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New Spain
Viceregal rule for 300 years
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| Cortés Flag |
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Sex, and please forgive me for bringing this to your attention, proceeds birth. So it was with the Mexico we know today. The coitusists were none other than Cortés and a lady known to history as La Malinche. Mexican school children are taught to think of her as a wicked traitor, which really is unfair. She had, after all, been given to Cortés as a trophy following a battle on the Gulf Coast in what is now the saucy state of Tabasco. She was loyal to her new master. Very loyal. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Cortés had led his merry band -- some 560 men and 16 horses -- out of Cuba in defiance of orders. He and they – the men, not the horses -- sought gold and glory. Most had crossed the Atlantic hoping for riches only to arrive in what we once called to West Indies and find that the riches had all been grabbed up. That being so, Westward Ho! First stop was Cozumel. The Conquistadors’ fleet had been driven away from Tulum, a Maya city one Spaniard described as “grander than Seville.” Grander, but unfriendly. Back then, tourists were not welcome.
Somewhere along what is now known as the Maya Riviera, the fleet picked up a shipwrecked priest. The padre had been held as a Maya slave, and had learned the Maya language. He also knew there was no gold in those parts, but told tales of the fabulously rich Aztec capital, Tenochitlan, far to the north (or west, to be more precise; look at a map).
The Cortés fleet of ten ships made its way along the coast, swinging past the Yucatan Peninsula out of the Caribbean, into the Gulf. Then came that battle in Tabasco with Malinche as the prize. Tabasco is about as far north as the Mayas ever got. The Aztecs, too, came there in search of chocolate. Cocoa beans, a local crop, served as currency. Mexico gave the world both chocolate and vanilla, but that is another story.
Malinche could speak not only Maya but also Nahuatl, the tongue of the Aztecs. She could talk to the shipwrecked priest in Maya, the language he had learned from his captors, and he could relay her words to Cortés in Spanish. What she said may have not been fit for the confessional, but when the time came to parlay with the Aztecs, she would listen, would repeat what they had to say so that the cleric could then relay it all to Cortés in Spanish. You may well wonder what was lost in translation.
The tale of the Conquest is worthy of a movie. Cortés landed his men near what is now Veracruz, which is the Gulf Coast harbor closest to what is now Mexico City. Legend has it that he ordered his ships burned, making it clear there was no way to get back to Cuba. Actually, he had them scuttled. If things did not work out, probably they could have been floated again.
The tiny, dwindling army – some had died in battle, others succumbed to tropical diseases -- managed to make its way across the Sierra Madre, fighting off challenges and winning allies who had been conquered by the Aztecs. Once they arrived at his capital – a city covering an island in a lake -- the deeply religious Moctezuma welcomed the Spaniards as gods. The gods, for their part, were horrified. Tenochitlan may have been a new world Venice, more glorious than any city in Spain at the time but it was horrible, too. Satanic images caked with human blood glared down at the Europeans. Human sacrifice was a daily event. For devout Christians, this was Hell.
For their part, many Aztecs saw these gods as devils. The supposed Quetzalcoatl was nothing more than a squat martinet who bled, urinated and defecated like any other human. He never washed. He stank. He depended on a woman to speak for him. By the time the Cortés band reached the Aztec capital, apparently Malinche had mastered enough Spanish that she no longer needed the shipwrecked priest.
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| Riviera mural |
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Moctezuma, considered by his own people to be a living deity, received the Spaniards with lavish courtesy. The Spaniards, in turn, once inside the palace, seized the Aztec ruler and made him their prisoner. The Spaniards demanded gold as ransom. They got it and might simply have taken it, gone back to Veracruz and set sail for Cuba, but some unhappy native hurled a stone at Moctezuma, killed him, and all the hell in Hell broke loose. The Spaniards, lugging all the gold they could carry, were chased out of the island city. Many fell from the causeway and drowned. Once across, Cortés, seemingly defeated, is said to have wept beneath what is called the Tree of the Sad Night. The tree still stands.
