact. They point to the massive Olmeca stone heads as proof of this. However, this is not a view held by most Mesoamerican scholars. Robert M. Carmack, Janine Gasco, and Gary H. Gossen, The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 26. William F. Rust and Robert J. Sharer, "Olmec Settlement Data from La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico," Science 242, no. 4875 (October 7, 1988): 102--03. Claims that the Olmeca were from Africa are mostly based on the facial characteristics of the artifacts, especially the Olmeca stone heads. See The Olmec-Ancient Mexico, http:l/www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKo9mUelueM (accessed August 27, 2009). However, most specialists claim that there is no scientific evidence that the Olmeca are not part of the Amerindian family.

12. Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Mayan (New York: Quill William Morrow, 1990), 56. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 52.

13. Olmec & La Venta, http://www.delange.org/La Venta2/LaVenta2 .htm (accessed August 26, 2009).

14. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 53. 15. Meyer, Sherman, and Deeds, Course of Mexican History, 14.

Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 55. 16. Robert N. Zeitlin, "Ancient Chalcatzingo," Science 241, no.

4861 (July 1, 1988): 103ff. John S. Justeson and Terrence Kaufman, "A Decipherment of epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing;' Science259,no.5102(March19, 1993): 1703ff.Scott Faber, "Signs of Civilization-epi-Olmec Hieroglyphics Deciphered-1993-The Year in Science-Column," Discover 15, no. I (January 1994): 82ff.

17. Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 159. Tikal dates to the Middle Formative (about 800 BC), and it was occupied to about AD 900. The Ruins of Tikal, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=lOvYZiMvZIY (accessed August 27, 2009).

18. Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 17. 19. YouTube has a comprehensive 16-part series on the Mayan

Calendar Explained (Part l of 16)-Ian Xel Lungold, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEyZFbkvJjw (accessed August 26, 2009). The Mayan Calendar, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BeE-3BBqG58 (accessed August 26, 2009).

20. Virginia Morell, "The Lost Language of Coba," Science 86, no. 7 (March 1986): 48ff. Francis Mark Mondimore, A Natural History of Homosexuality City (John Hopkins University Press, 1997). Louis Crompton," 'An Atmy of Lovers': The Sacred Band of Thebes (Homosexual Soldiers in Ancient Greece)," History Today 44, no. 11 (November 1994): 23ff. See Colin Spencer, Homosexuality in History (Harcourt Brace, 19%).

21. Pete Sigal, "Ethnohistory and Homosexual Desire: A Review of Recent Works," Ethnohistory 45, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 139 .

22. Norman Scribes Hammond, "Warriors and Kings: The City of Copan and the Ancient Mayan," History Today 43 (January

16 Chapter 1 • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes '

1993): 54£f. See Maya writing, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=u9LRbLXMzyM&feature=related (accessed August 27, 2009).

23. See Vernon L. Scarborough and David R. Wilcox, eds. The Mesoamerican Ballgame (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1991). Vernon L. Scarborough, "Courts in the Southern Mayan Lowlands: A Study in Pre-Hispanic Ballgame Architecture;' Vernon L Scarborough and David R. Wilcox, eds. The Mesoamerican Ballgame (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1991), 129-44. The following has three parts: Mayan Ball Game, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcal8GcS4ll (accessed April 6, 2009). A brief tour of Chi ch' en Itza, Yucatan, Mexico, focusing on the ball court, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=hobm U4Y8-8I(accessedApril 6, 2009).

24. Karl A. Taube, "The Mesoamerican Ballgame;' Science 256, no. 5059 (May 15, 1992): 1064ff. Theodore Stern, The Mesoamerican Ballgame (University of Arizona Press, 1991). Google lists several excellent sites on the Mesoamerican ball game.

25. Meyer, Sherman, and Deeds, Course of Mexican History, 361. See Mayan Numbers Les.<;0n, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= W-om9DkpvgA (accessed August 26, 2009) or Mayan Counting System, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mon20Zf56U (accessed August 26, 2009).

26. See Preface for a discusSion of Mayan prophecy for December 21, 2012-End of Time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= QEJ8C2qw5FM&feature=PlayLlst&p=B2878C04EE3C336D& playnext=l&playnext_from=PL&index=37 (accessed August 27, 2009) 2012 Mayan Prophecy Ertd of an Age Part l. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=cH6ig9Xgq3s (accessed August 27, 2009). The Actual Astronomy of 2012-Absolutely Amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=cGPcjMe6Qlw (accessed August 27, 2009).

27. Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 84-85. 28. See Tikal, a place of remembered voices, http://mayaruins.

com/tikal.html (accessed April 11, 2009). Also Mystery of Tikal, http:/lvideo.yahoo.com/watch/887339/3566544. See "Maya Trade and Economy," Authentic Maya, Guatemala, Cradle of Maya Civilization, http://www.authenticmaya. com/maya_trade_and_ecom ... ny.htm (accessed April 11, 2009). It is atl excellent site.

29. Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 57. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 323.

30. Palenque, Pacal's Mystery, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TBI-BWiatRo (accessed August 29, 2009). Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 221-305. Anahuac Civilizations: A Focus on Women, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= zBIYpRW9fgU&feature=related (accessed August 28, 2009).

31. Palenque-Mexico, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= Wq-yZzy-cTk (accessed April 11, 2009).

32. Mayan Ruins at Tulum (YouTube Edition), http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Y9Vy06GIVMo&feature=related (accessed April J !, 2009).

33. Meyer, Sherman, and Deeds, Course of Mexican History, 14. Thomas O'Toole, "Radar Used to Discover Mayan Irrigation

34. The use of radar technology and photographs taken by satellites has revised estimates based on newly discovered evidence. "Science/Medicine: Developments in Brief; NASA Images Aid in Mayan Research;' Los Angeles Times, March l, 1987.

35. Vilma Barr, ''A Mayan Engineering Legacy-Coba (Includes Related Article on Acid Rain Effects);' Mechanical Engineering- CIME 112, no. 2 (February 1990): 66ff. Alison Bass, "Agriculture: Learning from the Past," Technology Review 87 (July 1984): 7lff. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 63.

36. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 61. Morell, "Lost Language of Coba," 48ff. Frank J. Greene, "Smile-You May Be on Candid Satellite;' The San Diego-Union-Tribune, May 10, 1986. "Satellite Discovers Lost Mayan Ruins;' The New York Times, June 19, 1984. "What Killed the Mayas: War or Weather?; A Global Weakening of the Ties ... , "OUTLOOK;SCIENCE&SOCIETY 118,no.23. U.S. News & World Report (June 12, 1995): !Off.

37. Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 321-22. Overpopulation was one of the major problems. As the population grew, it became more difficult to eke out a living. The best farmland rested under many of the newly built buildings in places like Yax-Pac, where the ball court area alone had over 1,500 struc- tures. An estimated 3,000 people per square kilometer lived there. Deforestation also led to other problems such as erosion and it affected climate and rainfall.

38. British scholar Eric Thompson was responsible for the myth of the peaceful people. Alfredo Lopez Austin, Leonardo L6pez Lujan, and Bernard R. Ortiz De Montellano, Mexico's Indigenous Past (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 137. However, it is important to note that no empire has ever been peaceful. The Old Testament is not a peaceful story, nor is the history of the United States. Likewise, it is difficult to get beyond the sensational on YouTube or most articles, scholarly and popular.

39. Pir.imides de Teotihuacan, Mexico. 1 de 5, http:/ /www.youtube. com/watch?v=N8IzmWX5frc (accessed August 28, 2009). Pyramids of Teotihuacan, Outside Mexico City, Mexico, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV-sBJaqo-Q (accessed April 11, 2009). Teotihuacan, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=D7nbKa5_XM (accessed April 11, 2009).

40. Meyer, Sherman, and Deeds, Course of Mexican History, J l. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 57, 60, 77.

41. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 33. Kenneth Hirth, "Xochicalco: Urban Growth and State Formation in Central Mexico," Science 225 (August 10, 1984): 579.

42. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 71. Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961).

43. The lecture about Maya Toltec History in Chichen Itza, Mexico, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mror2p7qmlo (accessed August 27, 2009). Second Life-Chichen Itza Mexico, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= PPI8s4JZnDg (accessed April 11, 2009). Chichen Itza-Wonder of the World http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuSvdlTEHXo&feature= fvw (accessed August 28, 2009).

44. Zapotec and Mixtecan Culture at Monte Alban, http://www. ...... ,.. ... " ._ , -- - .J "--!1 ....

2009). Early Astrology at Monte Alban, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=z2EgwqyFDDg&feature=related (accessed April 11, 2009). Views of the town of Oaxaca and the Zapotec Ruins of Monte Alban in 1961, http://wwwcyoutube.com/ watch?v=Nl2Kq79tGvY (accessed August 26, 2009).

45. Mitla, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_IQZr-Zvl&fea- ture=related (accessed August 27, 2009). Mitla, Mexico, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_SormLIGQI&feature= related (accessed April 11, 2009).

46. Joyce Marcus and Kent V. Flannery, Zapotec Civilizations: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley (London: Thame and Hudson, 1996), 12, 20, 84. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 73, 91. Matt Krystal, "Conquest and Colonialism: The Mixtec Case;' Human Mosaic 26, no. 1 (1992): 55. Cultura Mixteca y Zapoteca, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= wnUmYOAkSVA (accessed August 28, 2009).

47. Mixtecs, http://wwW.latinamericanstudies.org/mixtec.htm (accessed April 11, 2009). Maarten Jansen, "The Search for History in Mixtec Codices;' Ancient Mesoamerica 1 (1990): 99-109.

48. The Azteca called nomadic tribes north of central Mexico Chichimeca. The name generally meant barbarians. They were different and varying ethnic and linguistic groups.

49. See Richard Townsend, The Aztec (Thames & Hudson, 1992). The concept of Aztlan is controversial among right-wing schol- ars and nativist groups who claim that it is an example of Chicano sentiment to retake the Southwest If the truth be told, it just says that the Azteca came from a place calledAztlan, which has been documented to have existed It is not a matter of faith, and it is a process of deductive reasoning, based on early maps. Journalist Roberto Rodriguez and Patrisia Gonzales have done serious research into its existence. The Azteca probably did come from the Southwest A wider view of indigenous culture comes from an understanding of the com culture that bonded the peoples of the Americas. What is Aztlan? Roberto Rodriquez, "Utah Said to be Historical Location of the Mythical Aztlan;' http://www.networkaztlan.com/history/origins_of_aztlan. html (accessed August 26, 2009). NetworkAztlan.com, http:// networkaztlan.com/ aztlan.html (accessed April 11, 2009).

