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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers (52th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - March 2006 |
….Mexico City, the capital of New Spain, led the parade, followed by Puebla, Querétaro, Valladolid, and, a bit later, Guadalajara. Whatever the attractions of the latecomers, they were no match for Mexico City, which was, by the early seventeen century, testified a visiting Spaniard, “the Athens of America” a “literary metropolis”….famed for its schools, the sophistication of its citizens and for the meticulous Spanish spoken. “Thomas gage, an English friar who saw Mexico City in 1625, compared it to Venice, different merely because “Venice sits upon the sea water and Mexico upon a lake.” Travelers entered via causeways linked to a grid of streets each wide enough for three or more carriages to drive abreast. The Plaza Mayor, or Zócalo, lay at the heart of the city, while the government buildings, among them the palace of the viceroy and the cathedral, fronted it. Around and in back of the Zócalo were the other buildings of church and state. Squat houses built of stone enclosing verdant gardens fronted on the principal avenues, the abodes of the distinguished families. To Bernardo de Balbuena, a lyric bard, “a thousand lovely canals, teeming with long, narrow boats, veritable mine-hoards of supplies, goods, and singular articles for the shops, twist[ing] and turn[ing] delightfully like crystalline serpents through spacious streets,” bestowed color and glamour on Mexico City.
The biggest city in the Western Hemisphere, Mexico City had 200,000 inhabitants, who formed a kaleidoscope of skin colors. Europeans, mostly Spaniards, numbered 72,000, fewer than half of them women. Over a third of the European in New Spain lived in Mexico City. Indians totaled 80,000, and Africans and mulattoes, both slave and free, 10,000. Mestizos, who ran the gamut of skin colors, made up the rest. The richest families of New Spain made their homes in Mexico City, just a short distance away from the hovels of indigent Indians, blacks, and mestizos. While upper-class women “ate dirt in order to stay thin and pale of skin,” down the street foul-smelling “dens of iniquity” dispensed pulque to the besotted. Every quarter, every street, had a pulquería. No one worried about the gap between the rich and the impecunious, while a middle class, the emerging in western Europe, was wanting.
Founded in 1532, Puebla City ranked next in importance. Lying at the heart of one of the richest agricultural zones, Puebla flourished until well into the next century. From the start, it was a Spanish city, the offspring of the second audiencia, which gave Spanish vagabonds, then very numerous in New Spain, small plots of land; they transformed the Puebla region into a granary for Mexico City.
Established in 1541, Guadalajara developed as an assemblage of flat, adobe houses sitting on a less fertile plain. Set apart from other cities by the absence of roads, Guadalajara thrived as a commercial and administrative entrepôt, but was known also for its fine schools. No gold or silver was discovered nearby, although as the capital of the province of Nueva Galicia it profited from the mines of Guanajuato and Zacatecas. Guadalajara’s neighbors Valladolid as well as Querétaro, in the Bajío, began as commercial hubs.
Veracruz, the oldest city and the chief port of New Spain, lay on the Gulf of Mexico. Hot and muggy most of the year, it came alive when the fleet from Spain dropped anchor in its harbor, when merchants from Mexico City arrived with money to spend. Incoming viceroys, archbishops, and diverse royal dignitaries made their entrance into New Spain by way of Veracruz, often before reception committees from Mexico City
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Pre-Hispanic Mexico City Mural with Iztaccihuatl and Popocatépetl Volcanoes
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Panoramic view of the Zócalo with the Cathedral
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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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