Chapter Three
Mexican Americans come from roots put down centuries ago. Understanding the modern Mexican American depends, to some degree, on understanding these roots. Although much may be written of the Indian cultures of pre-Columbian Mexico, any history of Mexican Americans must begin with the arrival of the Spaniards in the Western Hemisphere. This event provided a catalyst for the development of modern Mexican Americans.
The story began when Christopher Columbus, sailing under the auspices
of Queen Isabella of Castille, sought a westward route across the Atlantic
Ocean to the Far East-a route intended to open up for Spain a share
of the lucrative trade monopolized by the merchants of Venice. When,
after long weeks at sea, he first sighted the islands of the Caribbean,
Columbus thought he had indeed come upon the East Indies. He called
the people of the islands "Indians" and claimed the land for
Spain. On his first voyage, Columbus established a colony on the island
of Hispañola (now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
Thus began the Spanish experience in the New World.
By the early years of the sixteenth century, thriving Spanish colonies
were to be found on Hispañola and on Cuba, with lesser colonies
throughout the Caribbean. People of various backgrounds left Spain to
seek their fortunes in the New World. Many of them were adventurers
who sought danger and the pleasure of discovery in any unknown world.
This was the fabric of which the conquistadores-the conquerors-were
made.
Among those who settled in Cuba was a young man named Hernán
Cortés. He had come to America in a lowly position with the Spanish
colonial administration. But Cortés dreamed of greater things
for himself. This was an age of exploration and the romance of discovery
pushed men beyond the boundaries of the world they knew. Such an era
would not occur again until man began to feel his way into outer space
five centuries later. Rumors-usually false-of fantastic riches in distant
unconquered and unexplored regions ran like wildfire among the populations
of established colonies.
Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), when only 16 years of age, decided to give up the study of law in Spain and seek adventure in the New World. In Santo Domingo in the West Indies he fought the native Indians as Spain conquered new territories. He then helped Diego Velazquez in the conquest of Cuba, and Velazquez commissioned Cortés to conquer Mexico.
Cortés sailed from Cuba with a fleet of 11 vessels, with 700
Spaniards, 18 horses, and a few artillery pieces. After he built a fort
at Veracruz on the east coast of Mexico, Cortés scuttled his
fleet. He wanted his men to know they had to be successful in their
conquest of the Aztec empire. There was no way to turn back!
Cortés' Expedition
Hernán Cortés heard such a rumor in Cuba. It was said
that a land of unbelievable riches, called Mexico, lay across the sea
to the west of Cuba. Cortés decided that Mexico must be conquered.
At first he won the support of the Spanish governor, who set about organizing
an expedition to sail to Mexico. But the governor-probably with reason-soon
began to fear Cortés would steal the glory of discovery and he
recalled the aggressive and enthusiastic young man from the expedition.
Cortés, not about to be thwarted, persuaded the sailors and soldiers
who had signed on with the expedition to join him in defying the governor.
One day in 1519 he stole away from port with the governor's fleet. Thus
began an adventure that would end in the conquest of Mexico.
When Hernán Cortés set sail he knew virtually nothing
about the land ahead. He could only hope that the rumors of fortune
were true. His first encounters on the new continent were hardly encouraging.
The fleet landed at Yucatan, where the expedition saw little more than
tropical overgrowth. Cortés then ordered his ships to sail north,
following the outline of the new continent. A few weeks later he landed
near the site of modern Tabasco.
All this time the local grapevine had been working, and the Indians
of Mexico followed the progress of the Spaniards up their coastline.
To understand the fright they felt, we must look at the Mexico of 1519
and at the beliefs of its inhabitants.
This area was one of the culturally advanced regions of pre-Columbian
America. Its peoples had achieved a high degree of civilization centuries
before the Spaniards reached the New World. Many different tribes, speaking
many different languages, populated the land. But in the final years
of the fifteenth century, most of the tribes had been subjugated by
one group of empire builders-the Aztecs. The Aztecs had built their
society on the institutions and cultures of older Mexican civilizations.
They were a militaristic people and had expanded their control first
over the valley of central Mexico and then over more distant lands.
They conquered and they demanded that the subjugated tribes pay them
tribute. Most of the other tribes hated the Aztecs but lacked the strength
to overcome them.
Like other peoples of the Americas (and the Europeans of that era, too)
the Aztecs were superstitious. And the omens that had come to them before
the Spaniards arrived told of impending disaster. Legend tells us that
the Emperor Montezuma II was brought a bird with a mirror in its head.
When Montezuma looked into the mirror he saw a strange army. Then a
rival chieftain bet Montezuma that the land of the Aztecs would be invaded
by strangers, and Montezuma lost the game planned to decide who was
right.
