The Colonial Period

Indo-Mexico on the eve of European contact consisted of complex societies, established territorial entities, and an empire. The intrusion of strangers upset the political balance established by the Mexica of the central valley: Foreign contact came at a critical moment, as the region grappled with evolutionary pressures. Expansion of trade created regional interdependence on resources, bringing merchants in contact with new ideas, different gods, and an array of chiefdoms. An expanding circle of cooperation made force less effective and encouraged consolidation, and an initial amalgamation in the valley of Mexico created the triple alliance of three cities in the valley of Mexico: Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and a weaker Tacuba. This alliance (c. 1430) created an imperial core of shared interests, and that made possible a bicoastal empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Deification of the paramount chief in order to provide political stability had not been solidified by 1519. A legal code developed by Nezahualcóyotl, the philosopher-chief of Texcoco, represented an emerging universal legal philosophy. Spain arrived in the hemisphere at a moment of transition in Indo-Mexico and openness to change.

The expedition of Hernán Cortés (1519) and the subsequent fall of Tenochtitlan (1521) marked the end of indigenous sovereignty. Castile's imperialism, following the Iberian experience, did not seek to extinguish the existing organization and laws of its Indian subjects. Spain recognized two republics (in the sense of distinctly organized peoples): the Republica de los Españoles, which governed Europeans in Mexico, and the Republica de los Indios, which applied to indigenous people. Theoretically, two parallel societies existed, joined in the person of the monarch; the difficulty lay in finding an acceptable way for the two to interact within an overarching sociopolitical structure. Conflict over booty threatened to fragment a weakly consolidated indigenous empire and dash the Crown's plan to modify without destroying. The struggle to reach an acceptable balance among the interests of the indigenous population, the Spanish settlers, and the monarchy lasted for decades. The fight began almost immediately over the issue of slavery.

Slavery was the first major issue that divided the monarchy and those that toppled the Mexica. Thousands of men, women, and children became slaves as a consequence of war, presenting a moral issue for the Crown. Slavery conflicted with the papal trusteeship of the New World to introduce Christianity. The Spanish Crown considered itself to be a benevolent power introducing a unifying social template across the region, and indigenous slavery complicated that process. Nevertheless, it could be eliminated only as the monarchy established its directive authority.

The initial organization of New Spain relied upon the municipality as the basic foundation. A hierarchy of urban settlements in a descending chain placed cities at the apex with authority over towns that in turn directed villas that controlled subordinate pueblos (villages) and so on down to lugares ("small places"). Theoretically, instructions could be filtered down to the lowest levels, and responsibility for enforcement was shared. Cities, which functioned as the overarching territorial units, had recognized municipal councils, and their authority applied until the border of one municipality touched another.

A parallel indigenous structure involved a modification of the Indian political traditions rather than its replacement. It reassured indigenous leaders that they had a place and a political role in New Spain. Subdivision of regions into cabeceras under an elected Indian official, the juez-gobernador, mirrored the role of the preconquest hereditary tlatoani. Consequently, theoretically, elected officials tended to stay in office, or circulated from one position to another over a lifetime. Indians modified the structure even further, referring to their governor as the gobernadoryotl. Each cabecera had a municipal council drawn from the ranks of recognized leaders, prinicipales, and caciques. Indian officials interacted with the viceroy, audiencia (high court), and lower levels of the Spanish system. In Mexico City two indigenous municipal council governed the two former Indian cities of the vice regal capital.

Cortés assumed the initial governorship of New Spain, employing his prestige as the conqueror to influence both Indians and the Europeans. Cortés's diplomatic skills and reassurance of the indigenous population played a large part in the transition from one empire to another and accounted for his popularity among the Indians. A suspicious Crown worried that he might declare himself a New World monarch. Consequently, Madrid appointed an audiencia to curb Cortés under the ruthless Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán.

Conflict among the Spaniards over Cortés's awarding of land, encomiendas, and other favors to his supporters threatened stability. Encomiendas assigned tribute-paying Indians to a Spaniard who had the theoretical obligation to maintain armed men to be mobilized in case of an Indian rebellion. Tribute could be paid in labor, making it possible for those who acquired land to bring it to cultivation. (Land had no direct connection with the grant of an encomienda.) Cortés reserved an encomienda of 21,000 for himself, but most had only a few thousand. Cortés became a sugar planter and miner—he realized that land and labor, not booty, represented wealth. The Indians were familiar with the concept of tribute, and they adjusted to new demands, as well as to the notion that negotiated cooperation constituted the heart of the monarchy's ruling system.

