Chapter Five

Farms and Forts-The Expanding Settlement

The Europeans who migrated to America during a period extending from the Fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries had one thing in common: an overwhelming desire to own land. This was equally true in Spanish America. The Spanish settlers came from a country where good land was scarce and the average man had no chance of owning his own farm. Spain is a harsh land, arid or semi-arid almost in its entirety. It has little timber and few fertile valleys; for generations, the choice land has been owned by a privileged few.
Many of the settlers in Spanish America had been poor in Spain; they came from among the huge peasant populations. Having had little to make their lives easy or enjoyable, they came to America in search of opportunity. Their dream of gold and wealth collapsed and land supplanted gold as the key to happiness for the vast majority of settlers in New Spain-land where a man could be his own boss.

Yet even here there was to be disillusionment. Title to land proved to be almost as elusive as gold so far as most settlers were concerned. Nevertheless land and agriculture became the key to the future of the colony.

Commercial agriculture, like mining, was in keeping with Spain's mercantilistic policy. If crops could be grown on a large scale in America, the crown would benefit. This theory was reinforced when early settlers discovered that certain crops native to the New World were greatly in demand on the European market. Those that could be grown without any great outlay of capital were, of course, especially profitable. Cacao, for example, had long been grown by the Indians of Mexico. The bean had been used as a beverage (chocolate) and as a medium of exchange. The Spaniards soon discovered that chocolate, an exotic taste for Europeans, was much in demand, and they vigorously encouraged the cultivation of cacao. It cost them little, for they acted only as distributors, leaving cultivation in the hands of the Indians.

Other crops required more in the way of machinery and facilities. When a large capital outlay was needed to convert crops into saleable products, the Spaniards themselves took control of the cultivation and refining processes, often with aid from the crown. Indigo-a blue dye greatly in demand in Europe-and sugarcane were such crops. Great indigo and sugar plantations were established in the lowlands of Mexico to raise the crops and produce the finished product.

Migration Northward

Commercial agriculture was profitable, but as we have seen, mining had turned the attention of the colony northward. The North was not an attractive region for farming, and at first only a few farmers settled there. The soil was poor. It could yield crops only with extensive irrigation, and this was often difficult because of the lack of water. Moreover, labor was in short supply. The Spaniards depended on Indian labor to tend fields and harvest the crops. But the population had always been sparse in the North. The small population that did exist was further decreased during the early years of settlement when the encomiendas were plundered for Indian slaves and many died from European diseases. Even today the region is sparsely populated; only 19 percent of Mexico's people live in the North, which constitutes 40 percent of the nation's territory (Preston, p.611).

Despite the problems, Spanish colonists made a success of agriculture in the North. They did so because the climate and environment of the area were similar to the climate and environment of the mother country. Spain was arid; so was northern New Spain. In their homeland, the Spaniards had had to rely on irrigation to make their crops grow; in the colony they applied the same techniques that their families had used for generations. And not being accustomed to having timber in Spain, they built their homes of adobe and bricks. However, few farmers were attracted to the North at first, for agriculture in this arid land offered a man little opportunity to make a fortune. Yet in the final years of the sixteenth century, a steady flow of migrants moved northward.

The migration was spurred, at least in part, by conditions in the mother country. Spain, for a short time the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, went into steady decline after the middle of the sixteenth century. And the deterioration of the mother country adversely affected the colonies.

The influx of precious metals from the New World had created rampant inflation in Spain. As prices skyrocketed there, the colonists also found their purchasing power reduced. Few could afford to buy finished goods shipped from Spain. The colonies, prohibited by Spain from either manufacturing their own goods or buying from foreign countries, suffered a decline. Of course, smuggling and illicit manufacturing provided some goods, but the prices were almost as high as they would have been through legal channels. The quality of colonial life deteriorated noticeably as Spain's fortunes changed for the worse.

Spain began to lose control over her distant colonies. Communication across the Atlantic had always been difficult. Many months might pass before a message from the crown or the Council of the Indies reached Mexico City; it might never arrive if a ship went down in a storm or was attacked by pirates. Also, England's defeat of the Armada in 1588 disastrously weakened Spanish sea power and, consequently, the ties between mother country and colonies. Colonial administrators, lacking continuous direction from the crown, had to use their own discretion in governing; they were, more often than not, the sole authority over the colonies.