Most important was an old legend, predating the Aztecs by centuries,
which had been passed down from generation to generation. It told of
the god Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god, who was fair-skinned
and bearded. Quetzalcoatl lost a fight with the warrior god and was
banished from Mexico. He disappeared into the sky, but before he left
he promised the people he would return and told them when to expect
him. The year on the Indian calendar was the equivalent of the European
year 1519. Thus when fair-skinned and bearded Spaniards arrived, the
Indians of Mexico were convinced that Quetzalcoatl was returning from
the sun.
The Emperor Montezuma II sent emissaries, bearing gifts of gold, to
meet the Spaniards at Tabasco. His purpose was twofold. On the one hand,
the gifts were designed to appease Quetzalcoatl, should he actually
be among the strangers. On the other hand, Montezuma reasoned, if the
Spaniards were enemies, they would be satisfied with the gold and would
leave his land. Little did he know that the gold served as an invitation
to adventurers in search of fabulous riches. The Spaniards became more
determined than ever to claim the territory where such wealth existed.
An Easy Victory
The military conquest of Mexico was surprisingly simple. Hernán
Cortés led only a handful of soldiers against thousands of Aztec
warriors. But in less than two years he succeeded in subduing the armies
of Indian Mexico. He accomplished this even though he was defeated in
some crucial battles and many of his men were killed. But the accomplishment
seems less marvelous when we look closely at the factors that aided
the Spaniards.
We have seen that superstition played an important role in the life
of the Indians. They believed that they would be conquered and thus
were emotionally prepared for defeat. The belief that Quetzalcoatl might
be among the invaders acted as a powerful deterrent: the Indians hesitated
to attack and incur the wrath of their god. They also considered the
possibility that all the Spaniards might be gods. This was reinforced
when they first saw the Spaniards mounted on their horses-animals as
foreign to Mexico as the fair-skinned men they carried. At first, the
Indians thought man and beast were one, a fierce new god that must be
appeased. Their fear was further reinforced by the fact that the Spaniards
proved resistant to Indian witchcraft. The spells the Aztec sorcerers
cast upon the invaders had no effect at all.
A second factor that contributed to the Indians' defeat was the differing
concept of war between the two peoples. To the Aztecs, war was a ceremony.
Its primary purposes were to capture prisoners for sacrifice to the
gods-in itself a great honor for the victim-and to win the tribute of
conquered enemies. Furthermore, war was secondary to such vital activities
as planting and harvesting. Crops could be grown only with difficulty
in much of Mexico. Famines, common enough in ordinary times, had become
even more of a threat in the early years of the sixteenth century as
population pressure on the arable land increased. When the Indians put
down their arms to tend the crops, the cease-fire was mutually respected
by belligerent tribes.
But the Spaniards refused to recognize such a cease-fire. Spanish warfare
was not a ceremony but a battle to the death. If victory could be achieved
by destroying the crops of the enemy, then so much the better. To the
amazement of the Indians, the Spaniards killed their enemies on the
battlefield, rather than taking them prisoner. And they did so with
weapons far superior to the swords and spears of Indian armies; Spanish
guns could kill or wound a man at distances that seemed incredible to
Indian warriors.
Arms superiority certainly provided the Spaniards with a great advantage
in their campaign against the Aztecs. But a further advantage must not
be overlooked: the all-important alliances between Cortés and
tribes hostile to the Aztecs.
When Cortés arrived in Mexico, an Indian girl called Malinche
(or, as the Spaniards named her, Marina) joined the expedition. She
learned Spanish quickly and was invaluable as interpreter, guide, and
spy. Malinche told Cortés of the hatred many Indians felt for
the Aztecs and urged him to form alliances with these people. This was
a difficult task, for most Indians feared the Spaniards as much as the
Aztecs did. A few joined the strangers immediately. Most had to be cajoled
or forced into an alliance. Some had to be defeated in battle before
they would join the Spaniards. But once they had allied themselves with
Cortés, these Indians represented the difference between victory
and defeat. They added to the numerical strength of the Spanish army.
More important, perhaps, they supplied the Spaniards with food and acted
as messengers and carriers, keeping the lines of communication open
between the front and rear.
A final factor aided the Spanish cause. The Europeans brought new diseases
with them to America-diseases like smallpox, typhoid, measles. The native
Americans had no natural immunity as the Europeans had, and the diseases
decimated Indian populations all over the New World during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. In 1520, shortly after Cortés landed
in Mexico, the first epidemic of smallpox struck the Indians. The effects
of this epidemic (and of all other European diseases) were disastrous.
