The Political and Social Complexities of Spanish Rule - Term Paper Example

? Reign and Revolution in Mexico: The Political and Social Complexities of Spanish Rule The ancient Aztec civilization thathad established itself in the Valley of Mexico before 1200 fell prey to a mixture of circumstance, internal politics and military inferiority before the Spanish forces led by Hernan Cortes. It all came together very neatly for the conquistadors. Cortes appeared coincided with a year of Ce-Azatl, which imbued him with a divine aspect that overawed Moctezuma and his subjects. Timing appears to have been in Cortes’ favor – his arrival came at a time when the peoples who had long been subject to the Aztec empire were ripe for revolt, needing only the encouragement of a strong ally, both of which Cortes readily provided. Of course, the Spaniards’ military superiority is well documented. Moctezuma’s warriors were bewildered by the firepower Cortes’ men brought to bear and the Aztec population was decimated by the smallpox pandemic. It all happened with shocking speed: Cortes made landfall at the Gulf of Mexico in 1519; two years later, he and his men entered the smoking ruins of Tenochtitlan, masters of Mexico.1 In so short a time, the Aztec empire was completely shattered. “Conquered by Cortes, the Indians of central Mexico had to come to terms with a radically new society.”2 What would follow was a cauldron of ethnic, social and political change. The conquest of the Aztecs was the great drama that raised the curtain on Mexico’s colonial epoch. The Spaniards had adroitly forged alliances among the peoples of Central Mexico, yet these fared little better than their Aztec victims. The Tarascans, among others, benefited in the short term from the conquest of Tenochtitlan, but they were no more impervious to the ravages of smallpox than their ancient oppressors. They didn’t have long to wait before discovering that the Spanish, who had promised so much, were to become their new oppressors. 2 The first Audiencia, established by decree in 1527, established a pattern of corruption that would become a hallmark of the Spanish occupation. It was also illustrative of the struggle between church and government over a number of issues, not the least of which was the treatment of the natives. Juan de Zumarraga, first bishop of Mexico, wrote a letter to King Charles V of Spain complaining of the depredations committed by the administration of Nuno de Guzman. Zumarraga’s letter addressed everything from illegal land grabs to outright murder. He writes that since the Audiencia was established, “they have declared vacant many and very good encomiendas of Indians, more than thirty of them, either by exiling those who held them, or by confiscation”3 Zumarraga proceeded to list the encomiendas the Audiencia itself had bestowed on the native population. It got worse: Zumarraga went on to list breathtakingly immoral behavior by Guzman and his cronies. On one occasion, “the lords of Tlateloco of this city came to me weeping so bitterly that I was struck with pity for them; and they complained to me saying that the president and oidores were demanding of them their good-looking daughters, sisters, and female relatives.”4 Things had gotten so bad, Zumarraga reported, that an Audiencia official demanded that the Indians provide what amounted to a personal harem for Guzman. The president had also wasted little time engaging in a slave trade at the expense of the natives. Zumarraga reached the end of his rope when the Audiencia forced him to desist from acting in the capacity of defender of Indian rights. Eventually, Zumarraga’s complaints and the opposition of Guzman’s 3 political enemies, such as Cortes, were enough to convince the authorities of Guzman’s guilt. In 1538, he was arrested for treason and for abusing the government’s subjected Indian populations. One may question the veracity of some of Zumarraga’s charges, but there can be no doubt that Guzman and the oidores of the Audiencia had been told to treat the natives with respect and forbearance. Evidently, those who succeeded to power learned the lesson. The second Audiencia operated more in line with the crown’s wishes, working to protect the Indians from rapacious conquistadors such as Guzman, and restraining the power of the encomenderos and conquistadors.5 Nevertheless, the model for exploitation was firmly in place. Indeed, the guiding spirit of the Spanish venture in the new world centered on gain and conquest, the great motivators of conquistador behavior. Just as England would use the piratical activities of an incipient fleet to form a powerful Navy, the Spanish Crown leveraged the conquistadors and their penchant for war in order to spread the power of the king and the Catholic church into new lands, and plunder the riches to