50. Peter W. Rees, "Origins of Colonial Transportation in Mexico;' Geographical Review 65, no. 3 (July, 1975): 323-34. Spanish transportation followed the corridors established by the Azteca and other Mesoamerican merchants who established the first El Camino Reals.

51. Excellent but in Spanish. Las Chinampas, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Q4y03ltpGOY (accessed April 11, 2009). Xochimilco canals Mexico City, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v= _TDXbmiCG80 (accessed August 28, 2009).

52. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 77-78. Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985).

53. Miguel Leon-Portilla, El Destino de la palabra de la oralidad y los c6dices mesoamericans a la escritura alfateticos (Mexico, DF: Fonda de la cultura, 1996), 45. Miguel Leon-Portilla, Toltecayotl aspectos de la cultura nahuatl (Mexico, DF: Fondo

Chapter 1 • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, ana Heroes ·1 /

de la Cultura, 1995). Rozanne Dunbar Ortiz, "Aboriginal People and Imperialism in the Western Hemisphere," Monthly Review 44, no. 4 (September 1992): lff.

54. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 324. 55. Inga Clendinnen, Los Aztecas: Una Interpretaci6n (Mexico,

DF: Editorial Patria, 1998), 205-77, or Aztecs: An interpreta- tion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). lrene Silverblatt, "Lessons of Gender and Ethnohistory in Mesoamerica;' Ethnohistory 42, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 643.

56. June Nash, "The Aztecs and the Ideology of Male Dominance," Signs 4, no. 2 (1978): 349-62.

57. Ibid., 355-6, 359. 58. Aztec Legend of the Fifth Sun, http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=eFJKzz-eolg&translated=l (accessed April 11, 2009). Leyenda Azteca, Tenochititlan, http://www.youtube.com/ watch1v=6Ado6TVJaU8&translated=l (accessed April 11, 2009).

59. Clendinnen, Los Aztecas: Una Interpretacion, 225, makes the point that it is unknown in what context the transvestite was portrayed-in a comedy or drama or perhaps a cult. Meyer, Sherman, and Deeds, Course of Mexican History, 64. Carmack et al., The Legacy, 116. Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs, 101--02.

60. Clendinnen, Los Aztecas: Una Interpretacion, 155-89. Meyer, Sherman, and Deeds, Course of Mexican History, 70.

61. Kay Almere Read and Jason ). Gonzalez, Mesoamerican Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs of Mexico and Central America (Oxford University Press, 2002), 7-8.

62. Barry M. Pritzker, A Native Americdn Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples (USA: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3.

63. Timothy A. Kohler, Matt Pier Glaude, Jean-Pierre Bocquet- Appel, and Brian M. Kemp, "The Neolithic Demographic Transition In The U.S. Southwest," American Antiquity 73 (4), 2008, p. 645-669. http://libarts.wsu.edu/anthro/pdf/ Kohler%20et%20al%20SW%20NDT%20AAq.pdf (accessed August 28, 2009), states "maize reached northeastern Arizona by 1940 B.C. which is almost as early as the southern Arizona dates. More lag can be seen in its subsequent eastwest spread-for example, it reached the Northern Rio Grande in New Mexico by about 1200 B.C."

64. Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez, Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwestern United States (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 20-3, 29.

65. Nearly two dozen large towns were constructed in or about what is now Phoenix. Velez-lbaiiez, Border Visions, 20-55. "Hohokam Irrigation:' http://carbon.cudenver.edu/stc-link/ hohokam/Hohokam.htm (accessed April 11, 2009).

66. Daniel B. Adams/'Last Ditch Archeology;' Science 83, no. 4 (December 1983): 28ff.

67. Thomas E. Shei'idan, "The Limits of Power: The Political Ecology of the Spanish Empire in the Greater Southwest," Antiquity 66 (1992): 156.

68. Harold S. Colton, "Reconstruction of Anasazi History," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 86, no. 2: 264-69. Hector Neff, Daniel 0. Larson, and Michael D. Glascock, "The Evolution of Anasazi Ceramic Production

18 Chapter 1 • Not Just Pyramids, Explorers, and Heroes

and Distribution: Compositional Evidence from a Pueblo III Site in South-Central Utah;' Journal of Field Archaeology 24; no. 4 (Winter, 1997): 473-92.

69. Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519-1821 (Austin: University of Texas, 1992).

70. Edward H. Spicer, Cydes of Conquest: T)le Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1961). Rodolfo F. Acufia, Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of

Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007).

71. Rio Yaqui---Llfe and death, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= KOJAWRGVyyk&translated=l (accessed April 11, 2009). Yaqui Ritual Performance Mexico, http:/fwww.youtube.com/ watch?v=hCifVH7CskY (accessed April 11, 2009).

72. Jonathon E. Ericson and Timothy G. Baugh, The American Southwest and Mesoamerica: Systems of Prehistorit Exchange (Springer, 1993), 12-13.

The Occupation of Middle America

1480 1492 1512 1700

WHAT DROVE THE CONQUEST

181Q )821

Spain's occupation of Mesoamerica violently disrupted the latter's evolution, destroying Mesoamerican social institutions, religion, and infrastructure. Within 80 years, I 519-1600, the native population fell from at least 25 million to about q million. What followed was 300 years of colonial rule, accompanied by political and economic exploitation, 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 and allowed them to buy into a world market dominated by China.

The Asian market's demand for silver in the early 1500s contributed to the growth of mining districts such as Zacatecas. In the early 1500s, the gold/silver ratio was 1:6 in China; in Europe it hovered around 1:12, in Persia 1:10, and in India 1:8. Thus, with six ounces of silver, merchants could buy a full ounce of gold in China. In Europe, the same six ounces had a purchasing power of one-half ounce of gold. This trade put a, premium on silver. In 1571, the Spaniards founded the city of Manila, Philippines, and it became a global center of substantial and continuous trade across the Pacific Ocean. Through the seventeenth century, Pacific galleons transported more than 50 tons in silver annually from Acapulco to Manila, where Chinese merchants would ship the cargo to the mainland. Trade with the Orient pushed demand for Mexican bullion as the Chinese population zoomed from 55 million in 1500 to 231 million in 1600 and 268 million in 1650. By the next century, the Chinese comprised more than one-third of the world's population.1 Zacatecas and the northern periphery of New Spain depended on the demand for silver in the Orient.

Discussion: Note the timeline. Although it runs some 300 years, it is thousands of years shorter than the habitation of the Mesoarnerican people of what are today Mexico and Central America. I did not begin the timeline in 1492 because events were in motion before the actual beginning of the occupation of the Americas. As you read the introduction keep in mind the timeline and how it relates to it.

19

20 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

Africa Begins at the Pyrenees French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) wrote, "Africa begins at the Pyrenees." Iberia (modern-day Spain and Portugal) was much more a part of the ancient glories that were Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, Rome, and the Muslim world than it was of Western Europe. The intermingling of the races began in about 35000 BC. By 5000 BC, the Basque people lived in the north, in the Pyrenees region. Between 4000 and 3500 BC, the Iberians entered from North Africa. The Celtics arrived through the Pyrenees from 900 to 650 BC, bringing knowledge of iron metallurgy. Around llOO BC, Phoenician merchants from present-day Lebanon established trading posts in Cadiz and elsewhere along the Spanish coast. Greeks traded along the northeastern coast and Jewish merchants from North Africa settled on the Iberian Peninsula.2 The Phoenician colony of Carthage in what is modern-day Tunisia rose in power and displaced the Lebanese Phoenicians. Iberia came under the rule of Carthage, but Rome displaced it following the Punic Wars (264-246 BC), laying the foundations for Spanish language and culture.3

Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, the Visigoths, a Germanic people from central Europe, ruled Spain. In 711, the Muslims of northern Africa launched an invasion across the Strait of Gibraltar, occupying most of the peninsula. The African presence lasted more than seven centuries.4 Under Muslim rule, Spain was a center oflearning and art. The Muslims i:-;eserved the writings of many Greek, Roman, and Middle-Eastern intellectuals--writings that otherwise would have been lost. Muslims brought improved irrigation methods, food strains (i.e., oranges and other fruits and vegetables), rice, sugar cane, and cotton. The Africans also brought other breeds of animals; using stock from the Muslims and Moors, the Spaniards developed a better breed of horse, which they adapted to an arid climate. They developed strategies to travel long distances, herding African cattle and churro

Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms to the north regained power in holy wars known as la reconquista, the reconquest, driving the Moors southward. By the 1 OOOs, Christians were gaining an upper hand, and by the 1200s, they had driven the Muslims into the Granada region of the peninsula. In 1479, the marriage of Queen Isabela and King Fernando united the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, and in 1492, they conquered the last Moorish kingdom, Granada (the eastern half of present-day Andalusia).6 That same year they expelled between 120,000 and 150,000 Spanish Jews. These events set the stage for "Occupied America!'7

THE SPANISH CONQUEST Who was this man, Cristobal Colon or Christopher Columbus?8 He is claimed by Italians, Jews, Spaniards, and Catalans. No one really knows. DNA tests are being conducted at this very moment, as linguists examine his writings. The only ones who do not claim Columbus are the Native Americans, who prefer to call him "colon;' with a small "c" and without an accent mark. 9

What is pertinent to this narrative? 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. In 1495, he rounded up 1,500 Tainos (Arawaks), selecting 500 of the best specimens, and set sail for Spain. Only 300 natives survived. Because of the Spanish conquest, by 1650 few Tainos or Caribs-who occupied most of the Lesser Antilles, the Virgin Islands, and Vieques Island-remained alive. 10

By the early 1500s, sugar-growing plantations emerged on the islands. The plantation system was not new to Columbus. The Arabs had initiated it on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Sicily, and it required an immense captive labor force of African slaves. By the 1440s, the Portuguese, through "raid and trade" techniques, had expanded down the West African coast. When the Spaniards decimated the native population, much the same as the Portuguese had done on the Atlantic Islands, the Azores, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome, and Madeira, they too imported African slaves.