Thousands died and Indian armies and Indian morale were severely weakened.
When the Spaniards landed in Mexico in 1519 Cortés was unable to communicate well with the natives. One of his soldiers knew the dialect spoken along the coast, but was ignorant of the Aztec language. An Indian chief gave the Spaniards a young female slave named Malinche who was familiar with both native tongues and proved to be an excellent interpreter for Cortés. The conquistadores called her Dona Marina.
Malinche was the daughter of a powerful cacique or chief, but after
her father's death she had been sold into slavery by her mother and
stepfather. She was attractive and intelligent and quickly learned Spanish.
On many occasions her knowledge of Mexican dialects and customs and
her ability to judge the designs of the natives saved the lives of the
Spaniards as Cortés played the dangerous game of trying to turn
the Indian tribes against one another.
Malinche remained with Cortés all through the conquest and early
settlement of Mexico and bore him a son, Don Martin Cortés. In
1525 Cortés married her off to a Spanish knight, giving her a
large estate in her native province as a dowry.
Converting the Indian
By summer 1521, after much difficulty and bloodshed, the military conquest
of Mexico was complete. Hernán Cortés claimed the land
for the Spanish crown and called it New Spain. But military conquest
alone was not enough to consolidate the Spanish position on mainland
America. The culture and institutions of Spain would have to be imposed
upon Mexico and the Indians made an integral part of the empire that
was emerging in the New World.
Spanish conquerors and colonists sought to create a utopia in the new
land: Hernán Cortés dreamed of a new world that would
bring together the best of both Indian and Spanish societies. But most
of the conquerors were greedy opportunists, intent upon finding fortune
and fame for themselves-at the expense of the Indians if necessary.
They could best achieve their goals within a familiar system, and so
the next century was one of superimposing the language, laws, and institutions
of Spain on Indian Mexico. It was a century of conflict between Indian
and Spanish ways of life. But it was also a century of some fusion,
in which Indian and Spanish cultures blended to create a society uniquely
American, uniquely Mexican.
The first step in the hispanization of Mexico would be the conversion
of the Indians to Roman Catholicism. The conquerors came from a country
where religion was deeply ingrained in daily life. Spanish armies had
only recently driven the last Moslems from the Iberian Peninsula after
more than seven hundred years of occupation. In the course of that long
conflict, Spanish Roman Catholicism had become extremely powerful, and
explorers and conquerors transported this religiosity to America. In
their view, the Indians were heathens, in spite of the highly organized
religious systems that existed in America. The Spaniards came duty-bound
to convert the Indians-not only in service to God but in service to
their monarch, whose political strength would increase as the number
of Catholic subjects under control increased.
The conversion process began immediately, and was simplified by the
fact that the Indians of Mexico, throughout their long history, had
accepted new gods with ease. Conquered tribes traditionally incorporated
the deities of their conquerors into their pantheon of gods. Thus when
the Spaniards forced a new religion on them, few of the Indians questioned
the change (although many continued to worship the old gods in secret).
Then too, the old gods failed to rise up in anger when the foreigners
destroyed the temples and smashed the idols, and many of the Indians
lost faith in the powers of their traditional religion; fatalistically,
they accepted the new.
Conversion was further simplified by some basic similarities between
Catholicism and the religions of Mexico. Both Spaniards and Indians
believed in an ordered, supernatural world. Both believed in life after
death. Both accepted a Supreme Being. And the Indians, used to worshipping
many gods, accepted as supreme the God the Spaniards worshipped and
equated the saints with their own lesser gods. The new religion offered
hope when a whole world had been destroyed; it served as a bridge between
the old system and the new.
The builders of that bridge were the priests and monks who began arriving
in Mexico almost as soon as the military conquest was complete. The
Franciscans arrived in 1522, the Dominicans in 1526. They worked hard,
not only to convert the Indians, but also to teach them and to care
for their health and well-being. They established schools and hospitals.
And under their tutelage the Indians learned better farming methods,
along with new and easier ways of weaving and making pottery. There
was some question in the minds of the priests-indeed, in the minds of
all Spaniards-as to whether or not the Indians were really men, deserving
of baptism and, thus, salvation. A few were baptized, but the early
priests held back from wholesale baptisms; they waited for some higher
authority to decide whether or not the Indians had souls. Finally, in
1537, Pope Paul III declared that "the Indians are truly men."
From that time on, the conversion effort gained momentum; the priests'
main goal was to convert all the Indians of Spain's New World territories.