be found there. Given this cynical policy, it seems incongruous that the king, his successors and their governments would have repeatedly and naively relied on corrupt representatives in Mexico to exhibit moderate and Christian behavior. It is important to note that Madrid did, when properly motivated and convinced of the need, act to rein in its officials in Mexico and elsewhere in New Spain. This would eventually mean the ruling class in Mexico, the descendants of those soldiers who had secured new lands and wealth for Spain, would have 4 to be controlled and a new system implanted. “By the end of the century, with encomienda income fast declining in relation to other sources of colonial profit, the encomendero class was…politically subdued…6 A process which had begun in 1527 with the supplanting of Cortes had undergone a painful growth spurt in the evolution of Spanish rule in Mexico. The accession of Antonio de Mendoza to the viceroyalty in 1535 was, among other things, a move to consolidate Spain’s holdings in the new world, and to solidify Crown rule in an often chaotic and lawless situation. In truth, Mendoza was probably little more “enlightened” than Guzman or Cortes, but under his administration two universities formed on the Spanish model were established, and explorations as far afield as California and the Philippines were commissioned. When rebellion broke out among several Indian tribes, Mendoza was obliged to lead a large army composed of government troops and native levies against an insurgent force in the northern parts of Mexico. The Indian rebellion was dealt with harshly, which was common practice in Spanish Mexico, but Mendoza appears to have been successful at pacifying what had previously seemed an ungovernable situation. In addition to education (albeit a very Spanish and Catholic-centric notion of education), he aided the development of agriculture during his rule. However, he was loathe to enforce all of the New Laws imposed by the Crown in 1542. Mendoza’s use of reason in regard to the law which forbade the use of carriers mitigated a potentially volatile situation.7 A true political realist, Mendoza was skilled at navigating potentially incendiary situations, 5 which was badly needed in the decades after the depredations of the conquistadors and the first Audiencia. As such, his reign provided a badly needed respite during which the antagonisms between the government and the encomenderos could cool. The conflict between Spaniards of new and old Spain may have relaxed for a time, but the relationship between the conquerors of Mexico and the native Indian populations was seldom anything but charged and complex. Mexico presented the Catholic church with countless souls to indoctrinate into the faith. However, feelings toward the natives among priests and bishops sent to minister to the new flocks were mixed, and often in conflict with each other. Such a conflict among the clergy came to a head in the mid-16th century, when Father Fray Toribio de Motolinia wrote complaining of the attitude and actions of the Dominican Bartolome de Las Casas toward the Indians whom, Motolinia charged, Las Casas regarded as little more than beasts of burden. In his letter, Motolinia cites a particular incident in which Las Casas had donned his surplice and stole with the intent of baptizing an enthusiastic Indian who had proven adept at Catholic instruction. At the last minute, the bishop evidently decided against it and simply walked away, giving in to what Motolinia considered rank hypocrisy. “I then said to Las Casas: ‘So, Father, all the zeal and love which you say you have for the Indians ends with using them as carriers, and with going about writing of the Spaniards and abusing the Indians!’”8 The convoluted nature of the situation was hardly improved by the conflict between the orders and secular clergy, fought ostensibly over the saving of native souls. From a practical 6 standpoint, it was a pure power struggle. After the Ordenanza del Patronata of 1574 established episcopal control over the orders, an Indian congregation in Mexico City rose in opposition to the secular clergy, “hurling stones and demanding the return of the Franciscans, which they got.”9 Doubtless the Indians were also angered by the worldliness of the religious caste. The hypocrisy to which Motolinia referred in his letter became widespread as the exploitation that characterized the conquistador’s conquest and settlement of Mexico gripped the friars as well. Knight mentions that the acquisition of goods and land increasingly became the concern of the clergy, whose representatives went about in fancy carriages and adorned in sumptuous clothes and headwear.10 The church further aggravated its “public relations” problem by becoming involved in the hacienda system. The establishment