Columbus had trained in the Madeira sugar trade. 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. By the early-sixteenth century the sugar industry thrived on Santo Domingo, then on Cuba, and soon after on Puerto Rico. Simultaneously, the Spaniards almost wiped out the

·· •hrrmoh warfare. overwork, and disease. 11

The Pope had condemned the Portuguese practice of the plunder and enslavement of human beings along the coast of Africa. However, he left a loophole. The natives could be enslaved if they were cannibals. Columbus himself justified the enslavement of the indigenous people; claiming they were indeed cannibals. The Spaniards repeated this pretext throughout the colonial period. In Central America, they captured and sold tens of thousands of natives as slaves. They shipped Nicaragua natives to Peru to work in the mines and haciendas, plantation-like estates.12

Faith Versus Rationality Apologists for Columbus say that he did not invent the institution of slavery, and-to the credit of Spain- a debate did take place as to the morality of enslaving the indigenous people. Spain passed the Laws of Burgos in 1512 that included regulations protecting indigenous labor and ensuring their Christianization. Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolome de la Casas defended the rights of the Native Americans. 13 However, the Laws of Burgos were almost never enforced, and the famed national debate over whether the natives had rational souls occurred six decades after the initial contact in the Caribbean and three decades after the fall of the Azteca Empire. '

The debate took place in 1550-1551 in Valladoid, Spain, between Bartolome de las Casas and the renowned Spanish scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda, who 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." Sepulveda even wrote a treatise justifying war against the natives. His argument was that the Spaniards had an obvious right to rule over the "barbarians" because of their superiority. He reduced the natives' status to wild beasts. 14 The judges in the debate never reached a decision as to the legitimacy of Sepulveda or las Casas's arguments.

The Spanish Invasion of the Mexica The Spaniards slowly explored the Caribbean coastline of Middle America, gathering information. By 1511, the invaders had conquered Cuba, and in the late 151 Os, Hernan Cortes landed on the mainland that was to become Mexico. On the island of Cozumel, Cortes encountered the Maya. In 1519, Cortes sailed to what today is Veracruz, and within two years Cortes's forces conquered the great Azteca Empire and colonized what they later called New Spain.

Throughout the march to the Azteca capital of Tenochtitlan, the gunpowder, horses, snarling dogs, and glistening armor helped the Spaniards. The indigenous warriors tended not to kill their enemies, hoping to wound and capture them mainly for use as sacrifices to the gods. They stopped fighting periodi- cally to remove their dead and wounded from the battlefield. At close range, the Native Americans used wooden clubs tipped and ridged with razor-sharp obsidian-vicious weapons against other indigenous people, but weapons that proba' ·ly shattered against Spanish helmets.15 The double-bladed swords of the Spaniards in close combat slashed left and right, killing or maiming. Their armament allowed them to drive directly at warriors clustered around their leaders. When the Spaniards captured or killed a local chief, the chief's men usually fell back. In the battle for Tenochititlan, this weaponry gave the Spaniards a strategic advantage over the Azteca.

Moreover, the Azteca were not immune to smallpox and other European diseases, which acted as a form of germ warfare. At a critical moment, when it seemed as if the Azteca might drive out Cortes's men, a smallpox epidemic ravaged the native population. 16

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. Cortes'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 200years.

22 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

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 Tenochititlan, 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.) 17 An analogy can be drawn between the Black Plague of fourteenth-century Europe, where 40 million out of 100 million Europeans died, and the demise of millions of natives. Like the Europeans in the fourteenth century, the native peoples of Middle America must have believed that their gods had abandoned them.

There were four major epidemics in the first 60 years of Spanish occupation. Smallpox caused the first epidemic of 1520-1521, during the second year after Spanish contact. Azteca medicine could not stop its spread, 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.18

Apologists argue that it was their predisposed to European diseases that brought so many deaths to the Native Americans; they advanced theories that the native peoples were vulnerable to these diseases because their slow trek across the Bering landmass more than 30,000 years ago created a bio- logic selector and "cold screen" that eliminated harmful bacteria and viruses from their bodies. A more plau- sible explanation is that the lack of larger-sized animals available for domestication had shielded the natives from diseases carried by anirnals.19 The introduction of domestic animals, accordingly, contributed to the spread of diseases to the natives.

In brief, the Columbian Exchange exchanged food products, livestock. It also began the Atlantic slave trade and brought diseases that killed millions of Native Americans. The Spaniards brought gunpowder, the horse, and the Catholic Church to the Americas. The Americas as part of the exchange sent com, the potato, the tomato, peppers, pumpkins, squash, pineapples, cacao beans (for chocolate), and the sweet potato and animals such as turkeys. The Europeans brought livestock such as cattle, pig and sheep and grains such as wheat. They brought the onion, citrus fruits, bananas, coffee beans, olives, grapes, rice, and sugar cane from other parts of the world. However, they also brought smallpox, influenza, malaria, measles, typhus, and syphilis. The exchange wiped out the indigenous religions, submerged their languages, and tried to blank out their history. They also introduced a European construct of race.

The Conquest of Race and Labor in Mesoamerica The conquerors 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, the drink pulque, which was low in alcoholic content and rich in vitamins, had been used for religious purposes. It resembled beer rather than hard liquor. When the Spaniards introduced distilled alcohol, it became an escape, and addiction was common. Urban resettlement plans only reinforced substantial· crowding and lack of hygiene, and native centers became breeding grounds for epidemics.

INDIGENOUS LABOR A "Viceroy," or vice-king, governed New Spain, ruling the colonial government that was subdivided into smaller administrative units. The crown gave former conquistadors* (meaning "leaders of the crusades") encomiendas, large tracts of land with native subjects, an institution that Spain had established during the reconquista and also in the Caribbean Islands. The encomendero received the tribute of a village along with their free labor. In principle, encomenderos would protect the natives under their care and supervise their conversion to Catholicism.20 In reality the conquerors often maltreated and abused the natives under their trust, keeping the natives in a state of serfdom.

THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE Throughout the colonial period, Spain passed legislation supposedly to protect the natives. In theory, the Laws of Burgos, passed in 1512 as Recopilaci6n de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias (Recopilation of the Royal Law of the Indies), protected the natives. Spain strengthened the laws in 1542, eliminating the right of encomenderos to use indigenous labor at will. Occasionally, the natives successfully sued and used the laws to their advantage to protect their lands or personal labor. A large gap existed, however, between what the law said and its enforcement, and justice rarely went beyond an occasional victory in the courts.21

The Spanish Crown abolished indigenous slavery and the encomienda in the 1550s. In reality both flourished on the peripheries and frontiers of New Spain well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, the repartimiento system was routinely used. Under this system, native communities provided labor for public projects, agriculture, and mines and as carriers of goods. Although the system required wages for the natives, the employers often abused it. The repartimiento was not limited to labor; it also included the requirement that natives purchase goods from Spanish authorities only.

STRUCTURAL CONTROLS Despite the catastrophes of the invasion and colonization of Mesoamerica, the native communities endured, but not before Spaniards dramatically changed them. Colonial authorities grouped native communities into municipios, townships. The largest town of the municipios was the cabecera, or head community. This structure ensured the survival of the native community, but it also strengthened colonial control of the native village. The authorities isolated the native peoples from other communities, identifying them with the local communities rather than along class or ethnic lines. This division made it more difficult for the disparate communities to unite against Spanish rule and destroyed the intercommunity regional networks of the pre-invasion world system. They also placed increased power in the hands of local elites called caciques, chiefs, who controlled tnbute and the local system, and were loyal to the new order.

Other forms of social control were subtler. The Spaniards allowed the indigenous peoples to retain their languages, but Spanish was the official language. All official government business transpired in Spanish. If the native or the casta, of mixed blood, spoke Spanish, l ·for she was considered superior to those who did not. In addition, the Catholic Church was the colonial religious institution, and it substituted the Christian God for the indigenous gods. 22 Furthermore, the paternalism of the Spanish friars was racist- with few exceptions they viewed the natives as childlike. Many friars believed that the native personality lacked the spiritual dimension to understand Catholicism. Thus; early in the colonial period Spain did not permit natives to become priests or nuns. 23

The religious conquest was administered from Spain, with most members of the co.lonial hierarchy born there. Indeed, the monarchy and the Church were one with the crown appointing the bishops-a right generally reserved to the pope. Spaniards influenced by the reconquista of Spain were intolerant of any person who was not Catholic. To hold office or be a 11<>hle, they had to prove a limpiezq. de sangre (purity of blood), that is, that they were not of Jewish or Moorish descent.24 This intolerance extended,i,nto the colonies that Spain controlled. The Spanish instituted a caste system based on race, which dictated an individual's

* The name conquistador expresses the similarity of conquests in the New World and the conquest of the Moors in Spain. It is similar to a knight who participated in the crusades or the reconquista.

24 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

relative importance. Spanish priests listed racial classification on baptismal certificates. There were four main categories of race: the "penigsular;' 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. There were also innumerable subcategories"of mixtures.25 This complex system, used for social control, lasted in various forms throughout the colonial period, although during the eighteenth the increased mobility of the castas, the mixed bloods, allowed them to fudge on their race. The advantage of moving up in race was clear: The more Spanish one looked and claimed to be, the more privilege the person enjoyed.26

WOMEN IN COLONIAL MESOAMERiCA During the colonial period, criollo culture flourished along with the Spanish culture, literally built on the ruins of the indigenous past. Colonial society had a luxury class that could afford to produce literature and the arts, giving birth to geniuses like Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), an intellectual, who was subordinated because of her gender. As important as these expressions of Colonial Mexican society are, here we focus on women from the indigenous classes, for any discussion on women in this period depends greatly on ethnicity and class.27

The Changing Roles of Women The social and economic roles of women varied in both precolonial and colonial societies. Women were the victims of rape, the ultimate symbol of subordination. However, the economy did open opportunities. In Yucatan the introduction of sheep began the production of wool. Women were generally responsible for making goods, thus broadening their participation in the wool trade. Yet, this was not entirely positive sincerepetitive motions in textile work resulted in physical ailments.