The failure of the first audiencia led the Crown to dispatch professional lawyers in 1530 to establish a more respectable institution. The second audiencia proved to be a success. Cortés returned to Spain to defend himself before royal officials. A relieved monarch elevated him to the nobility as the Marques del Valle, and confirmed land grants and other actions of the conqueror. He was allowed to return to Mexico, but prohibited from entering Mexico City by a wary Crown still concerned about his ambitions. The Crown selected a high nobleman, Antonio de Mendoza, to be the first viceroy of the Kingdom of New Spain (1535), which was joined with the other kingdoms of Spain only through the monarch. Colonial Mexico became a political entity theoretically equal in status to all other kingdoms, not a colony in the modern sense. As a kingdom it could expect Emperor Carlos V (Carlos I of Spain) to pay attention to its well-being.

ROLE OF RELIGION

While security and organizational issues distracted Madrid, the religious struggle for the minds and souls of the king's new subjects proceeded with notable success. Religion set the parameters of acceptable behavior for both Europeans and the Indians. Cortés requested missionaries to begin the process of conversion to Christianity, and a small group of Franciscan friars arrived in 1524, followed by twelve Dominicans two years later. Mass conversions with almost nonexistent instruction in the faith constituted more a political act than a spiritual one. Spain could not tolerate non-Catholic subjects, and the Indians understood that they had to adopt the religion of the dominant power. Some immediate benefits accompanied conversion to Christianity: The new religion did not require human sacrifice, protected adherents from enslavement, acknowledged the humanity of the indigenous population, confirmed that they were entitled to be treated as members of the faith, and established their equality before God. Nevertheless, Spain understood that the abrupt acceptance of Catholicism required a spiritual apprenticeship, and so the Inquisition (introduced in 1571) excluded Indians, leaving guidance—and discipline—in the hands of bishops. The Indians' second-class religious status played a major role in creating social inferiority. Subsequently, in the next century, the cult of our Lady of Guadalupe (1648) provided an indigenous manifestation of an important Catholic figure.

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Catastrophe played a role in shaping society. Pandemics swept away an unknown number of Indians in populated regions, and penetrated into mountain ranges and dense jungles. Smallpox, measles, plague, yellow fever, and other diseases that arrived with the Europeans attacked the indigenous population, which had no immunity. In the last days of the besieged city of Tenochtitlan, smallpox thinned the ranks of its defenders. Indigenous leaders, who were more likely to have contact with Europeans, were particularly vulnerable. Disease spared those with immunity to European and African diseases: Spaniards and their mixed-parentage offspring, the mestizos, and blacks had a biological advantage. As the population declined, land was abandoned and the encomienda became less effective as a source of Indian workers. This accelerated the movement to various forms of wage-contract labor and distribution of workers through a repartimiento system to Spanish agriculturists. Lands abandoned and confiscated from the pre-European state increased settlers' holdings as haciendas emerged.

A series of epidemics in the 1540s again swept through the Indian population. The source of these diseases is not known, but may have been a result of drought that drove rodents into close contact with human beings in rural villages. Combined with cultural shocks, epidemics created psychological turmoil in indigenous societies, and this made them conducive to both reactionary retreats and abrupt abandonment of pre-European ties to groups, customs, and traditions. Indians who abandoned traditional dress, learned Spanish, changed their diet, and adopted an approved ceremonial life became cultural mestizos detached from Indian society.

The hierarchy of races was more a theoretical than an actual fixing of status. Spaniards born in the mother country were at the top of the racial hierarchy, followed by creoles (Europeans born in the New World), mestizos, mulattoes, Indians, and blacks. A small number of Spanish women went to Mexico. In the middle of the first century, women made up only 16.5 percent of immigrants; their numbers peaked in 1600 at 28 percent. A gender ratio of one female to four males meant that population replacement and growth depended on native-born Mexican women.

Consequently, racial factors were only one element fixing an individual's place in society. Attachment to European culture, religion, occupation, wealth, and marriage alliances combined to determine status. The New World constituted a biological and social frontier where one could invent a past, become a self-declared hidalgo (petty noble), or otherwise elevate one's social position, and all of these choices could be legitimized by success and wealth. The fact that most Spaniards arrived in Mexico as servants or were poor relatives of rich merchants could be forgotten. Cultural identification transformed Indians into mestizos, and later, in several generations, perhaps into Creoles. Racial fluidity created a distinct Mexican race in the cities and towns, whereas in the countryside the population remained largely indigenous.