of the haciendas transplanted, to an extent, the feudalistic European system of land management and labor control. It represented another step in the development of European control in Mexico, though it was less of a purely coercive situation than existed with the encomiendas. The haciendas and the nearby villages they controlled gradually developed a symbiotic relationship. Villagers provided a ready and available labor force. The economic situation required that “most haciendas…recruit gangs of temporary labourers (eventuales), and many developed stable, symbiotic relations with local villages in order to meet their needs.”11 Nevertheless, the granting of large haciendas to the clergy had the effect of blurring the line between the spiritual work of the church and the temporal pursuits of 7 what amounted to a large and affluent planter class. This brought the church in Mexican New Spain into conflict with both the natives and members of the Spanish aristocracy there. As the haciendas increased and spread out over vast areas, the haciendados who operated them wielded ever greater power over the villagers who lived in their shadow. These powerful landowners increasingly found themselves in positions of authority such as lawmakers, judges and magistrates, posts that often came in the form of patronage from among the hacienda power structure itself.12 The inexorable spread of the large ranches made peons out of many among the indigenous populations and cut many off from water supplies and significant swathes of cultivable land. Peasant dissatisfaction with the inequities of this system led to a growing unrest throughout the country. By the 18th century, the gulf between rich and poor, between the powerful and unempowered, had widened considerably. This would have dramatic ramifications for Mexico’s class structure and, ultimately, its ties with Spain. Economic and social pressures became manifest in 1799 when impoverished criollos rose against the ruling native Spanish caste, a precursor of the events of 1810. The failed “Conspiracy of the Machetes” sought to rid Mexico of Peninsulares, capture the viceroy and other government officials and cause widespread rebellion against Spain. The conspirators were eventually incarcerated and the threat ended, but the symptoms of widespread unrest couldn’t be so easily swept away. The edifice of Spanish power in Mexico was weakened not only by internal economic and social factors, but by Spain’s own war for survival against the threat posed by the armies of France and Napoleon’s ambitions in the Peninsula. The French invasion in 8 1808 toppled the old Bourbon dynasty and Napoleon placed his brother on the throne. With Spain under foreign influence, a new criollo-led uprising gathered momentum. Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo, a profane criollo priest fomented rebellion among members of his own class, the native Indian populations and Mexicans of mixed Spanish-Indian birth. All of the grievances that the Mexican peasantry had nursed for generations, anger over burdensome taxes levied by Spanish officials; oppression of Indians and mestizos; and the heavy imbalance in land ownership; came to the fore. Hidalgo and a populist rebel army took control of local militia stores and went on a rampage of destruction, seizing property and killing many wealthy colonists. Hidalgo was eventually captured and executed, but as is often the case in popular rebellions, he and his followers had struck a powerful chord among the general population. What became a nationwide struggle for independence began as a truly native expression of anger among mestizos and criollos against European mastery and exploitation. As such, the revolution had a socially leveling effect, at least in a theoretical sense. One especially significant result came in the early stages of the revolution, when Morelos y Pavon assembled the Congress of Chilpancinga, which drew up a constitution that called for equality and the removal of class distinctions that had for so long disaffected the native populations.13 The Chilpancinga document drew on philosophies and writings that had inspired revolutionary movements in America and France. Mexico’s revolutionary intellectuals drove the issue home, setting the stage for new ideas of political freedom and social equality among all classes. Bibliography Knight, Alan. Mexico: The Colonial Era. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Simpson, Lesley Byrd. Letter from Fr. Toribio Motolinia to Charles V, 1555. The Encomienda in Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1950. Simpson, Lesley Byrd. Letter from Fr. Juan de Zumarraga to Charles V, Aug. 27, 1529. The Encomienda in Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico. 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