Most of the early priests were good, hardworking men. They accomplished
their goal with incredible speed and, within a few years, considered
the task of conversion complete. Lesley Bird Simpson (p. 77) tells us
that "the missionaries did their work so thoroughly they soon found
themselves with time on their hands. A spirit of emulation and even
of rivalry developed between the [Franciscan and Dominican] orders....
It was not long before they were competing in building convents and
churches on a scale beyond reasonable necessity."
Creating a Labor Force
The colonial effort of the Spaniards had two main goals. The first,
the idealistic goal, was to save the souls of the Indians. The second,
the materialistic goal, was to create a labor force to build a colony.
The priests-sometimes willingly, sometimes unconsciously-contributed
to the achievement of the second goal as well as the first. They did
so by changing the life style of the Indians of Mexico.
Before the Spaniards arrived, most Indians had lived in tiny villages
or hamlets. The cities of pre-Columbian Mexico were, for the most part,
ceremonial centers, inhabited by priests and nobles. The common people
lived outside the cities, close to the land they farmed. Distance made
communication with the city, and even with other hamlets, difficult.
Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566) gave up his law career in Spain to travel to the Spanish Antilles. Here he was an advisor to the colonial governors, but became a priest a few years later.
Father Las Casas became convinced that the encomienda system was wrong.
Under it the native Indians were enslaved and cruelly treated. Through
their encomiendas the conquerors forced the Indians to labor long hours
in the fields and mines and perform many other tasks in violation of
the king's laws. The native population of the Caribbean islands was
reduced drastically in a few decades.
In 1514 Father Las Casas gave up his own encomienda and started a long
fight to improve the lives of the Indians under Spanish rule. After
failing at first to better their lot, Father Las Casas wrote The History
of the Indies. This work tells of the cruelty of the Spanish settlers
toward the Indians. It is a very important source of information about
the early Spanish colonies in America.
But Father Las Casas also found a chance to put into practice his belief
that the Indians must be converted to Christianity by word and good
example. This he did in Guatemala in 1537, when he went there to bring
about peace among some warlike Indians. He won the trust of the Indians
by his kind and fair treatment of them.
Later, after Las Casas succeeded in pacifying some of the warlike Indians
of Guatemala he returned to Spain to help write the New Laws. Although
objections to this reform of the Indian code were many and its enforcement
was lax, the New Laws eventually led to more humane treatment of the
natives and changed a thin disguise for slavery into a form of social
system.
Many have criticized Father Las Casas for not understanding the problems
of the Indians and for exaggerating the evils of the Spanish rule in
New Spain. Yet he has won the title "Apostle of the Indies"
from those who appreciate his work.
Congregaciones
The Spanish priests quickly saw that it would be difficult to work among
these scattered peoples, that the conversion effort would be slowed
down if not halted completely by lack of communication and the inaccessibility
of many Indians. And so they decided that the Indians should be gathered
together in villages call congregaciones. Each congregación would
have its own church and priest to look after the instruction and welfare
of the inhabitants. The Indians would farm the surrounding fields, raising
food for themselves and crops for sale in Europe.
The system was advantageous to some purposes. It enabled the priests
to work closely with the Indians, a captive audience, and so speeded
up the conversion process. It gave the priests the laborers they needed
to build the churches (and the Indians performed this task, just as
they had worked building the temples in the old days). But the system
also had disadvantages. The congregación robbed the Indian of
his pride and independence; it made him a child of the priests, who
forced him to adopt European dress, to plant the crops the priests wanted
grown and to accept a religion he did not really understand. A few Indians
fled to the hills and rebuilt their lives in the old manner. But most
remained in the Spanish villages, drained of their self-sufficiency,
accepting their new role with a strange fatalism. And in the villages
they were further exposed to the diseases of the Spaniards. The diseases
that had killed them during the military conquest became even more of
a threat when the Indians were gathered together in the close quarters
of the congregacion. Epidemics often decimated entire villages. The
Spaniards were little concerned, for death by disease was common in
sixteenth-century Europe and they accepted the epidemics without attempting
to understand their cause. Between 1519 and 1650, probably more than
two4hirds of the Indians died of European diseases (Wolfe, 1959: p.30).
The congregacion put the Indians to work for the benefit of the priests.
The conquerors and colonists also needed Indian labor. If the Spaniards
were to reap the profits of the colony, the Indians would have to be
put to work in the mines and fields. The Spanish gentleman of that era
abhorred manual labor of any kind and his attitude was adopted by even
the poorest Spaniard who settled in the New World. The colony, to succeed,
would have to be built by the conquered Indians.
Slavery was one way of creating an Indian labor force. In the early
years, some Indians were enslaved, denied their freedom and made the
property of their conquerors. But Indian slavery won the immediate disapproval
of the priests and was soon forbidden.