Azteca women were recognized as adults. They had rights before the law and society, although this status varied greatly according to their class. Under Spanish rule, their status was weakened, although Spanish law allowed them to litigate inheritance and land rights in court. Nahua women took advantage of these rights, and they actively litigated and testified on their own behalf in the colonial courts. This activity became less frequent in the seventeenth century, as Nahua husbands and fathers increasingly represented the women in court. Native women were not always recognized as hijils 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.28

INSTITUTIONALIZING INEQUALITY Before the arrival of the Spaniards, women generally married when they were about 20 years of age. In another change that took place after the arrjval 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. 29 Even in death, men received favored treatment, as they were more likely than women to be buried within the church courtyard. 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. According to Carmack and his colleagues, "Colonial authorities believed that the Indians would be easier to supervise and control if divided into small nuclear households," which 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 families, reducing the authority of native women within the clan. The age difference between male and female spouses favored the male. A 20-year-old male married to a 14-year-old girl held much more power than he \ii: -· .. -- .. 1..1 !CL ....... L -·---- ...,n ______ _ 1..J 30

The Assimilation of Native Women Native women, according to some sources, experienced a diminished participation in traditional social domains. Some scholars charge that the Catholic Church promoted rigid attitudes toward women, making women the scapegoats for its failures in converting the natives. Although women acculturated the children, Spanish authori- ties were not inclined to educate them. Few religious schools dedicated to educating young women existed. By contrast, during the pre-conquest period, women had worked as marketers, doctors, artisans, and priests, and perhaps, occasionally, as rulers. The change had a lot to do with class; for example, native noble women who married the conquerors and brought a dowry were more easily assimilated than lower-class natives.31

THE MYTH OF PASSIVITY Native women were anything but passive or invisible, however. By the end of the eighteenth century, they accounted for one-third of the Tenochitlan, or Mexico City, workforce. (Tenochitlan had become the capital of New Spain and was renamed "Mexico City.") A sizeable number of native, African, and mixed-breed women worked outside the home. In Mexico City, 46 percent of native women and 36 percent of women from las castas (mixed breeds) engaged in work outside the home, whereas only 13 percent of the Spanish or criollas worked outside the home in the labor force. Most women found employment as domestic servants. We can deduce that native women and women from the castes did the menial work while middle-class women pursued an education.32

·Native women were far from docile; legal documents show many examples of resistance. Take the case of Josefa Maria Francisca, a cacica, or noblewoman, who for some 30 years played a leading role in Tepoztlan, near Cuernavaca. Francisca did not know how to read or write and probably was unable to speak Spanish; nevertheless, her fiery temperament made her a respected ally and a feared opponent.33 What angered Francisca was the repartimiento, which forcefully took the village's men to the hated mines of Ta:ioco. In 1725, when authorities arrested repartimiento workers, she led an assault on the jail and freed them. In September a group of 100 women broke into the sacristy, liberated the ornaments and vestments, and sold them to pay for litigation. Angelina Maria Francisco, the wife of Miguel Francisco, Francisca's lover for 30 years, led the revolt and authorities sentenced her to one year in an obraje-a sweatshop-and six months at the hospital de indios. They later commuted her sentence.

In the winter of 1797-1798, as typhus ravaged the Maya village of Ixil, the women feared that the royal administrators would tax the village based on its pre-epidemic population. The fact that Spanish authorities violated the tradition of burying local Maya within the church compound and ordered that typhus victims be buried outside the church boundaries infuriated them. The Maya women locked the doctor and the priest in the church and made their release contingent on proper interment of the deceased.34 Throughout the colonial period, women lodged complaints against clergy for sexual improprieties. This was no small feat considering they were appealing to a patriarchal structure.

AGENT OF SOCIAL CONTROL OR LIBERATOR For many Mexicans, today the appearance of the Virgen de Guadalupe to an indigenous person is proof of the Church's benevolence. For others Guadalupe is the symbol of Spanish social control, representing a passive female role model, subservient to male authority. According to critics, the supposed appearance of the Virgin Mother to Juan Diego35 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. Like many narratives, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe may be the product of "the invention of tradition" rather than historical fact Today, however, the Virgen de Guadalupe has become a Chicana cultural expression that gives strength to women and unifies and defines Mexican culture. For many, she has become a liberator, a symbol of hope, and liberation for her community. Sandra Cisneros and Gloria have unc "rscored the indigenous roots of the Virgin and her symbol as a source of inspiration.36 ._,

Vincential Father Stafford Poole, C.M., in his book, Our Lady of Guadalupe, traces the making of the Mexican tradition of Guadalupe based on dqcuments produced in the colonial period. According to Poole's evidence, most authorities and priests did not know about the Tepeyac shrine representing the Virgin's appearance for some 20 years after the Virgin supposedly appeared to Juan Diego. Spaniards confused her

26 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

with the medieval Spanish Lady of Guadalupe shrine (in Extremadura, Spain), and venerated the Virgin. Not until the seventeenth century, when the criollo population begins to celebrate her, did she become more popular among native populations. Indigenous peoples during this time greatly identified with local religious symbols, which had played a central role in the development of their own religious practices. Consequently, by the mid-1600s, the Church had already been able to baptize most natives in Central Mexico.37 Far from bringing about a native spontaneous upsurge, however, during the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, Guadalupe was more a symbol of criollo nationalism, according to Poole. He argues that even the story of the apparition appears to have changed during t'fie 1".ilonial era as did the tradition itself, until Father Miguel Hidalgo used her as a symbol of Mexican independence in 1810. Notwithstanding, today the Virgen de Guadalupe has taken on different dimensions, symbolizing for many Mexicans and Latin Americans a "renewal and rebirth as a people. Guadalupe stands for both transformation and continuity in Mexican religious and national life:'38

AL NORTE: GOD, GOLD, GLORY, SILVER, AND SLAVES The Spaniards sent expeditions from Colonial Mexico in every direction searching for riches. A Cuban-based expedition in 1565 planted one of the oldest European colonies in the United States near present- day St. Augustine, Florida. Meanwhile, the viceroy had sent scouting expeditions from Central Mexico to investigate rumors of another Tenochitilan to the north. In 1533 Diego de Guzman, a slave trader, penetrated as far as Yaqui Valley, in what today is Sonora, Mexico. In 1540 Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, in search of Cibola, the legendary city of gold, led an army of mostly Native Americans and five Franciscan friars who traveled as far as the Grand Canyon and across the central plains to Kansas before retreating to Mexico without finding a trace of gold.39

Unlike the Azteca and the natives of central New Spain, many natives of the north did not live in concentrated areas. Some lacked the complex social and political organization of the towns of south- central New Spain. Because they resisted the Spanish encroachments, the Spaniards called them indios barbaros, or barbaric Indians.

Meanwhile, the Spanish named the colonial administrative region in western Colonial Mexico "Nueva Galicia;' comprised roughly of the present states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and south Sinaloa. Guadalajara became its administrative capital and base of operations for expeditions into the northwestern frontier. An expedition led by Governor Nufio de Guzman left a trail of depredations, enslavement, and mistreatment of natives as the Spaniards explored and secured the area. The most notable of the native rebellions were those of the Tepeque and Zacatecas Indians at Tepechitlan.

Clearly, bonanzas, or large mining strikes, energized the pull north.40 They made possible the exploitation of river valleys and the establishment of haciendas, missions, and settlements. The move to the north did not come easily, as the northern tribes resisted the encroachment. It was not until after the 1541 Mixt6n Rebellion that the Spanish were able to open the mines of Zacatecas, which, at their height, produced one-third of Mexico's silver and employed 5,000 workers. The bonanza drew prospec- tors and Christian natives to the mines. It generated institutions such as the hacienda and the mission. Bonanzas in Guanajuato (1548) and Real del Monte (1552) followed Zacatecas. The Chichimeca, sometimes called Otomi 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 Queretero.

The Decline of the Indigenous Population The Spaniards' arrival on the northern frontier, with natives from the interior 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, which became an integral part of the invasion after the Chichimeca war of the 1560s. As with the Mesoamerican civili7ations. the nnmhers of n:ltives fell rlr,..otir,.JJv rlnrinu thP Sn,.nish occnoation. Th,.

.._.. .......... r ......... - ..... _ ........ -- -·------- --- Greater Southwest, according to Thomas Sheridan, encompassed "that vast arid convulsion of deserts and mountains north of Mesoarnerica;' with an estimated population of around 1,700,000 in 1519, plummeting to 165,000 by 1800.41

THE LIVING PATTERNS OF THE NORTHERN CORN PEOPLE Most natives lived in rancherias, semi-fixed farming settlements. Three-quarters of all indigenous rancheria 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 rancheria was smaller than a traditional native village, numbering between 30 and 50.

The Tarahumara people of modern Chihuahua/Durango lived over a great area; they would come together at tesgi.iinadas, festivals during which the Tarahumara practiced rituals that included imbibing corn beer. 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 Pueblo people, found mostly in what is today New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas, also lived in villages. In comparison, the nomadic people were still in the process of migration when the Spanish arrived.

THE CHANGING ORDER The mining city of Zacatecas was a melting pot of varied races and people. Near the mines, haciendas for cattle raising sprang up, which caused tensions with the native populations in these valleys as the newcomers usurped the best land and believed themselves entitled to native labor. As in the south, the Spanish elites considered themselves conquistadors entitled to encomiendas of natives.

Slowly, the Spanish imperial system moved up the Pacific coast to Culiacan, and, simultaneously, up the Zacatecas trail to Durango and Chihuahua. The Spaniards established presidios, missions, haciendas, and pueblos (Indian villages or towns). Because of the lack of population and capital, Catholic missions played an essential role in extending the empire's borders and congregating, forging a native workforce and religious presence on the frontier. The demands on native labor occurred both inside and outside the mission orbit: 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 settlers, increasingly dependent on the presidios to maintain order by force.42

Meanwhile, the missions profoundly changed the lives of indigenous people. For example, while life had always been harsh for women, often subjected to the raiding and enslavement of intertribal warfare, they had always held strong roles in their communities. Females and males seem to have inherited wealth equally, and women were involved in the trade of weaving and pottery. Both men and women could marry multiple times before they found the ideal mate.43 A native woman had the choice of abortion, and women participated in ceremonies, although their religious roles were subordinate to those of males. Pre-conquest women shared these C'tltural memories and religious values; however, the missions ended these choices, as they imposed the attitudes

1 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 to women work that men had previously done.