All this resulted in a certain confusion in government. Decisions made by viceroys or their subordinates might be rescinded many months later; laws passed by colonial governors might be at variance with the wishes of the crown. No one knew at any given time what the laws of the land were. To add to this, the crown subjected its colonial administrators to rigorous inspections by royal representatives, and it frequently recalled or transferred viceroys on the basis of these checks. Each new viceroy, to make his presence and power felt, had to overhaul the system completely; he went through the work of his predecessor with a fine-toothed comb and rejected much of it. Thus there was no continuity in colonial government and a great sense of insecurity among colonial peoples.

The Haciendas

As the mines became less profitable and commercial crops like indigo and cacao commanded lower prices on the European market, economic depression was added to the political and social insecurity the colonists felt. Many sought to escape these conditions and dreamed of creating a new and better life. Out of the chaos of the sixteenth century, a new way of life did emerge. Its basis was the hacienda-the privately owned estate.

During the early years of colonization, the crown considered all the land in America as its own personal possession. The kings awarded a few grants of land to those men who served them especially well; these grants were rarely given and jealously guarded, and private ownership of land was the exception rather than the rule. As we have seen (chapter 3), the crown more often granted encomiendas, or trusteeships over Indian villages. The encomiendas did not involve ownership of the land, but merely the right to the tribute payments and personal services of the Indians. However, this was not enough to satisfy land-hungry colonists.

The conditions that had led to the confusion and insecurity among the colonists forced the crown to change its policy. As Spain's financial situation became more desperate, it sold its lands in an attempt to replenish the royal treasury. In New Spain, as in other parts of Spanish America, the wealthy colonists bought up vast tracts of land. The enormous size of these tracts served two purposes. In the first place, the immensity of his holding satisfied the ego of the purchaser and gave him independence and personal security; he could retreat from the confusion of society to the isolation of his own little kingdom. In the second place, a large tract of land was essential for the changed use to which the land would be put. The hacienda was to be based not on crops but on livestock-livestock which needed vast tracts for pasture. This change in orientation further served to turn the attention of the colony northward. For although the North was poorly suited to the cultivation of commercial crops, it was suited to the needs of livestock. Cattle and sheep thrived in the semi-arid North and thus provided the impetus for the northward movement of the hacendados (landowners) during the sixteenth century.

The hacienda, in order to function, needed labor-as did every endeavor the Spaniards undertook in America. To fill this need, the new hacendados invited workers to settle on or near the estates. Most of the workers did so willingly. Generally they were Indians; however, some were poor Spaniards who had failed to make satisfactory lives for themselves. The hacienda offered them protection in a disrupted society. If too few workers came voluntarily, the hacendados found other means of filling their labor needs. It was increasingly common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for them to attach neighboring Indian lands to their tracts and thus bring entire communities under their control.

A strange alliance, basically feudal in nature, evolved between workers and hacendados. The workers who came to the hacienda were rarely paid straight wages-a salary for their services. Even if they did receive wages, the money was never enough for survival. They were forced to turn to the landowner, who provided for them and demanded complete loyalty in return for his paternalism. Occasionally, the hacendado paid workers in kind for their services; that is, he provided for their basic needs-food, clothing, housing, recreation-as payment for their labor. Most commonly, however, the hacendado assigned each worker (and his family) a plot of land on the hacienda. The worker became combination laborer and tenant farmer. He worked the lands of the hacendado and, when time permitted, his own.
These tenant farmers rarely produced more than enough for bare subsistence. Whatever extra they did produce, they could sell-usually to the hacendado at prices well below the market value. Moreover, the hacendado extended credit to his tenants throughout the year-to buy food, tools, livestock, fodder, and seed. By the time the workers were ready to sell the goods they produced, they did not receive enough to cover the debt to the hacendado. The debt grew with each passing year and served to tie the worker permanently to the land and the landowner. More important, a son inherited his father's debt. In this manner, generations of hacienda workers were made dependent on the landowner, their master and provider.