Encomienda
The encomienda provided an easier way of accomplishing the same thing.
An encomienda was a grant from the crown to those conquerors and settlers
who served Spain well. The settler (or encomendero) was granted the
right to the services of stipulated Indian villages and tribute payments
from the Indians of those villages. In return the encomendero was expected
to care for the health and physical needs of his Indians, and to assure
their religious instruction. It was not a land grant but a trusteeship.
However, the encomenderos became so deeply entrenched, and their control
over the Indians so complete, that it might as well have been a land
grant. The encomienda differed from slavery only in that the Indians
were legally free men and not property. But the grant of an encomienda
could be passed on from father to son, and there were no restrictions
on what the early encomenderos could demand of their Indians.
The abuses of the system were appalling. Many of the encomenderos, lusting
for gold and riches, forced the Indians to work beyond the capacity
of human en durance, cared little for their physical needs, and, of
course, paid them nothing The system soon came under attack by priests
who feared for the welfare, even for the survival, of the Indians. Led
by men like Father Bartolomé de las Casas who later earned the
title "Protector o the Indians," the priests brought the abuses
of the encomienda to the attention of the crown. It soon became apparent
that if the Spanish monarchs failed to act the incensed priests would
take their complaint to the pope. To a large degree the Spanish crown
owed its position ii the New World to the papacy. It was through the
good offices of Pope Alexander VI that Spain and Portugal had in 1493,
agreed to the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the unknown world between
them, with Spain getting the lion's share of the land and Portugal getting
mostly ocean. Furthermore, the Spanish crown was in debt to the papacy
for its support during the long struggle to oust the Moslems from Spain
and for concession the popes had made to Spanish rulers.
The crown, therefore, issued the "New Laws" of 1542. The New
Laws, among other things, abolished the encomiendas and severely restricted
the colonists' control over the Indians. A wave of protest spread throughout
the American colonies. It was so strong in Mexico that break with Spain
was threatened. The crown was forced to modify the laws, allowing each
encomienda to remain in force until the death of the original trust
tee. The protest graphically demonstrated that the growing power an
wealth of the encomenderos constituted threat to the supremacy of the
crown;
would have to be checked if the monarchy, hindered by distance and poor
communication, was to remain in control of the colony.
The encomienda did remain, but a series of laws restricted it, and the
crown slowly undermined and destroyed the system. After 1549 the encomienda
no longer included the right to Indian labor, and the amount of the
tribute which Indians owed to their trustees was set by royal officials.
Finally, the monarch made the Indians vassals of the crown and claimed
the right to their tribute payments. The encomienda was officially dead.
Repartimiento
But the colony still needed a labor force. The Spaniards had to find
a means of forcing the Indians to work for them. And so a new system,
called the repartimiento, replaced the encomienda. Under the repartimiento,
Indians were to work a specified number of days a year on projects judged
essential by the crown; they were to be paid wages, fed, and
housed during this period by the colonists using their services, and
any person wanting the services of Indians had to apply to the royal
officials.
The abuses of the repartimiento surpassed even the worst aspects of
the encomienda. In the first place, no one was any longer responsible
for the well-being of the Indians; the men who used them had no concern
for them other than in getting the most work possible for their money.
Royal officials succumbed to bribery and assigned Indians to jobs that
should not have been considered "essential." Indian laborers
were transported far from their homes in defiance of the law and most
Spaniards ignored the time limit on their use of specific Indian groups.
If wages were actually paid (and many colonists ignored this requirement)
they were usually meager. If the employer provided housing and food
(again, frequently ignored), it was of the poorest quality.
The Indians of Mexico certainly suffered under Spanish rule, as conquered
people have always suffered. Their institutions were effectively destroyed,
and Spanish religion, government, and society imposed upon them. In
the face of conquest the Indian changed. But the Spaniard changed as
well. At the time he was imposing his own institutions and way of life
on Mexico, he also came under the influence of Indian customs. The result
was a blending of Indian and Spanish culture, the creation of a new
and unique society. It was aided, in part, by the mixing of the races.
Children were born of Spanish fathers and Indian mothers. At first these
mestizos were accepted by neither group. But as time passed their numbers
increased to the point where today most Mexicans are of mixed Indian
and Spanish heritage. The mestizos were the new race of the Americas.
They represent the blending of blood and of culture that has produced
the modern Mexican and Mexican American.
REFERENCES
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. Historia de las Indias. Mexico City:
Fonda de Cultura Economica, c. 1951.
Simpson, Lesley Bird. Many Mexicos. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1959.
Wolfe, Eric. Sons of the Shaking Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1959.
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