The Bonanzas The mining bonanzas forged the Camino Real (Royal Road) from Mexico City to Zacatecas, then through today's Durango to Chihuahua, and then to New Mexico. Natives from central Mexico as well as Africans, Spaniards, mestizos, and the castas were drawn over this road to the mines. The conquerors uprooted Native

28 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

Americans from their villages and destroyed their institutions. Consequently, caught in a work-or-starve situation formed a large sector of the wage earners. Dozens of small and large ore strikes brought these workers through Durango to Santa Barbara and then to Parrafin 1631.44

By the tum of the sixteenth century, Spain attempted to expand its dominion into present-day New Mexico, where it expected to find another bonanza. In 1598 Don Juan de Ofiate, whom the viceroy had appointed governor of the territory of New Mexico, set ou! with a party of some 500 colonists, including 10 Franciscans and hispanicized Tlazcala and Tarasco natives, many of whom were from Central Mexico to establish a colony. Juan de Ofiate's father had been a prominent mine owner, one of the founders of Zacatecas. The younger Ofiate, married to a granddaughter of Cortes and a great granddaughter of Mocteczuma, financed the operation. When Ofiate and his party failed to find gold or silver, he returned to Mexico City in disgrace.45

However, Ofiate did manage to plant a small agricultural and trading colony along the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

For most of the seventeenth century, New Mexico was an outpost. The land between Santa Barbara/Parral and New Mexico had few villages. Continuous small mining strikes filled this space during the century. However, the northern expansion did not come without cost as the Indians resisted the encroachment as well as enslavement and other forms of forced labor. Due to war and epidemics, the indigenous populations of Chihuahua and New Mexico dwindled radically. For example, the native population in New Mexico numbered more than 60,000 at the time of the Spanish arrival. By 1800 it had fallen to 9,000. Throughout the frontier, from 1560 to 1650 the population declined by 50 percent. The population fell 90-95 percent by 1678. Frequent smallpox epidemics brought heightened competition for farm labor in the north; those in 1639-1640, the 1640s, and 1650s were especially severe. In the 1690s, yet another epidemic of measles broke out.46 Droughts and labor shortages affected the supply of food. Due to these tensions, frequent revolts spread throughout northwestern New Spain during the 1600s.

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. 47 Landowners and miners could avoid restrictions on forced labor due to their distance froin central government. They sought arrangements that bound natives without being required to pay wages or credit advances. The repartimiento was the optimal form of labor· because it improved reliability. The types oflabor varied in the mines, and haciendas used mixed crews of wage laborers of all races who worked alongside African and indigenous slaves.

Periodic bonanzas increased demand for labor. Mine owners and hacendados pressured the missions for' workers. The mission congregation almost invariably followed the establishment of Spanish mining camps and estates. The earliest encomiendas drew workers from the native rancherias, competing with the missions and Indian villages for workers. The encomenderos were in full control of the native population under their charge, often abusing their so-called "trust" by renting "their" natives to mine owners and other hacendados. Colonial elites also used native caciques to furnish workers, further stressing the native population.

The repartimiento, although primarily used for agricultural labor, was sometimes used for the mines.48 The repartimiento as an institution continued long after "free" wage labor was employed in mines and hacienda. The forced labor draft was crucial to agriculture. In addition, repartimientos were also used for maintaining public works. An overlapping progression from slavery to encomienda, to repartamiento, to free labor operated often simultaneously. In this scheme, the missions were training schools, often supplying · the haciendas and mines with skilled workers.

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 modem Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango, and, at different times, parts of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Coahuila. The capital of the province was Durango. Exploratory and missionary expeditions launched from Nueva Vizcaya resulted in the settlement of New Mexico, Parras and Saltillo, and

The first colony to be settled north of Nueva Vizcaya in what is today the United States was Nuevo Mexico where, as mentioned, the Spaniards hoped to find gold or silver. However, its existence and prosperity rested on the waters of the Rio Grande that ran from the Rocky Mountains down the center of the province. Because of large numbers of sedentary natives, there was also a ready supply of labor that made possible the development of large haciendas and trade with various other indigenous people.

In New Mexico, the Spanish settlers repeated the patterns of exploitation described in Nueva Vizcaya and Sonora. The use of bonded servants was widespread. New Mexican colonists used fictions such as indios de dep6sito to forcibly place natives in Christian households under the pretense that they would receive a Christian education. Forced indigenous labor was so widespread in New Mexico that the colonists had no need to import expensive black slaves. Indeed, New Mexico was a net exporter of slaves to the mines of Parral and elsewhere. 49

The Pueblo people had lived in this region since at least AD 1 and shared the traditional indigenous perceptions of the world of nature, only differing in language. The Pueblos also shared a theocratic lifestyle that interrelated their kinships and religious groups with the world of nature. The members of each village organized themselves to cope with their particular environment. Survival conditioned them to note even the minutest variations in climate and topography-the amount and seasonal rhythm of precipitation, the form of flood plain, the erosion of a temporary stream.

The Pueblo's social grouping was matrilineal, i.e., they grouped kinship around the core of blood-related 'women. The Pueblo people conceived kinship as timeless, extending back into the remote past, and extending forward through generations of unborn. Thus, they related the kinship system symbolically beyond the human community into the world of nature, using animals and plants as symbols for different clans.

The colonists established Santa Fe as the capital of the province in 1610. During these early years, the hispanicized population of the province increased from a few hundred to a few thousand, dispersed in isolated farms, ranches, and harnlets.50 Spanish settlers and their livestock encroached on native fields. Although tensions existed, there is evidence that the newcomers commingled with the natives and, often, intermarried

However, tensions mounted as encroachment on native lands, forced labor, a prolonged drought in the region, and Apache raids contributed to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Pope of the San Juan pueblo led the rebellion, joined by some mestizos and mulatos. The natives drove the colonists from New Mexico, the bulk of whom did not to return until the 1690s.51

The 1680 Revolt spread and affected the whole ofNueva Vizcaya and Sonora; it became known as the "Great Northern Revolt." In New Mexico, the revolt had millenarian trappings. The natives washed off the stains of baptism, annulled Catholic marriages, and destroyed churches. The New Mexicans wanted the Spaniards and their God out of their space and wanted to return to the old ways. 52

Slavery as well as other abuses must have taken their toll. According to Ram6n Gutierrez, "Within New Mexican households slave treatment ran the gamut from the kind neglect of some to the utter sadism of others."53 At the time of the revolt, 426 slaves were dispersed among the Hispanic households. Some 56 percent of the households had one or more slaves. In this system, female slaves were worth more than males and were sold openly at fairs, as females were valued as household servants and for bearing children, who would also be born into this class. The Spanish merchants also marched New Mexican slaves to Parral to work in the silver mines. Some ended up in the plantations of Veracruz and, after 1800, in Havana, Cuba, and Yucatan. 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.

The Decline of the Native Population Constant warfare reduced the Pueblo population from 17 ,000 in 1680 to 14,000 in 1700. Many Pueblos went into exile with the Apache, Navajo, and Hopi. After the colonists returned to New Mexico, the encomienda system was replaced by the repartimiento. The excessive use of the repartimiento system had a devastating impact on the indigenous people, depriving the native communities of labor for their own crops, which caused a shortage of food, and ultimately malnutrition. 54

30 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

By the end of the eighteenth century, New Mexico society was entrenched: only 68 of some 16,000 persons had been born outside New Mexico, with two born in Spain. The landed peasants, mostly mestizos, lived above Santa Fe in areas they called Rio Arriba and Rio Abaja. Until the mid-eighteenth century, land grants were largely private grants. After this point, colonial authorities parceled out community grants-that is, community land grants that included common pasture lands and common rights for using land-to buttress the haciendas of the elite in the south of Rio Abajo from native attacks. Most of the mestizo colonists were of humble birth, although they fashioned themselves Spaniards to distance themselves from the indios and other lower castas.

The Rio Arriba and Abajo villages were self-sufficient. As a group, the villagers were distinct from the hacendados. Both the Pueblo Indians and the villagers were at a disadvantage compared with the hacendados. However, according to Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, "Though Pueblos and Hispano villages had no political or economic power during the eighteenth century, the elite, on the other hand, never gained the necessary economic prosperity to affect the predominant village life of the province not to change land tenure patterns radically during the colonial period." Still considerable tension existed between the Pueblo population and the colonial administration; as late as 1793, the governor jailed the caciques of various Tewa pueblos for holding "seditious" meetings.ss

THE COLONIZATION OF TEXAS The forerunners of the Texas natives lived in camps perhaps as early as 37,000 years ago and subsisted primarily on wild game. In fertile East Texas the tribes built permanent villages and had well-developed farms and political and religious systems. These tribes formed a loose federation, known as the Caddo confederacies, to preserve the peace and provide mutual protection. This ancient culture originally occupied ' the Red River area in what is now Louisiana and Arkansas. As semi-sedentary agricultural people, they grouped around ceremonial mounds that resembled temples. Some scholars speculate that as skillful potters and basketmakers, they were probably related to the Mesoamerican cultures of the south. 56

Because of the vastness and remote location of what eventually became Texas, it took the Viceroyalty of New Spain hundreds of years to occupy it. While on the periphery of the Viceroyalty, it had been fully explored. But unlike other parts of the Viceroyalty, there was no evidence of mineral wealth to attract expeditions and adventurers from the south. Its occupation came from three directions: El Paso del Norte belonged to New Mexico and was a corridor to Chihuahua and Sonora. East of El Paso, where the Rio Grande joined the Conchos River at La Junta de los Rios, the Spanish founded missions in Nueva Vizcaya. The Conchos River was a corridor into West Texas and the area along the Rio Grande. The coastal region from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande and upstream to Laredo was settled from the province ofNuevo Santandar after 1749. The movement into Texas came from these areas.

By the eighteenth century, Spain entered a period of declining revenues and deferlse of its territories. Spain was a declining power and the expenses of the missions and presidios drained the royal treasury. Hence, the crown encouraged the establishment of self-sufficient pueblos, consisting of castas and a sprin- kling of Spanish peasants. Unlike Nueva Vizcaya and Sonora, where mining drew settlers, the occupation of Texas was more a matter of holding on to frontier territory.

The Rio Grande played a key role, seen by many as the answer to the development of New Mexico and much of northern Mexico. The river had the potential of an all-water route to the Gulf of Mexico. Plans to exploit the river and navigate it never fully developed-Spain just did not have the resources. But, the importance of the Rio Bravo did not escape the early colonists, who recognized the interdependence of the frontier colonies in what today is called the American Southwest and northern Mexico.57

El Paso de/ Norte The oldest Spanish settlements in Texas were in the El Paso area. The first Spanish entry into the El Paso area took place in 1581 with the Rodriguez-Sanchez expedition, consisting primarily of natives f\Om Mexico. They passed through two mountain ranges rising out of the desert with a deep gap between them at the

Chapter 2 • The Occupation ot Middle Amenca .:n

crossing of the Rio Bravo (Grande), which they named El Paso del Norte. (El Paso refers not to a passage through the mountains but rather to the crossing of the river.) Ofiate's expedition also passed through there near today's San Elizario in 1598, when Oft.ate claimed the entire territory drained by the Rio Bravo. It was not until 1659 that Fray Garcia de San Francisco founded Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Mission. The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680 drove Spanish colonists, Franciscan missionaries, and Pueblo and Tigua natives from northern New Mexico (who sided with the Spaniards) to the Paso del Norte. South of the river, some 12 miles from today's downtown El Paso, the refugees settled Santisimo Sacramento, later known as Ysleta del Sur. Two years later, construction of a mission began there and was completed in 1692.