New World Aristocrats

The history of Spain's colonial experience demonstrates that control of the labor force meant power and position in colonial society. This was true because the Spaniards, with their traditional aversion to manual labor, depended on Indians, mestizos, poor settlers, and later, black slaves to keep the colony operating. As the hacendados gathered more and more workers into their fold, they replaced conquerors and silver barons as the elite of the highly stratified social structure. Certainly by the end of the seventeenth century, but probably earlier, the hacendados dominated the society of New Spain as surely as they controlled the land. And by the time Mexico proclaimed her independence from Spain in 1821, most of the nation's land was in the hands of only ten thousand private owners (Preston, 1959: p. 591).
The hacendados formed a body of self-made noblemen and the display of their wealth and position in society exceeded even the most vulgar ostentation of the silver barons. The landowners decked themselves in the most splendid clothing they could acquire-in sharp contrast to the frequently ragged dress of the workers. They built great mansions on their haciendas-again, in contrast to the hovels and shacks of the hacienda laborers. Some of them maintained private armies, thus demonstrating their supremacy over the crown in their own territories. They were independent, yet they represented the epitome of tight control and power in the colonial world.

The hacienda created generations of New World aristocrats. Yet it was completely at odds with all the prevalent views of what constituted success. The hacienda was self-sufficient. It provided all that was necessary for its own survival. The goal, ostensibly, was profit. But it always produced below capacity. And much of the money it did make was spent on an unproductive display of wealth-the dress, house, and fabulous parties of the hacendado. It became an isolated bastion in the wilderness, intent not on the world that surrounded it, but on maintaining itself.

Indian Raids-Spanish Garrisons

The hacienda moved the colony northward, as the mines had done. In its own way, it represented the permanence of the Spanish presence in New Spain. But as the colony moved into the North, new forces threatened its existence. Hostile Indians began to attack the farthest frontier settlements, the isolated haciendas. Soon the Indians began to send raiding parties farther and farther south into the populated areas of New Spain. Often, the raiding parties came out of the territory of Arizona and New Mexico. Among the most ferocious of these Indians were the Apaches. They had apparently been a peaceful people in preceding generations. But the northward movement of the Spaniards made them fearful for the sovereignty of their own territory, and horses left behind by the Coronado expedition made them mobile. Their raids into New Spain frequently devastated small mining communities and haciendas. Soon, the roads throughout the northern reaches of the colony were unsafe for travel. The North was being effectively cut off from the administrative center of the colony, Mexico City, and continuing operation of the mines was threatened.

New Spain was one of the most important silver producers among the American colonies. The Spanish treasury depended heavily on silver to keep the country solvent, and protecting the mines became an issue of the greatest importance. Spain, therefore, took steps to protect the road north and, in so doing, added yet another element to the diversity of northern society. Forts and garrisons were built along the main routes and at the mines. And the soldiers who manned them joined the throngs of Spaniards moving northward. They often took their families with them and new communities sprang up around the forts.

Each garrison was staffed by about sixty Spanish soldiers. They were equipped with horses and firearms. However, their duties were far more diverse than mere soldiering. These men acted as policemen in rowdy mining and military communities; they served as guards and escorts for important persons traveling the dangerous road between Mexico City and the mines, and they were the mail carriers and messengers who kept open the lines of communication with colonial administrators.

The Indian raids continued, becoming more and more destructive as northern communities grew in size. It soon became apparent, even to the distant crown, that the soldiers could not provide sufficient protection. There were simply too many Indians, too many raids to be effectively stopped by a few widely scattered troops. But at the end of the sixteenth century, Spain-her sea power at low ebb, her treasury depleted, her ties with the New World growing weaker-could scarcely afford the cost of more soldiers and stronger fortifications. A new solution had to be found.

The most effective solution, it seemed, would be to create a buffer state. The crown reasoned that a colony north of the mining area would absorb the Indian attacks. It would act as a buffer, or cushion, between hostile Indians and the crucial mining communities.
Thus in 1595 the king authorized the settlement of a Spanish colony in the far North, to be called the Kingdom of New Mexico. Its purpose would be to bear the full burden of Indian hostility. A new chapter in the history of Spanish-speaking people in America was about to begin.

REFERENCE

Preston, James. Latin America. New York: The Odyssey Press, 1959.