Quickly the Conquistadors rallied, fought back, built boats to sail across the lake and with bacteria to aid them, triumphed. Boats, bacteria and 200,000 Indian allies. Be aware that there are some details missing here, but you get the general idea. Mexican wits are fond of saying that the Indians defeated the Aztecs and won Mexico for Spain. Three hundred years later, they add, Spaniards defeated Spain and won back for Mexico its independence. But Spain did rule what is now Mexico for three hundred years.
The first question was what to do with it.
The Indian enemies of the Aztecs might have triumphed long before, but, until Cortés arrived, they could never agree on who would be their leader. The Spaniards, too, were adept at quarrelling among themselves. Once the Conquistadors had conquered, flunkies back in Cuba tried to take their prize from them. At times, Cortés was fighting a two-front war.
Don Hernán was obliged to make his way back across the Atlantic where he boasted that he had won for his sovereign the biggest and brightest jewel in the crown. But by now King Charles I of Spain was Emperor Charles V of Europe. True, he did not rule all of Europe, but that was his intention. That was the idea behind the Holy Roman Empire. Charley was busy fighting both the Pope and Protestant Reformation and had no time to worry about all these new lands across the sea. He shut up Cortés with an aristocratic title, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca. That valley was more than a valley. It included just about the entire Aztec Empire beyond Mexico City. The territory was bigger than Spain itself. And in Mexico City, too, Cortés was the top dog.
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| Cortés Palace - Cuernavaca |
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Not that he stayed there. After his victory over the Aztecs, Cortés led one expedition into Central America and another to the wilds of Baja California. In between, he seemed to be commuting to Spain, demanding his rights. In 1547 he died there at the age of 63. Some have compared him to Alexander the Great, but official Mexico maintains he was more like Attila the Hun. His only monument is a palace where he never lived in Cuernavaca. A mural within – paid for by an American ambassador – depicts Hernán Cortés as a fiend.
Far worse was Pizarro in Peru or Nuño de Guzmán, who spread terror and devastation just north and west of those lands awarded to Cortés. But there is some justice in the world. Guzmán was sent back to Spain in chains. Down in Yucatan, two generations of Montejos struggled to defeat the Mayas. Although the Montejos managed to settle two or three cities, the Mayas never truly were conquered.
As for Cortés and his cutthroats, they were not cut out to be landed gentry. Their reward consisted of lands that could become plantations along with Indians to work them under something like a trust arrangement. In return for Indian property and Indian labor, these new squires would convert the Indians to Christianity and save them from damnation and the horrors of Hell.
The Conquistadors were less than ecstatic about all this, although some settled in on their estates and built themselves mansions. A few of these now are resort hotels, including one lavish spread given to a Cortés lieutenant who agreed to marry Malinche. Sugar was the big cash crop. The real conquest, however, was carried out not by soldiers but by friars and priests. Everywhere you drive in Mexico you see there monuments. Cathedrals, churches and chapels, many resembling fortified castles, soar over even the remotest villages.
The most remarkable of these shrines, the one that changed the life of the nation and the one that grips it still, stood atop Tepeyac Hill on the north side of Mexico City. The original structure was replaced time and again by something bigger and more grander. It was on Tepeyac, ten years after the fall of the Aztec Empire, in December, 1531, that a recently converted Indian -- his new Christian name Juan Diego -- traipsed all the way to the home of the newly-arrived bishop and reported that the Virgin Mary was asking for a church to be built where a shrine to the mother of the ancient gods had stood. To prove what he said was true, Juan Diego explained that the Virgin had instructed him on that wintry day to gather roses and carry them to the bishop. He brought the roses in his tunic. When he opened the garment to display them, the Virgin’s image – looking more Aztec than Jewish -- was painted on the cloth. Today what is said to be that tunic can be seen, handsomely framed, above an altar in the Basilica of Guadalupe.