THE CONQUEST OF PERMANENCE

In 1541 the Mixton War shook the foundations of New Spain. Up until then, the relatively smooth acceptance of Spanish authority in central Mexico indicated a pragmatic adaptation to a political and religious system able to maintain peace, encourage trade, negotiate differences, and impose responsibilities. In the north, nomadic groups of less civilized Indians maintained a state of warfare, raiding and burning settlements well into the nineteenth century. If similar massive resistance had occurred in central Mexico, the survival of New Spain would have been in danger, but instead the Indians rallied to defend Spanish sovereignty.

The Mixton War was the consequence of the violent activities of European predators. Under Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, life in the weakly held western fringe of royal authority was intolerable, as marauders swept across the settlements, looting and killing. When the Indians in the vicinity of Guadalajara revolted, Viceroy Mendoza fruitlessly called on the encomenderos for help. The desperate viceroy then turned to Indian leaders, and a force of 3,000 indigenous soldiers along with 300 Spaniards suppressed the rebellion. It became obvious that the king's new Indian subjects provided a more solid sociopolitical foundation than did the Spanish conquerors, whose claims to privileges and status as a new colonial nobility eroded after 1541.

In 1542 the Crown prematurely issued the New Laws of the Indies, which directly attacked many of the privileges that encomenderos assumed had become settled custom. Moreover, the law prohibited the granting of new encomiendas. Outraged Spaniards verged on rebellion. Viceroy Mendoza quickly suspended the New Laws pending an appeal. The threat of a civil war forced the Crown to permit new grants of encomiendas, though there were some new restrictions. Royal officials, the corregidores, began the task of converting tribute-paying encomienda Indians into regular taxpayers. The institution underwent progressive modifications that rendered it harmless, ending the attempt to create a feudal elite. Nevertheless, the struggle between the monarchy and the aspirational European elite continued to be a matter of concern.

Another crisis occurred in 1563 with the arrival in Mexico of Martín Cortés, the conqueror's son and legitimate heir. The young marques, an immature aristocrat, enjoyed great respect among the indigenous population, and seemed to offer a new option to disgruntled encomenderos. Conspirators envisioned manipulating Martín Cortés, declaring him a king and legitimizing their coup with an assembly of notables, but an indecisive Cortés delayed, enabling the audiencia to lure him into their chambers and arrest him. With the arrival of a new viceroy, Cortés returned to Spain to explain his role in the affair. The two major conspirators were convicted of treason and beheaded; this served as a warning to encomenderos.

THE ECONOMY

Land, and the agricultural production and livestock it supported, constituted the basic form of wealth. In 1528 Carlos V instructed Hernán Cortés to distribute land to his men based on their status. Because all claimed hidalgo status, most received grants of 44 hectares at least, with many receiving two or more grants. Cattle, sheep, pigs, and domestic fowl, which were first introduced on the islands, soon arrived in Mexico. Cattle feasted on the abundance of native grasses until European grasses inevitably replaced them. Cattlemen established estancias but grazed their herds across croplands, causing damage and giving rise to complaints, so vice-regal authorities directed them northward away from agricultural regions.

Spaniards understood that the domestic market for foodstuffs constituted their primary market: Europeans in Mexico demanded wheat, mutton, and familiar vegetables. In contrast, Europe had little need for American agricultural products, and moreover, transportation costs made low-value exports too expensive. Most crops could be grown in Europe from seed, and it took many years to develop European demand for tropical items such as cacao and tobacco. Early focus on urban markets created an internal economy that was soon affirmed by the development of mining, particularly of silver. Silver, a high-value export, could absorb transatlantic transportation costs. Silver facilitated imports of wines, olive oils, fine cloth, fashionable shoes, and more mundane items such as plows and farm implements.

Trade with Spain relied upon an annual convoy. European pirates (who were tacitly supported by European powers that believed they had been excluded unfairly from the riches of the New World) and North African coastal pirates forced Spain to convoy ships. The arrival of trade goods in large volume distorted prices: Usually they were sold at the trade fair in Jalapa to merchant distributors who were able to take advantage of overabundance to drive hard bargains, then sold at progressively higher prices before the next convoy. This had important economic consequences. Demand for reasonably priced goods and consistent supply led to contraband activity by foreign vessels. Avoidance of customs levies provided a price advantage and cut out middlemen who bought items in other countries then transshipped them on the convoy.

