Life Under Spanish Rule
The Spaniards did not wait long before rebuilding Tenochtitlan. They put up Roman Catholic churches where pyramids once stood. Fine Spanish homes replaced Aztec palaces. Spanish style plazas, or central squares, now dotted the city. The fallen Aztec capital had become Mexico City, the capital of New Spain. For the next 300 years, Mexico was officially known as New Spain.
This was only the beginning of the changes the Spanish victory brought. In a short time, the culture of New Spain was as much like Spanish culture as the conquistadors, or the conquerors, could make it.
The Wealth of New Spain
The conquistadors hoped to get rich as quickly as possible. They wanted wealth for themselves and for Spain. Yet they captured little treasure when the city finally fell. Most of the gold lay at the bottom of Lake Texcoco. The conquerors, therefore, looked to the land for wealth. They wanted to start plantations and ranches in Mexico. They would then sell their sugar cane, cotton, wool and cattle hides to people in Spain.
The King of Spain gave Cortés and his soldiers encomiendas, or land grants. An encomienda included the right to use all of the Indians who lived on that land as workers. In return for this privilege, the conquistadors were supposed to Christianize the Indians and supply them with housing and food.
From the start, the Indians were treated as little more than slaves. The Spanish cared more about quick profits than the health of their workers. They pushed the Indians to exhaustion. Thousands died from overwork. Many more died from diseases the Spanish unknowingly brought to the Americas.
By 1550, the Spanish were so concerned with the high death rate among the Indians that the King changed the work rules. He set up a new system called the repartimiento system. Now every Indian man had to work only 45 days a year on Spanish farms, ranches, or mines. They were also to be paid for their work and treated fairly. In practice, however, the Spaniards pushed the Indians as hard as ever. This was particularly true of those who owned mines.
By the middle of the 1500s, the Spaniards realized that the real wealth of New Spain was not in the land but in the resources that lay beneath that land. Silver and other metals were now the source of much of Mexico’s wealth.
It was the Indians who paid the price for this wealth. They were forced to climb down notched logs into the stifling heat of the mines. They then had to carry up heavy loads of ore in the very blankets they slept in at night. The dark, damp mines turned into graves for many Indians. Some died in explosions. Others drowned when the tunnels flooded. The poor food and long working hours led to an early death for many others. The entrances to some mines were marked by a white ring of human skeletons.
While Spain’s rulers grew rich from the silver of New Spain, they were not completely blind to the suffering of the Indians. They sent the Roman Catholic priests to care for the Indians and to protect them against the conquerors.
The Colonial Church
Roman Catholic priests were present in Mexico at the time of the conquest. The five priests who accompanied Cortés to Tenochtitlan would gather huge crowds of conquered Indians and baptize them as Christians. Since the Indians did not understand what was happening, the priests had only limited success.
Within a few years, the priests were struggling to learn Indian languages. They hoped that if the Indians understood their words, they would be eager to accept the Christian religion.
During the 300 years of Spanish rule, the Roman Catholic Church became very powerful in Mexico. Church leaders built about 12,000 churches and brought millions of men, women, and children in to those churches. They also built and ran hospitals and even a few banks.
Priests and nuns were also the most important teachers in New Spain. Some ran the schools that served wealthy Spaniards. Others taught poor Indian children. Still others worked at universities. By 1551, Mexico had its first university. Like other schools, it too was run by the Catholic Church.
As education grew in New Spain, so did art, science, and literature. Priests wrote many of the early histories of the colony. Nuns were expected to play a less public role. Yet perhaps the greatest writer in all of New Spain was a nun. Her name was Sor (sister) Juana Ines de la Cruz.
In an age when even the wealthiest women received little or no schooling, Sor Juana astonished Mexican society with her knowledge and wisdom. She wrote plays and poems. In many of the poems, she mourned the unequal position of women in Mexican society. Sor Juana devoted her life to studying and writing. At a time when books were very expensive even in Spain, she managed to build a library with over 4,000 volumes.
The Social Pyramid
Gradually, the Spanish were building a new way of life in Mexico. It was a way of life in which everyone had a fixed place. Imagine a pyramid on which all of the people in New Spain were arranged. At the top of the pyramid were people born in Spain. They were called peninsulares because Spain is on the Iberian peninsula. The peninsulares controlled the church, government, and most businesses in New Spain. There were never many peninsulares in the country at any one time. Most returned to Spain after making their fortunes in the Americas.
Spaniards born in Mexico were called criollos. Their Mexican birth put them below the peninsulares on the pyramid. Although many criollos became wealthy ranchers, farmers, or miners, they were not allowed to hold important jobs in the government and church.
Below the criollos were the mestizos. Mestizos had both Spanish and Indian ancestors. Most were small farmers or workers on the big plantations owned by the criollos. Next on the pyramid were African slaves. Because the Africans were skilled in crafts the Spanish needed, they ranked a little above the Indians.
At the very bottom of the pyramid were the Indians, the largest group of all. Before the conquest, there may have been as many as 20 million Indians in Mexico alone. Within a century, their numbers fell to less than one million. This may be the sharpest population decline in human history. Yet the Spanish were never able to destroy the culture of the Indians. It still survives today.
Reading Guide – Please answer the following question, in complete sentences, in your notebook.
1. What did the conquistadors hope to gain from Mexico? Where did they have to turn to find it?
2. Explain encomiendas and how they affected the Spanish and the Indians.
3. Explain the repartimiento system and why it was set up. Did it achieve its goal?
4. Where did the Spanish turn next to find wealth and what role did the Indians play in this new stage?
5. Explain three ways that the colonial church influenced Mexico.
6. Who was Sor Juana and why was she important?
7. Draw Mexico’s social pyramid and give a brief description of each of the groups.
8. List two facts from the reading that would support the statement “the Spaniards did a lot to help the native peoples of Mexico.”
9. List two facts from the reading that would support the statement “the Spaniards acted with greed and selfishness and ruined the lives of the native peoples of Mexico.”