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| Perhaps understandably, skeptics have their doubts about all this. The Catholic hierarchy itself was slow to react. The first shrine erected was neither big nor impressive. Not that it mattered. According to church documents, within a decade more than nine million Indians, hearing the story, had accepted conversion. Even so, nearly two centuries would pass before the site got anything like a decent church. This was, after all, an Indian thing and in those early years the lordly Spanish sneered at anything Indian. Times changed, but slowly. It was only in 2002 that the Catholic Church canonized Juan Diego. So why, you may ask, Guadalupe? The Spanish have their own Lady of Guadalupe, but what has she to do with Mexico? Not much. The way the Church explains it, the Virgin spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl, identifying herself both as the Mother of God and “Cuatlasupe,” or “snake stomper.” Juan Diego repeated her words. The bishop and his priests misunderstood.
And why “Snake stomper?” Snakes had been worshipped by the natives. A feathered serpent was the symbol of Quetzalcoatl. But Christians hated snakes. “Snake stomper” is what they wanted.
For the next three centuries and more, the Church would govern what was the New Spain. The system worked out very well for the monarch across the sea who at home depended on the Inquisition to keep the peace. The Catholic Church is far from the monolith it sometimes appears to be. Within months after the Conquest, the first dozen Augustinian monks arrived in New Spain. They were followed by the Dominicans and the Franciscans and finally by the Jesuits. And then there were the seculars, parish priests belonging to no particular order. Priests and friars neglected to love each other the way Christians should.
Each group was assigned a territory where it baptized the newborn, married the lovelorn and buried the dead. Clerics ran schools and hospitals, were responsible for charity and, if effect, carried out all the basic functions of government. There were, to be sure, viceroys and governors and mayors, but their main occupation seemed to be encouraging, then settling disputes between the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans and the secular priests.
The clergy came across the sea to stay. The viceroys and other royal officials seldom remained very long. It would not do to have them build up any kind of power base. They might forget who was king. Indeed, it is amazing how Spain held on to its vast empire for so long. But then viceroys and their ilk came, as Bernal Díaz, one of the Conquerors, declared about his own motivation, “To serve God and the king and then to go home rich.”
Their salaries would not make them rich, but there were other ways. The royal government could insist on licenses and permits and fees for virtually everything. In the Anglo-Saxon world at the time, it might be said that anything was allowed that was not specifically prohibited. Where Spanish was spoken, everything was prohibited unless the law said it was allowed. For a price, anything could be allowed. A tradition was born.
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| Flag of New Spain |
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The search for gold and souls to save continued. Expeditions were sent north into what is now the western United States. No fabled seven cities were found, but the lands nonetheless were claimed by Spain. Not until the 1700s would missionaries move into those territories.
Far more successful was the Conquest of the Philippines. Not that anyone found gold, but a trade route to the Orient was opened and that was worth several fortunes. For nearly three centuries Spain had a virtual monopoly of commerce with the Far East. Spain alone, or New Spain, really, produced silver, and Asia craved silver even more than gold.
Silver made Spain, and New Spain, among the richest lands in the world. The most enchanting cities to visit in Mexico today are the colonial cities, monuments to the wealth of the silver age: Taxco, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Alamos and their neighbors like San Miguel de Allende and Queretaro. There were others like Puebla, famed for its ceramics in an era when ceramics were to the world what plastic is today. Campeche and Oaxaca produced dyestuffs (brazilwood in the case of Campeche, cochineal, or pulverized insects in the case of Oaxaca), worth more ounce for ounce than even silver, but silver is what oiled the colonial economy. Guanajuato alone was said in many years alone to account for one third of the world’s silver production.
For Spain, this was a disaster. With wealth flowing into the country from the Americas, there was no need to develop any industry. Spain could buy what other lands manufactured. Never needing to make anything itself, Spain failed to industrialize. Although Charles V divided the Hapsburg realms, bequeathing Central Europe to his nephew, son Philip in Spain built up the most extensive empire the world had ever known. True, the Netherlands rebelled, Portugal was unhappy and the Italians restive. Philip squandered his fortune to keep them all in his grip, along with the Americas and the Philippines, then flirted with insolvency while attempting to crush both Islam and Protestantism. In launching his famous Spanish Armada, he finally bankrupted his kingdom. Spain was both the heart of a mighty empire and home to some of the poorest people in Europe.
