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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers (51th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - February 2006 |
……..still, it was a commercial agriculture. The big, successful Haciendas developed on the fringes of the cities, becoming part of the fertile, agricultural zones. Just outside of Mexico City, Chalco was one, serving as its granary. Some fifty haciendas, both large and small, produced the corn consumed by the inhabitants of the metropolis. What was true of Chalco appeared again in the hinterlands around Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and other cities. From the start, too, an agriculture for export took hold. Cochineal, a red dye made from a bug on the maguey plant of Oaxaca and produced on Indian lands, found markets in the textile industry of Europe, as did a blue dye from the indigo plant. The cacao bean, the essence of chocolate, rewarded its planters handsomely, as did the sale of vanilla. Sugar, too, was sold abroad, although most of it stayed home.
Cattle and ship ranching went hand in glove with the hacienda. Cattle multiplied rapidly, first on the central plateau but, more and more, in the north. The plains of Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Sonora, had grass for cattle to fed on. Huge herds developed, some with as many as 150,000 head, while sheep by the millions grazed on the grassy stubble of Zacatecas. As in Castilla, the Mesta, an organization of stockmen, wielded power and influence. Out of this activity evolved the ranching world of charreadas (rodeos), charros (gentlemen horsemen), and vaqueros (cowboys), who, along with miners and missionaries, colonized the north.
The precipitous decline of the native population, according to one interpretation, distorted the economy of the seventeen century. For lack of labor, New Spain suffered a “century of depression”, as the colonial economy, stopped expanding both as a market and as a producer of goods. Indeed, a depression did strike, despite massive importations of African slaves to fill labor demands, primarily for sugar plantations and mines. The “century depression,” all the same, was hardly that: New Spain basked in prosperity until 1630, and again after 1670. Depression, moreover, had multiple causes, principally the woes of mining. The economy, true enough, revived only after the growth of the laboring population, still mainly Indian, but also with the recovery of mining, above all as a result of the use of mercury to separate silver ore from the chaff.
V
From antiquity, Spaniards had dwelt in towns and cities, and that is what they did in New Spain. “Ever since I came to this country,” Cortés said, “ I have tried to find a harbor on the coast where I might establish a settlement”; Cortés meant a town, where Spaniards could replant a way of life, as much for security as for cultural reasons. Cities, therefore, became the cornerstones of New Spain, where Spaniards established two types of them, one on the ruins of the old Indian sites (Mexico City comes to mind) and others as commercial hubs to supply the mining enclaves. As a rule of thumb, Spaniards dwelt in the cities; Indians, in pueblos in the countryside. The ruling class of the city and countryside, nonetheless, was one and the same: mine moguls, hacendados, merchants, and bureaucrats.
Cities were and amazingly transplant of Iberian society to the new world, reflecting faithfully the Spanish model. As in Europe, the rights and privileges of a town depended on a royal charter, the trade mark of municipal government in medieval Castilla. The urban designs of the Old World, above all Andalucía, dictated the blueprints of cities in New Spain. Around the main plaza stood the municipal buildings, the main temple, the monasteries and convents, and, always, the homes of the well-heeled. On their fringes lay the Indian ghettoes, called barrios by the Spaniards.
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Hacienda in Yucatán (17th C.) for the Henequen Production
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In the next issue we’ll continue with Chapter IV of this fascinating book: A NEW SPAIN (Miracles of Silver).
Prof. Germán Estrada
E-mail: estradanav@yahoo.com
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).
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 his website. |
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