The merchant community had its own guild, the Consulado de Comercio, which was established in Mexico City (1592) and composed of the principal merchants (almancenros, or wholesalers). It served as a commercial court, and represented their interests to the viceroy and lobbied officials in Spain. The Casa de Contratacion, Spain's trade board (1503), set imperial trade policy and acted on appeals. The Consulado of Seville and the Casa shared many of the same responsibilities.

Merchant activity functioned on a number of levels, but combined, it constituted the commercial engine of New Spain. Large-scale distributors, the aviadores, arranged for sale of imported goods to regional merchants. Regional merchants linked to merchants in Mexico City represented only the skeletal trade structure. Peddlers at the bottom of the scale carried items into rural villages, then sold or extended on credit to small stores in minor towns. In addition, Indian porters, mule drivers who transported goods across the region, engaged in trading on their own account as well as carried the goods of others. Leperos (urban vagrants, petty criminals) recycled stolen property and sold it to small stall owners in what aptly became known as the thief's market.

Money remained in short supply, making credit important. Although the Crown established a mint in Mexico City in 1535, export demand for silver drained species out of New Spain. Financing the production of domestic food crops to supply the needs of urban centers, as well as the production of agricultural items with European demand such as cochineal (red dye), depended on credit extended under the repartimento de comercio. The repartimento distributed goods on credit against harvests. It included items such as animals, seeds, and consumer items. Credit terms could be exploitive; nevertheless, production and consumption depended on the survival of the primary producer and consumer. The church served as a basic source of credit in the absence of modern banking. Reasonable interest rates facilitated purchase of land and urban property. Debt could be rolled over from one generation to a purchaser facilitating land transfers. The church preferred a steady income to support hospitals, orphanages, convents, and other facilities and services.

MINING

New Spain had minor sources of gold, but vast silver deposits. Cortés worked silver mines in Taxco as early as 1525. The first mining boom resulted from the discovery of a huge deposit in Zacatecas in 1546. Four years later, prospectors uncovered a rich vein in Guanajuato; this was followed by a series of strikes in San Luis Potosí, Real de Monte, Pachuca, Parral, and elsewhere. The great mines of Guanajuato produced an estimated 20 to 25 percent of New Spain's silver; the Valenciana mine may have been the most profitable mining enterprise in Mexico. In the early period, miners worked silver out of croppings close to the surface. As the easy available ores ran out, mining became more expensive. Deep shafts required complex drainage, shoring, and pumps (introduced in 1609). Consequently, large enterprises displaced individual miners, except in marginal silver operations. Deep shaft mines in the eighteenth century could absorb a capital investment of a million pesos and years of work.

Usually located in high table land far from food resources, the mining industry had an insatiable demand for supplies of all types. Mining fueled the internal economy. By the eighteenth century the industry depended increasingly on deep shafts that went below the water table, requiring lumber to shore up tunnels and vast amounts of hand tools. Wool clothes; hides for ores; waterproofing material; mules, horses, and oxen for motive power and transportation; fodder for animals; and innumerable other items made mining efficient and life more bearable.

The demand for supplies and the tranport of ores by high-wheeled wagons to smelters required a road network that reached far beyond the mines. Wages for mine labor tended to be attractive, and mine workers constituted a privileged segment of the labor market. Successful investors and silver merchants (mercaderes de plata) became a plutocratic elite. Silver pesos financed trade with China by way of Manila through the annual galleon to the west coast port of Acapulco. Crown taxes on mining required one-fifth payment, a rate that could be reduced by various artful dodges or Crown concessions. New Spain absorbed most of the wealth generated by silver. Peripheral parts of the viceroyalty and financial dependencies such as Cuba and others represented a Mexican subimperial structure.

WOMEN AND FAMILY

The importance of Indian women in the family and comparable Spanish notions molded the role and place of women in Mexican society. Both cultures placed the male at the head of the family and subordinated the female. A protective web isolated wives and children from all but the extended family. Lineage, whether real or imagined, conveyed status and had to be preserved; consequently, marriages had to be carefully considered to avoid loss of social standing. Moreover, a dowry negotiated too generously might strain the resources of the family. Dowries could be paid in any thing of recognized value, but they remained the property of the wives, and although they could be managed by the husbands, they could not be squandered. Incidents of wives suing husbands over dowries or failure to acknowledge dowry payments testify to its importance. In the case of catastrophe, the dowry supported the widow.