By 1682, the Spanish crown had founded the missions and settlement of El Paso del Norte, San Lorenzo, Senecu, Y sleta, and Socorro, all south of the river. This cluster of settlements became a trade and farm center on the Camino Real. Throughout the colonial period, this area was more properly part of New Mexico, Chihuahua, and the northwest Mexican territory than of Texas, with some elite families from other

. . th 58 provmces movmg ere.

The Tlaxcalan and the Castas As with New Mexico, natives from central Mexico played an important role in the colonizing of Texas proper. According to Carlos Velez-Ibanez, the Tlaxcalan initially served as scouts and auxiliary soldiers on various expeditions. In 1688, the Tlaxcalan participated in the building of the presidio of San Juan Bautista near today's Eagle Pass. In response to French exploration along the Mississippi River Valley, Spanish friars established six missions along New Spain's eastern frontier in 1690. The missions' isolation-a three-month journey away from the capital in Mexico City-left the missions vulnerable.

Spanish friars planted Mission San Antonio de Valero, now known as the Alamo, as a way station on the San Antonio River in 1718. The following year the French that were active in present-day northwest Louisiana forced the Spaniards to abandon the east Texas missions, and the missionaries took refuge at Mission San Antonio. By 1731, a chain of five missions (three of which had moved from east Texas), popu- lated by indigenous recruits from Texas, operated along the San Antonio River. Mission San Jose, founded in i 720, quickly grew prosperous and became the largest of the Texas missions. An acequia, an irrigation ditch, boosted agricultural production, and the mission sold the surplus to the growing settlements around the military presidio and the villa of San Antonio. The mission's holdings included El Rancho Atascoso, about 30 miles to the south, where native vaqueros, or cowboys, tended 1,500 cattle, 5,000 sheep and goats, and herds of mules and horses. 59

The Importance of San Antonio and Links to the Rio Bravo The area that is present-day San Antonio was vital to the future of this frontier. In the early 1730s, a contingent of 55 peasants arrived from the Canary Islands. The colonists revived the villa of San Antonio. The Canarians joined the descendants of the first colonists and friars to form a community, depending on the local garrison for trade and outside merchandise. The population increased slowly but began to prosper somewhat by the 1770s when the community developed new markets in Louisiana and in the El Paso area. 60

Spain chose to colonize the rich valleys of the upper Rio Grande and the mining districts of Nuevo Le6n and Coahuila to prevent French encroachment into this area. The incentive for this expansion was the need for more pasturage for their herds and the growing demand for cattle and their byproducts by the mines. The colony of Nuevo Santander included the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and south Texas. Tomas Sanchez and other hacendados established the colony of Laredo in 1755, downstream from Sanchez's Hacienda de Dolores, where some 30 families lived.61 As in other areas, the natives resisted Spanish encroachments.

By 1 ?67, Laredo had a population of 186 persons. The 1789 census listed 45.3 percent of Laredo's residents as espafioles, 17.2 percent as mestizos, 17.2 percent as mulatos, and 15.6 percent as indios. However, only 6. 7 percent of the married persons said they were intermarried. illegitimacy was the highest between the mulatos and the indios. Tejano historian Gilberto Hinojosa writes that the Spanish population increased to 57.2 percent of the population by 1820 and that the non-Spanish population seemed to have

32 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

fallen by 23.9 percent. He speculates that the indios may have moved back to their rancheria settlements. A more plausible explanation is that colonists self-identified themselves as Spanish.62,The population grew to 2,052 in 1828. In 1824, Laredo had 700 sheep; four years later, it had 3,223. Wool became Laredo's chief export, traded with Mexican merchants from the interior. Racial divisions that existed in 1789 persisted in the 1835 census.

Meanwhile, the population ofNuevo Santander grew from 31,000 in 1794 to 56,937 in 1810. (The Native American population of Nuevo Santander was estimated to be 190,000 in 1519; in 1800 only 3,000 natives remained.) By 1820, despite the turmoil of the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, the colony had grown to 67,434. The combined population of Reynosa, Camargo, Mier, Revilla, Laredo, and Matamoros, on both sides of the Rio Bravo, numbered 1,479 in 1749; by 1829, it had increased to 24,686. 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. Seventeen haciendas and 43 7 ranchos dotted Nuevo Santander by 1794. As ih other provinces, the presidio played an important role in the order and brought in government revenue. Ranching and commerce became the main economic pursuits in the Lower Rio Grande.63

THE OCCUPATION OF ALTA CALIFORNIA: PARADISE LOST 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.

Los Indios From south to north the missions housed the Dieguefio, Juanefio, Gabrielifio, Chumash, and Costanoan peoples. Inhabiting the coastland, they were skilled artisans who fashioned sea vessels out of soapstone, using clamshell-bead currency. These tribes bore the brunt of missionary activity.

The Spaniards never missionized the Yokut, who lived in settlements that ran the length of the San Joaquin Valley and the western foothills of the Sierra Madre just south of present-day Fresno. They were divided into as many as 50 tribelets, each with their own dialect. The Yokut, also known as Mariposan, spoke a Penitian language. Master hunters and food gatherers, the Yokut lived in communal houses, inhabited by as many as 10 persons. Chiefs or co-chiefs headed the tribes, hereditary positions that women could inherit. The women also had a wealth of knowledge about religious questions.

The Yokut carried on extensive trade with other California natives. They harbored runaway mission natives, and thus tension existed between them and Spanish authorities. Like native peoples elsewhere, a large number (75 percent) of the Yokut died because of epidemics, the most devastating event occurring in 1833.64

The Missions: Myth and Reality In principle, the missions were supposed to prepare the natives for a self-rule. This did not happen in the Spanish or Mexican periods. Because of the friars' puritanism and harsh treatment, they drove the indigenous populations to rebellion.65 Critics point to the falling birthrate among the indigenous people during the mission period. Furthermore, work was associated with a complex system of punishments and rewards. 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. Mostly mixed- blood colonists from Sonora and Sinaloa settled the pueblos. Spanish officials granted many former presidio soldiers land, known as ranchos, where they raised cattle and sheep. Some received larger grants for haciendas. The California natives did most of the labor, usually trained by the missions to be vaqueros, soap makers,

tanners, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, bakers, cooks, servants, pages, fishermen, farmers, and carpenters, as well as a host of other occupations.

Ample evidence exists as to tension between military and ecclesiastical authorities over the soldiers' mistreatment of the indigenous women; historian Antonia I. Castaneda says that we can assume that this was the case in other provinces of New Spain as well. Father Junipero Serra, himself a severe taskmaster, often complained about soldier misconduct, saying that the indigenous people resisted missionization, and some- times became warlike and hostile "because of the soldiers' repeated outrages against the women." Serra lamented, "even the children who came to the mission were not safe from their baseness."66 Evidence suggests that offenses against women were not remedied; rape and even murder went unpunished. Military officials assumed a "boys-will-be-boys" attitude, although the official policy prohibited such abuses.

In 1785 natives from eight rancherias united and attacked Mission San Gabriel, killing all the Spanish settlers. Toypurina, a 24-year-old medicine woman, persuaded six of the eight villages to join the rebellion. The soldiers captured and punished her along with three other leaders.

Conclusion: On the Eve of the Mexican War of Independence By the eve of the Mexican War of Independence, a complex society had evolved on the northern frontier of New Spain. Although they were isolated, there was considerable inter- action between the different regions in northern New Spain. The nonindigenous settlers tapped into a network of routes used before their arrival by the natives. The Chihuahua Trail, part of the Camino Real, was the trade route linking Santa Fe to Chihuahua and Mexico City. After Taos, New Mexico, was founded in the 1790s, they extended , this trail to its plaza. A major part of the trail within New Mexico was a river road, following the Rio Grande. Caravans traveled this road and brought imported goods and luxuries to the settlements of the Rio Grande as they had to the mining camps of Nueva Vizcaya. Exchanges would include ore, slaves, and other goods. There were also well-established routes connecting Alta California, Sonora, New Mexico, and Texas.67

We should not romanticize this society as egalitarian. Though most of the inhabitants were non-European, the elites in these societies were recently immigrated Spaniards and/or their criollo children. The vast numbers of subjects were castas, mixed bloods, which had limited access to land. Indeed, the 1793 census shows the dynamic race mixture that was taking place in New Spain. A word of caution would be that although there was diversity, race established privilege, and the more Spanish the subject appeared, the more privileges.

Race by the nineteenth century was based more on sight than on the rigid categories of the sixteenth century. 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.68 Over genera- tions, those who were originally African or native looked or wanted to look more like Spaniards.

As has been mentioned throughout the chapter, 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 soine cases, like that of the Tarahumara, a large portion of them retreated further into the Sierra Madres. The Yaqui, who had warred with the Spaniards, were later drawn into battle with the Mexicans in the 1920s in defense of their homeland. The Mexicans' justification was that they were gente de raz6n (people of reason), or better still, Christians, and those who opposed them were indios barbaros.

On the eve of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico did not yet have a set national identity. As the reader can deduce from the below chart the new nation was racially diverse. The new nation was predominately Indian, and Africans were at least 10 percent of the population. Given the 300-year tradition 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.69 The colonial mentality and racial ambivalence are even today a factor among the Mexican people. Yet, it is clear from current population data that most miscegenation took place after Independence with the mestizo population going from 10 percent in 1810 to about 60 percent today; on the downside the indigenous population fell from 60 percent to 30 percent.

34 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

Population of Mexico in 1810

Racial Category Number Percentage

Indians 3,676,281 60 Europeans (peninsulares) 15,000 0.3 Criollos (Euromestizos) 1,092,397 18 Mestizos (lndiomestizos) 704,245 11 Mulatoes and zambos (Afromestizos) 624.461 10 Blacks 10,000 0.2

Sources: Austin Cue Canovas, Historia social y econ6mica de Mexico {1521-1854) (Mexico, 1972), p.134, adapted in Meyer and Sherman, p. 218.