Neighboring France took advantage of this distress by replacing the Hapsburg monarchy in Spain with the Bourbons, whom the Spanish called Borbons. And when Napoleon replaced a Borbon king with a Bonaparte, his brother, the colonial era in the Americas ended.
Even before Napoleon crowned himself in Paris, there was trouble in the New World. Although Spain manufactured virtually nothing, it nonetheless prohibited its colonies from making anything, or even growing grapes for wine. Everything had to be imported. This caused resentment. In addition, Spain reserved all the main bureaucratic posts in its colonies for Spaniards born in Spain. The Peninsulars, as they were called, were presumed to be more loyal. Like the British who went out to India, the Peninsulars were expected to serve their time and come home. Those skilled in collecting bribes and commissions would come home rich.
The Creoles, Spaniards born in the Americas, were very much second class subjects, not that anyone was really first class. Anyone of mixed blood counted for nothing at all. New Spain was racist in the extreme. To some extent, pure Indians were legally equals of the Creoles. While banned from entering European domains, Europeans were barred from entering theirs. Everyone not European or Indian was a “caste,” classified as being half-white, half-Indian or half-black, half-Indian or one quarter this and three quarters that. More than half-a-dozen official classifications existed. The son of a white male and an Indian woman ranked much, much higher than the mixed blood offspring of a Peninsular or Creole woman and an Indian or black male.
Even then, those in the higher strata were reminded how low that strata was. In 1767 a viceroy summed it up very nicely: “Once and for all the subjects of the grand monarch who occupies the throne of Spain must remember that they were born to obey and remain silent, to neither discuss nor opine upon the high affairs of government.”
That was before the revolution in the British colonies to the north, but the subjects of the grand monarch were allowed to learn little about that when it did occur. New Spain was as sealed off from the outside world as North Korea is today. Jesuits in 1767 had just been expelled from all of the Spanish Empire. France and Portugal had banished them earlier. The Spanish Inquisition continued on as the thought police.
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| Charles IV |
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That the Spanish viceroy even had to admonish the subjects of the grand monarch gives some indication that the native born were becoming restless. Mexico City glittered, probably outshining Madrid itself in the 18th Century. Art and literature flourished. One of the greatest poets ever to write in the Spanish language, however, found herself forced to enter a convent. She is remembered by her religious name, Sor (Sister) Juana Inés de la Cruz. Napoleon deposed Fernando VIII and placed brother Joseph on the throne. That way, the French Emperor assumed he could get his hands of all that silver being produced across the sea, silver that would help pay for his wars. Joe Bonaparte, however, was no grand monarch. Both Creoles and Peninsulars wanted their real king back. Just why is hard to fathom. Ferdinand really could have used a semester or two in charm school, but across the Atlantic, no one cared about that.
The famous Cry of Independence – El Grito -- repeated the evening of September 15 every year by Mexican presidents, governors, mayors and anyone else who can grab a flag, was, in fact, no cry for independence at all. A parish priest in the rather unimportant village of Dolores near Guanajuato rang a church bell at dawn on September 16 and shouted something like, “Long Live Fernando VII.” He snatched up a standard bearing the image of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, making it Mexico’s first flag.
The cry now, with the words changed, is shouted out the night before because no one wants to wait around until sunup. Also, September 15 was the birthday of Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico for 30 years at the end of the 19th century and now is described in government school books as a cruel dictator. It would not be wise while in Mexico to dwell upon this bit about Don Porfirio, nor that stuff about King Fernando. The flag bearing the Virgin might still be waived, but we have all these provisions separating church and state. The Virgin has been replaced by the Aztec Eagle.