Marriage was an economic institution, but that did not necessarily preclude love and affection. A man typically had several spouses serially during his lifetime because of maternal deaths during childbirth. Marrying a deceased wife's sister would preserve wealth within the family; another common arrangement involved marriages between second cousins. The further down one stood in the social structure, the less important marriage became, until finally common-law arrangements were acceptable. Within the family, the male possessed legal authority over family members. Both male and female children remained legal minors until age twenty-five and shared the same rights to own property, to enter contracts, to serve as witnesses, and to enjoy other responsibilities. With marriage, responsibility shifted to the male head of household. A widow regained her legal rights, and depending on her personality, could become a powerful matriarch, conduct business, and protect family interests. The extended family and, at times, distant relatives, supplied the employees of family businesses. Actual and theoretical legal rights had little importance at the lower social levels.

Convents, another option for young women and the family, provided a protected, respected place for women and required a smaller dowry than what might be required by a marriage. In some cases, families anxious to avoid the marriage expenses forced young women into convents, but for others, convents were a socially acceptable way to avoid marriage. Convent life—with servants, black slaves, personal items, books, musical instruments, and comfortable quarters—could be pleasant for the nuns, though they could opt for a more rigorous regime if desired. Nuns ran schools for girls, wrote verse, and explored the life of the mind.

EDUCATION

Education in New Spain began with the Indians. The Franciscan lay brother Pedro de Gante taught European knowledge, including Spanish and Latin. In 1536 the Franciscans established a secondary school, Santa Cruz de Tlalteloco, for the indigenous elite. Among other objectives, Franciscan missionaries sought to establish and train an Indian priesthood. The Dominicans did not share such hopes, and as preconquest religious practices persisted, the clergy in general abandoned the notion of an educated Indian priesthood. In the early period, women directed by Catalina Bustamante taught Indian women, but as attitudes changed, that ended, too.

Laws specified that municipalities maintain at least one primary school, but many avoided the expense. Individual priests taught rudimentary literacy skills to selected students regardless of race. Mestizos, whether biological or cultural, could not be excluded from education or the priesthood as their numbers grew, so there were schools for young mestizo girls and boys up to the secondary level, often endowed by benefactors. Tutors might be engaged by the wealthy.

The University of Mexico began to function in 1553 with a course of theology and Latin. It was theoretically closed to mixed-race individuals, but such restrictions could be bypassed. Women could not attend. By 1775 it had conferred 29,882 bachelor degrees and 1,162 masters degrees.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIAL MATURITY

By the late seventeenth century New Spain had developed a dynamic economy and a unique society. It appeared to be self-sufficient—that is, able to manufacture what it needed or buy reasonably priced contraband goods from a competitive array of smugglers of different European nationalities. Meanwhile, Spain declined into an economic depression marked by food riots and the abandonment of rural districts. Transatlantic trade atrophied. The number of Spanish merchant ships arriving at the port of Veracruz declined drastically. In Madrid an unaffordable, bloated bureaucracy struggled to keep the government afloat. To add to the country's woes, a succession crisis occupied court politicians. Finally, Carlos II died in 1700 without an heir, setting off the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1713).

Only after Felipe V, the grandson of Louis the XIV of France, assumed the Spanish throne was attention paid to revitalizing the empire. There were muted indications of reform even in the darkest days of the previous century, but with the new Bourbon dynasty, recovery began to be evident. The introduction of regional administrators in Spain that reported directly to the king was a model that eventually was introduced in the Latin American empire. In 1743 José Campillo, Felipe V's minister of war and finance, circulated the Nuevo Sistema de Goberieno para la America (New System of Economic Governance in America), a report that suggested cutting taxes to eliminate contraband trade, rationalizing maritime transportation, and distributing land to Indians to make them more productive and to provide a new source of tax revenues. The Enlightenment focus on economics underpinned such plans. But planners and bureaucrats failed to consider that New Spain's merchants, miners, and agriculturalists had adapted to global commerce, tax avoidance, and a host of minor, prohibited, but collectively profitable activities that negatively impacted royal revenues and Spanish trade. Conflict between a prosperous New Spain and a suddenly demanding mother country anxious to repair its fortunes seemed inevitable.