Three hundred years of mercantilism had left it with- out its own commercial or manufacturing infrastructure. Spanish capital fled the country and the mainstays of its economy-agriculture, ranching, and mining-went bank- rupt. The Spanish tightly ruled New Spain, because it was Spain's most valuable commodity, giving the castas tittle experience in self-rule. Indeed, the castas as a group would continue to be excluded from the governance of the republic after independence. For example, Mexico did not have a professional civil service bureaucracy . .In addition, Mexico experienced a long war of independence (1810-1821), losing an estimated 10 percent of its population, and worsening Mexico's serious under-population that resulted from the mass migrations to the northern frontier.70

On the positive side, influenced by Enlightenment thinking and representative constitutionalism, many of

Notes I. Dennis 0. Flynn and Arturo Gira!dez, "Cycles of Silver: Global

Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century," Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (2002}: 391-427. This chapter is dis- cussed in the first chapter of Rodolfo F. Acufia, Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933 (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2007} and more intensely documented.

2. Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (New York: Free Press, 1992 ), 3. The Jews lived not as isolated individuals but as organized communities in Spain.

3. Punic Wars, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARF2r30 l80Y&feature=related (accessed April 8, 2009).

4. Gerber, The Jews of Spain, 18-19. 5. W. Montgomery Watt and Pierre Cachia, A History of Islamic

Spain (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967), 40. 6. Ibid. See Robert A. Williams, Jr., "Columbus's Legacy: Law as

an Instrument of Racial Discrimination Against Indigenous » A . - - .. - y _ . ---- - 1 _f

Mexico's new leaders wanted a modern society based on reason rather than theology. However, Mexicans had to overcome 30.0 years of Spanish colonialism, which was no small order. On the negative side, the secularization and modernization meant not only the privatization of property belonging to the Catholic Church but elimina- tion of feudalism that meant the privatization of Indian land. To build their own nation, they had to create a new identity for themselves. A crucial part of creating a new identity and nation building was replacing the old saints with new, secular heroes-heroes who would call on the people to celebrate Mexico and everything it meant to be Mexican.71 Within this was interwoven the acceptance of the Indian heritage, a process that really did not begin until a hundred years later with the Second Mexican Revolution.72

7. Many-not all-of the YouTube clips are in Spanish; in most cases a translation to English can be obtained. from the YouTube site. Reconquista Espanola, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=ci2jTnI2qqk&feature=channel (accessed April 7, 2009). When the Moors Ruled in Spain (I of 11), http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBsDDGClFLQ&feature=related (accessed April 8, 2009). S. Alfassa Marks, "The Jews in Islamic Spain: Al Andalus," Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, http://www.sephardicstudies. org/islam.html (accessed April 8, 2009).

8. Christopher Columbus, http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=OYjngFYwXls (accessed April 7, 2009).

9. Columbus was a terrorist, http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=eesscwqn008 (accessed April 7, 2009). Christopher Columbus 1493, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBiQ bmORLfA (accessed April 7, 2009).

IO. Jalil Sued-Badillo, "Christopher Columbus and the Enslavement _c .. 1t._..__.; ... ..-1..: ........... !- +1-.4 r ..... a .. J.._...,,. rnl11mhnc: thP NPUT

7lff. This article shows the involvement of the Genoese in the spread of sugar production and slavery and their involvement in the Azores and other islands of the Atlantic coast including the Canary Islands, where they experimented with mercantile capi- talism. John H. Elliot, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (New York: A Mentor Book, 1966), 56-57. In 1496; Columbus returned to Spain for the second time. In Guadalupe, he kidnapped two women, one the wife of a chief and the other her daughter. On the island of Santa Cruz, his sailors also kidnapped women. They justified the action by saying that the women were canni- bals. Robert M. Carmack, Janine Gasco, and Gary H. Gossen, The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 131. Peter Muilenburg, "The Savage Sea the Indians Who Gave Their Name to the Caribbean Stopped at Nothing to Satisfy Their Appetite for Adventure-and Human Flesh;' Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, April 25, 1993 ), an example of a popular article repeating myths about the Caribs.

11. Sued-Badillo, "Columbus and the enslavement;' 7 lff. It was alleged that the monarchs did not approve of the slave trade, yet from 1494 to the turn of the century about 2,000 slaves were taken to Castile. Kirkpatrick Sale, "What Columbus Discovered; The Nation 251, no. 13 (October 22, 1990): 444ff. Vincent Villanueva Mayer, Jr.,"The Black Slave On New Spain's Northern Frontier: San Jose De Parral 1632-76," (PhD disserta- tion, University of Utah, Utah, 1975). The Spaniards imported slaves from China, Cambodia, Java, Siam, Bengal, Persia, and the Philippines who entered through Acapulco on the yearly Manila galleon. These slaves were designated as chinos and esclavos de la India de Portugal.

12. Slave traders transported at least 10 million Africans to the Americas during the colonial period. They sold over 5 million to the Guianas and the Caribbean islands, almost 4 million to Brazil, some 600,000 to mainland Spanish hold- ings, and the remaining 900,000 to the British colonies in North America and to Europe in roughly equal shares. Sued- Badillo, "Christopher Columbus and the Enslavement of the Amerindians in the Caribbean; Columbus and the New World Order 1492-1992;' 71ff. The Spaniards also sold Indians in the slave markets of Havana, Mexico City, and even Manila.

13. John Sayles reads the words of missionary Bartolome de las Casas, check http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type= &search_query=de+las+casas&aq=f (accessed April 7, 2009). Fray Bartolome de las Casas 1/3, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ITN6qx3LrZU (accessed April 7, 2009). This is the first of three clips.

14. Carmack et al., The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 132-36. Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1959), 13, 33, 45.

15. Charles L. Mee, Jr., "That Fateful Moment When Two CiviHzations Came Face to Face; Spaniards and Aztecs," Smithsonian 23, no. 7 (October 1992): 56ff.

16. Tenochititlan, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3QA2J9 UxJE (accessed April 7, 2009). La Noche Triste, http://www.

youtube.com/watch?v=l)A_tYOIBaY&feature=related (accessed April 7, 2009).

17. Noble David Cook, Born To Die: Disease and New World Conquest (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 206. Francis J. Brooks, "Revising the Conquest of Mexico: Smallpox, Sources, and Populations;' Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 1-29. David Henige, Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population Debate (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). Henige is sarcastic and often puts forth a personal attack on the "high counters."

18. Susan Kellogg, "Hegemony Out of Conquest: The First Two Centuries of Spanish Rule in Central Mexico;' Radical History Review 53 (1991): 32. Gunter B. Risse, "What Columbus's Voyages Wrought; Editorial;' The Western Journal of Medicine 160, no. 6 (June 1994): 577ff.

19. Kellogg, "Hegemony Out of Conquest," 29. Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 48-58. See Cook, 132, 139, 140, 168, 170, 193, for table summaries of epidemics in Mexico and Guatemala.

20. Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The Course of Mexican History, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 130-2.

21. Hanns ). Prem, "Spanish Colonization and Indian Property in Central Mexico, 1521-1620." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (September 1992): 446. Spanish land policy was complex; it was constantly evolving. It was at first based on a tribute system. This gave way to farm land and cattle raising land awarded to Spanish settlers. By the end of the sixteenth century, these settlers came to regard Indian villages as a barrier to their expansion. The villages were most Indian and in the central and southern part of New Spain. The hacienda was a landholding device; it was not the same as the encomienda.

22. C. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963). Carmack et al., The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 166, quote "[N]ative people had no concept of a 'religion' or a 'faith' as such a clearly defined entity separable from the rest of culture, and they did not comprehend what it was they were supposed to be giving up and taking on:'

23. James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 14-58, 62, 428, argues that many aspects of the Azteca system remained intact, especially during the first 50 years after the invasion. His account, based on Nahuatl sources, is intriguing, if not always persuasive.

24. Catholic Inquisition and The Torture Tools, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx8PdvOELvY&frature=related (accessed April 7, 2009). Michael Ettinger, History, 235: The Church and the Jews. Limpieza de Sangre ("cleanliness of blood"), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpieza_ de_sangre (Accessed November 13, 2009).

25. Marcela Tostado Gutierrez, El album de la mujer de las mexicanas. Volumen IIl[[EACUTEJ]poca colonial (Mexico,

36 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1991 ), 109. Most racial designations were not used after the sixteenth century. The mixed races were referred to as castas. When ethnicity was cited, it was noted as mestizo and mulato. The darker skinned became Iobo and coyote. Diccionario Porrna: Historia, Biografta y Geografta De Mexico Quinta Edici6n (Mexico DF: Editorial Porrua, S. A., 1986), 535 lists the categories. Adrian Bustamante, "The Matter Was Never Resolved: The Casta System in Colonial New Mexico, 1693-1823," New Mex.ico Historical Review 66, no. 2 (April 1991): 143-63, on page 144 presents another variation. Castas, http://faculty.smu.edu/bakewell/BAKEWELL/ thinksheets/castas.html (accessed November 13, 2009).

26. Pinturas de Castas, Painting of Castes, http://wwW.youtube. com/watch?v=o3o-bR9gwmw (accessed April 11, 2009). D. A. Brading, "Source," The Hispanic American Historical Review 53, no. 3 (Augusr 1973), 389-414.

27. Strategically many of the conquistadores married the daugh- ters of the nobles and the caciques, who enjoyed the privileges of their class. Some inherited property and even went to Spain to live. There is a rich bibliography on Sor Juana. One of the best known is that by Octavio Paz, Sor Juana or, the Traps of Faith, trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tdNcjFWM9Q (accessed April 7, 2009). Shorter translated version, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=uzjpO 1ECRF4&translated= 1 (accessed April 7, 2009).

28. Silverblatt, "Lessons of Gender and Ethnohistory," 183-84. 29. Marie Elaine Danforth, Keith Jacobi, and Mark Nathan

Cohen, "Gender and Health Among the Colonial Mayan ofTipu, Belize;' Ancient Mesoamerica 8, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 1, 15.

30. Carmack et al., The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 181-83. Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Mayan (New York: Quill William Morrow, 1990), 40-41.

31. Louise Burkhart, "Mexica Women on the Home Front: Housework and Religion in Aztec Mexico;' in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 25-27. Susan Kellogg, "From Parallel and Equivalent to Separate but Unequal: Tenocha Mexica Women, 1500-1700;' in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 123-37. Pedro Carrasco, "Indian- Spanish Marriages in the First Century of the Colony;' in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 87-89, 93, 97.