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| Alhondiga - Guanajuato |
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That parish priest who waived that flag, rang that bell and cried out for the restoration of the legitimate Spanish monarchy was Miguel Hidalgo. He is regarded, for some reason, as first of the heroes of the Independence Struggle. Some would say he nearly destroyed it. Hidalgo raised an army of rabble, slaughtered the Peninsulars -- and, no doubt, many Creoles-- in prosperous, silver-mining Guanajuato, and terrified all who might be terrorized in the rest of New Spain. After some months, Hidalgo was tracked down by royalist troops, captured, tried and shot. Another priest, José María Morelos, took his place. Morelos really was the one who came up with the idea of independence. He organized a congress, which declared that Mexico no longer belonged to the Spanish crown. Slavery was to be abolished, racial distinctions ended and Spaniards invited to leave. Such measures would take effect, of course, only after Morelos’ forces triumphed. Morelos, too, was caught and shot.
The curious thing is that Mexico already was virtually independent. It had been since 1808, even before Hidalgo started shouting. The Peninsulars had bundled off the royally appointed viceroy and named their own man to the job. Later, they named the archbishop to take his place. What they wanted was to keep things as they were. King Joseph Bonaparte, they feared, was a Liberal.
For a while things indeed were kept as they had been. Across the Atlantic, Napoleon also had been caught, although he was not shot. Brother Joseph got himself out of Madrid and over to New Jersey for a while. Ferdinand was back on his throne, just as Hidalgo had wanted. There appeared to be no reason to keep on fighting. An amnesty was offered the rebels and most accepted it. Only two insurgent bands remained. Vicente Guerrero led one in the hot country near Acapulco. On the other side of the country, Guadalupe Victoria refused to give in. Both were more a nuisance than a threat.
But now the Creoles were stirring and becoming restless. Old Spain had ruled New Spain for nearly three centuries with no need of any army. Only in 1794, after the French lopped off the head of their king, did a nervous viceregal government start recruiting soldiers. The army, while small, provided a career of sorts for young men of Spanish blood born in America. The top officers, naturally, were natives of Spain.
Creoles did most of the actual fighting against rebels during the decade-long war for independence. Apparently, somewhere along the way, a few wondered what they had been fighting for. Or realized what they had been fighting for. A system that guaranteed no Creole ever would rise in the ranks very far.
In 1820, Agustin Iturbide, a handsome, ambitious Creole brigadier, convinced his fellow officers to switch sides. His brigadier rank, after all, was temporary. Once the last of the rebels were snuffed out, Iturbide could be expected to be reinstated as maybe nothing more than a major. This inspired him to get together with Guerrero. The two of them joined forces. Once more New Spain was declared to be independent. It would be independent Mexico now. Independent, but a Catholic monarchy ruled over by whoever the King of Spain might designate. Indeed, it was thought, the king might designate himself.
Timing is everything. Fernando VIII, once back on his throne, had ruled, or attempted to rule, as an absolute monarch. Many of his loyal subjects wanted none of that. No more divine right of kings in Spain. While battling Napoleon and his brother, the Spaniards had needed no royal direction and they wanted none now. Civil war erupted once again and ended only when the king agreed to a constitution. He was unhappy about that, and his colonial subjects knew it. So did his viceroy, who signed a treaty recognizing Mexican independence and inviting Fernando to come over and rule as emperor.
Emperor has a nice ring to it. Back when Charlemagne restored -- in theory, anyway -- the Roman Empire, the emperor was to be the maximum secular authority, the king of kings, while the Pope was to hold the ultimate spiritual power. Things never worked out quite that way, but Napoleon hoped he was going to set things straight, establishing himself as the emperor to whom kings reported. So for Fernando, the title Emperor of Mexico might have had a certain élan.
Perhaps, but the Spanish sovereign decided to stick with being a king. A counter coup in his favor abolished all that nonsense about a constitution and, as far as he was concerned, Mexico remained his anyway. No viceroy had the authority to sign away royal lands.
Obviously, with Fernando opposed, no Borbon nor Bourbon could accept the crown of Mexico nor could the scion of any other European family without infuriating the legitimate ruler of Spain. Mexico was not about to yield on independence, but it needed a volunteer to sit on the new imperial throne. Agustin Iturbide agreed to allow himself to be persuaded to accept the job.
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