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000968 Visit since May 31, 2004
| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY, a History
of The Mexican people (Chapter 1) |
by Prof. German Estrada
June, 2004 |
THE FOREFATHERS (part
11) continues..
....... Just the same, the Reconquista
passed on an ambivalent inheritance. To oust the
Moors, the Catholic kings, requiring popular backing
for their effort, gave certain rights to the peasants
and granted charters to cities. However, ridding
the country of the infidel, especially in Castilla,
required the aid of the nobility, which was rewarded
with huge grants of land, thus strengthening a latifundia
system dating from the Romans. On the other hand,
the new wool trade spurred commerce along the Cantabrian
coast, transforming Burgos and sister northern towns
into thriving entrepots while promoting the growth
of shipping. But sheep ranching on the central highlands,
which made possible the wool industry, also helped
to nourish latifundia.
When Isabella and Ferdinand
joined the two crowns, Spain had five major provinces:
Castilla, Aragón,
Navarra, Granada and Portugal. Castilla, the largest,
controlled about two-thirds of the Iberian península.
Some five to six million people lived there, while
Aragón had but one million and Navarra fewer.
After 1640, Portugal went its own way. The Kingdom
of Castilla of Isabel la Católica was land of
vast states in the hands of a backward aristocracy,
especially in Andalucia, the land of birth of a majority
of those who settled in Mexico. Less than 3 percent
of the population owned 97 percent of the lands of
Castilla; a tiny group of families, relying on the
practice of mayorazgo , or entail, controlled
more than half of them. The nascent burguesía (bourgeoisie)
of the northern cities could not challenge the hidalgos
of the south, the gentlemen who never soiled their
hands with labor or business affairs. By contrast,
the peasantry, perhaps 80 percent of Spain's population,
fared less and less well. By the second half of the
sixteen century, there were more peasants and fewer
public lands, tierras baldías , to
occupy; population growth had outstripped land supply.
As this occurred, a horde of mendigos , beggars
began to wander about the country. Castilla obviously
sat on rickety agrarian foundations.
Castilla, warts and all, was
still the more dynamic of the Spanish kingdoms, thanks
mainly to its wool trade and its textile industry,
centered in the towns of Segovia, Avila, and Cuenca.
Until the fifteenth century, the tiny kingdom of
Aragón, the royal
home of Ferdinand, which embraced Cataluña and
Valencia (the Levantine States), had flirted with glory.
Cataluña had led outburst of overseas trade,
and Aragón enjoyed a lucrative commerce based
on the exports of textiles. Merchants from Cataluña
competed with their rivals from Venice and Genoa for
the spice trade from the Orient, shipped Catalán
iron to buyers from abroad, and sold their textiles
in Sicily and Africa.
Trade and commerce encouraged the rise of a dynamic burguesía in
Aragón.
The rural nobility, far less powerful, had to take
backseat to the nascent capitalists of the cities,
who exacted from the crown a constitutional system,
Including a cortes, a sort
of parliament, that voiced their hopes and aspirations.
The merchants and shipping magnates of Aragón,
along with the clergy of Castilla, casting about
for heathens to baptize, cajole Isabella and Ferdinand
into supporting the scheme of Christopher Columbus
to sail westward to reach the Indies. The capitalists
of the port cities saw opportunities for profit in
the blueprints of the Genoese captain. Source: From the book Triumphs
and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his
author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization.
(W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London). We'll continue with this fascinating
book.
estradanav@yahoo.com
Prof. Germán
Estrada is the author of the best selling book,
"México
Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know
About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto
Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books,
Books as well as directly from the author by internet.
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