Imperial defense became an issue with the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). The fall of Manila and Havana to the British shocked Madrid and Mexico City. Concern that the 10,000 British troops in North America could capture Veracruz and then Mexico City could not be brushed aside. Even after the return of Havana under the terms of the peace treaty, future conflict had to be anticipated. New Spain had only 3,000 regular army soldiers, mostly on the northern frontier, and poorly trained militias suitable for warding off pirates perhaps, but not much else. Creating a colonial army could not be delayed. In 1764 the Regiment of the Infantry of America, along with a cadre of officers to train the newly reorganized militias, disembarked in Veracruz. To encourage recruitment, the military fuero (privileges) covered those in militia units as well as the regular units.

With the reign of Carlos III (1759–1788), another reality became evident. The former Hapsburg monarchs negotiated to establish accepted arrangements and compromises. The new Bourbon monarchy relied on administration by civil and often military bureaucrats rather than politics. Imperial administration reflected the authoritarianism inherent in the Enlightenment's scientific approach. The implication of the new approach arrived in New Spain in the form of the inspection tour of José de Gálvez (1765–1771). An impatient man intent on confirming his preconceived notions and rebalancing the imperial arrangement in favor of the mother country, Gálvez attacked the traditional vice-regal structure, including the audiencia. He hoped to eliminate symbols of independent internal sovereignty and replace them with a commandant-general and powerful regional officials, the intendants. On the local level, he anticipated substituting alcaldes (mayors) with subdelegados, allegedly to end corrupt practices and increase revenues. What Gálvez saw as long overdue reforms, Mexicans considered arbitrary acts that injured their interests. The sudden expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 from all Spanish domains seemed almost beyond comprehension to many in New Spain. The Society of Jesus had operated the most prestigious secondary schools, educating the sons of the elite.

In 1786 the division of New Spain into twelve intendancies began the implementation of Gálvez's reorganization plan. Earlier, in 1776, a regent had been appointed to assume some of the duties of the viceroy, including presiding over the audiencia. As anticipated, tax revenues increased. Nevertheless, resistance to externally imposed reforms delayed the more ambitious plan to eliminate the viceroy, and limited funds weakened the resolve of Madrid's planners. As New Spain entered its last decade, its institutions remained caught between the weakened traditional structure and partially imposed reforms. Nevertheless, the changes in trade policies benefited New Spain's cotton exports and stimulated the economy of the more entrepreneurial regions of Spain. In general, the Bourbon reforms engendered truculence but not rebellion, and in their weakened state could be adjusted to by merchants and others.

The establishment of the United States, followed by the French Revolution (1789) and the Haitian Revolution (1792), began the unraveling. Napoleon threw the European power balance into disarray, and the French blackmail of Spain drained it of money. After exhausting its resources, including church property in Spain, Madrid turned to its empire. The 1804 Law of Consolidation ordered the confiscation of church assets in America. New Spain's viceroy obeyed, in spite of the risk of an economic collapse. Gathering church funds required calling in loans and forcing owners to sell what they could to raise money. Resentment over the economic damage and fear of a French seizure of Mexico led to pressure for political autonomy.

In 1810 Father Miguel Hidalgo began a revolt, initiating a period of insurgency that lasted until 1821. The Spanish Cortes in Cadiz, in the face of the crisis caused by the Napoleonic invasion, embraced transatlantic constitutionalism, elaborating the Spanish Constitution of 1812. It might have worked, but the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 suspended the 1812 charter, then a revolt in 1820 reestablished it. Sporadic instability undermined Spain's credibility. Those who had previously favored autonomy now backed a complete break. Agustín Iturbide's Plan of Iguala (1821) proclaimed independence.

See alsoAudiencia; Bourbon Reforms; Cortés, Hernán; Cortés, Martín; Creole; Diseases; Dominicans; Encomienda; Franciscans; Gálvez, José de; Guzmán, Nuño Beltrán de; Indigenous Peoples; Jesuits; Mestizo; Mining: Colonial Spanish America; New Laws of 1542; Race and Ethnicity; Religion in Mexico, Catholic Church and Beyond; Repartimiento; Slavery: Spanish America; Tenochtitlán.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chocano Mena, Magdalena. La Forteleza Doctra: Elite Letrada y Dominación Social en Mexico Colonial, Siglos XVI-XVII. Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 2000.

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Hassig, Ross. Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Lockhart, James. The Nahua after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.

MacLachlan, Colin M., and Jaime E. Rodriguez O. The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico. Revised 2nd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

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                                    Colin M. MacLachlan