32. Carmack et al., The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 330. 33. Robert Haskett, "Activist or Adulteress: The Life and Struggle

of Dofia Josefa Maria of Tepoztlan," in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 147-53.

34. Silverblatt, "Lessons of Gender and Ethnohistory,» 641, 645-46. Javier Perez Escohotado, Sexo e Inquisici6n en Espana (Madrid: Ediciones Termas Hoy, 1998), 173-90, deals with the Inquisition in Spain and homosexuality.

35. Juan Diego was canonized in 2002 and the pope recognizes the Guadalupe event. Thus, Pope John Paul If believes that Juan Diego was real.

36. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (London: Cambridge University Pn:ss, 1983). Rhonda L. Barnes, "Demanding Social Equality: A Feminist Re- interpretation of the Virgin of Guadalupe;' http://www.ic.ari- zona.edu/-wsSOO l/virgin.htrnl (accessed Nov 6, 2005). Sandra Cisneros, "Guadalupe as the Sex Goddess;' in Ana Castillo, ed., Goddess of the Americas: Writing on the Virgin of Guadalupe (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 49-50. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 27. The Mysteries of Guadalupe, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cha-cE8lBI&feature= related (accessed April 7, 2009). Stafford Poole, C. M., Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797 (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1995). Carmack et al., The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 191-92.

37. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Carmack et al., The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 191-92.

38. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, 5. 39. Map of Spanish Exploration and Early Colonization Activities

in North America, 1513-1607, http://www.artifacts.org/ conquest.htm (accessed September 7, 2009).

40. Gold and silver strikes were first magnets that attracted miners northward in hopes of hitting it rich. Towns were evacuated. The news of a strike would attract hundreds sometimes thou- sands of workers and investors.

41. Thomas E. Sheridan, "The limits of power: the political ecology of the Spanish Empire in the Greater southwest," Antiquity 66 (1992): 153, 164, 167. Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1962), the indigenous peoples north of what is today Central Mexico were divided into three general groups: pueblo, rancheria, and nomadic or band peoples.

42. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 94, 118. Kellogg, "Hegemony Out of Conquest;' 29. See Chapter I in Acuiia, Corridors of Migration, which discusses this material. Especially look at the footnotes and bibliography. Research material in Rodolfo F. Acuna Collection in the Urban Archives of California State University at Northridge.

43. Susan M. Deeds, "Double Jeopardy: Indian Women in Jesuit Missions of Nueva Vizcaya;' in Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 255-59, 263. Catholic divorce or annulment was practically unavailable to indigenous women.

44. Florence C. Lister and Robert H. Lister, Chihuahua: Storehouse of Storms (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1966), 15-20. Carmack et al., The

Legacy of Mesoamerica, 5. Acuna, Corridors of Migration, 12-14.

45. Tina Griego, "A Foot Note to History; Amputation of N.M. Statue Underlines 400-Year-Old Grudge," The Denver Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO, June 21, 1998). Just prior to the 400th anniversary, the Cuarto Centenario of Onate's conquest of New Mexico, someone expertly cut the right foot off a bronze statue of Onate. During Onate's conquest of New Mexico, the people of Acoma Pueble resisted the invasion and Onate punished the people by condemning 24 Acoma men to the amputation of a foot and banished their women and children into slavery.

46. See Susan M. Deeds, "Rural Work in Nueva Vizcaya: Forms of Labor Coercion on the Periphery," The Hispanic American Historical Review 69, no. 3 (August l, 1989): 425--49.

47. Deeds, "Rural Work;' 435. See Jim Boeck, La Historia del Rio Abaja, New Mexico Shares in Tragedy of Slavery with Rest of the Country (September 17, 2005), News-Bulletin.com, http://www. news-bulletin.com/lavida/54394-09-17-05.html (accessed April 8, 2009). Acuna, Corridors of Migration, B-14, 37, 71.

48. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, I. 49. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 128. 50. Angelina F. Veyna, "Women in Early New Mexico: A

Preliminary View;' in Teresa C6rova et al., eds., Chicana Voices: Intersections of Class, Race, and Gender (Austin, TX: Center for Mexican American Studies, 1986), 120--35.

5 l. "The Pueblo Revolt of 1680," Native Peoples Magazine, http:// www.nativepeoples.com/article/articles/121/l/The-Pueblo- Revolt-of-1680/Pagel.html (accessed April 8, 2009). Jack D. Forbes, Apache, Navaho and Spaniard (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960), 200--24. Luis Aboites Aguilar, Breve Historia de Chihuahua (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1994), 42--44; Susan M. Deeds, Defiance and Deference in Mexico's Colonia North: Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003), 87.

52. The 1680 Revolt inspired Indigenous Revolts throughout present-day Chihuahua, Durango, and Sonora. Acuna, Corridors of Migration, 4-17. Earlier drafts in Acuna Collection, CSUN, have more extensive treatments.

53. Ramon A. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 171. Roxanne Amanda Dunbar, "Land Tenure in Northern New Mexico: An Historical Perspective," (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1974), 6. Jonathan Hass, "Warfare among the Pueblos: Myth, History, . and Ethnography," Ethnohistory 44, no 2 (Spring 1997): 235-61. Also see Jonathan Haas, "Warfare and the Evolution of Tribal Politics in the Prehistoric Southwest," in Jonathan Haas, ed., Anthropology of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 171-89, quote 182. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 122.

54. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, 159, 174. Angelina F. Veyna "A Look at Colonial Nueva Mexicanas through Thdr Testaments," in Adela de la Torre

and Beatriz M. Pesquera, eds., Building with Our Hands New Directions in Chicana Studies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 91-108. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 125. Also see Bustamante, 1991, 145-47, which points out that many of the census and parish records were destroyed during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.

55. Dunbar, "Land Tenure in Northern New Mexico," 15-17, 97, 107, quote, 133. Guitierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, 150, 162.

56. Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519-1821 (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1992). Handbook of Texas Online, Spanish Texas, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ articles/SS/npsl.html (accessed April 8, 2009).

57. Jesus E. De La Teja, San Antonio De Bexar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 3-5.

58. For example, Francisco Elias Gonzalez de Zayas, who was the founder of the Elias family of Sonora, was a presidio captain, rancher, and miner; he had arrived at Alamos, Sonora, from La Rioja, Spain, in 1729. He was Captain of the Presidio of Terrenate in 1768, lived in Arizpe, founded by his family, and died in Paso del Norte, Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1790. Frank C. Brophy, "The Romantic Saga of Four:' Original text written in 1966 for Arizona Highways, http://www.babacomariranch. com/pages/history.html (accessed April 8, 2009).

59. Carlos Velez-Ibanez, Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of The Southwest United States (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 47-48. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 179.

60. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 193-95. 61. Gilberto Miguel Hinojosa, A Borderlands Town in

Transition: Laredo, 1755-1870 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1983), 3. Armando C. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy: Ranchers and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 31. An often overlooked book is Reymandlo Ayala Vallejo, Geografia Historica De Parras: El Hombre Cambia a la Tierra (Saltillo, Coahuila: Sandra de la Cruz Gonzalez, 1996), 52-55. Tlaxcalans were very important in the colonization of the area as were black slaves who were brought into the area by the hacendados, missionaries and mine owners. From 1 to 30 percent of the population was either black or mulato.

62. Hinojosa, A Borderlands Town in Transition, 18, 33. 63. Sheridan, "The Limits of Power;' 167. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy,

67, 160-61. 64. Brooke S. Arkush, "Yokuts Trade Networks and Native Culture

Change in Central and Eastern California;' Ethnohistory 40, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 619-40.

65. Sherburne F. Cook, The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, Vol. I (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1943), 11-157.

66. Antonia I. Castaneda, "Sexual Violence in the Politics and Policies of Conquest: Amerindian Women and the Spanish Conquest of Alta California," in Adela de la Torre and Beatriz M. Pesquera, eds., Building with Our Hands New Directions in

38 Chapter 2 • The Occupation of Middle America

Chicana Studies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 15-33.

67. David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), I.Armando Miguelez," La tremula luz de! relampago: Lenguaje metaf6rico en El Clamor Publico;' Trabajo presentado en la conferencia El damor Publico: 150 Years of Latino Newspapers in Southern California, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 28 de octubre de 2005. Rodolfo F. Acuna, "El Clamor Publico: The Sonora Connection (rough draft)," Paper presented at the conference El Clamor Publico: 150 Years of Latino Newspapers in Southern California, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, October 28, 2005.

68. Note that Chihuahuans, like New Mexicans, took great pride in so-called racial purity. See examination of censuses for Santa Barbara, Chihuahua, Padr6n de Santa Barbara, Chihuahua 1778 (AGI indiferente 102), Padrones de Cusiguriachic 1778 (Archivo General de Indias), and various others. All compiled by Sylvia Magdaleno of La Familia Ancestral Research Association. The compilation explodes the myth of racial purity. The various castas are represented in different censuses. "The El Paso Del Norte: Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Marriage and Death Records, 1728-1775."

Extracted by Aaron Magdaleno, of La Familia Ancestral Research Association, January 1998 also shows that although race is not designated in every case, there is subs'tantial mixing.

69. In 1560, blacks and mulattoes outnumbered Spaniards in Mexico City; Africans came to Mexico in greater numbers than whites until the 1700s.

70. Diccionario Porrua: De Historia, Biograjia y Geografta Quinta Edici6n, Vol. I (Mexico DF: Editorial Pomia 1986), 876-77, has an interesting summary of demographic patterns in Mexico.

71. The Mexican census of 1921 shines a bright light on the question of identity. See John P. Schmal, "Racial Makeup of Native-Born Mexicans (from the 1921 Census)," The Hispanic Experience, http://www.houstonculture.org/hispanic/ censustable.html (accessed April 11, 2009) and Schmal, "Indigenous Identity In The Mexican Census," The Hispanic Experience, http://www.houstonculture.org/hispanic/census. html (accessed April 11, 2009).

72. Readers are encouraged to explore the following archive. Wallace L McKeehan, "Mexican Independence," Sons of Dewitt Colony Texas http:/lwww.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/dewitt.htm (accessed April 11, 2009). See Pilar Gonzalbo. "La familia en Mexico colonial: Una historia de conflictos cotidianos;' Mexican Studies!Estudios Mexicanos 14, no. 2 (Summer 1998), 389-406.