GOLDEN EYES OF THE CONDOR: THE SPANISH COLONIAL

PERIOD OF NEW SPAIN (MEXICO) 1521-1821

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Scholar in Residence and Chair of the Department of Chicana/o and Hemispheric Studies,
Western New
Mexico University

T
he facile description of Spain in America is to characterize the Spanish
enterprise in the Americas as a relentless search for gold, failing to
note the extent of Spanish settlement in the American hemisphere.
Admittedly the Spanish search for the mineral wealth of the “New World”
was a paramount motivation but so was territoriality and national purpose.
Spain’s global reach at the end of the 15th century and its extension in the
16th century can be likened to the American extension of its territory in the
19th century “from sea to shining sea” propelled by Manifest Destiny.

Spain’s first steps in the Americas were pacific enough until the Spanish
monarchs were given free rein per the Aristotelian doctrine of “natural
slavery” This Doctrine of Natural Slavery comes from Aristotle who believed
that some men are born to be slaves.

This Doctrine of Natural Slavery was brought to the attention of the Pope and
the Spanish monarchs in 1510 by “a Scottish professor in Paris, John Major,
[who] was the first to apply to the Indians the Aristotelian doctrine of natural
slavery” (Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race
Prejudice in the Modern World, Indiana University Press, 1959, 14).

The wonder is that in 1519 Hernando Cortez was able to “conquer Mexico”
with only 11 ships, 508 men, 16 horses, 10 brass guns, dogs, and
collaborating Indians (including Malintzin—Doña Marina—consort to Cortez).
It should be noted that horses, guns, armor, and steel constituted a
formidable arsenal in 1519 (including the wheel). Despite the greater
strength of force by the Aztecs, that formidable arsenal of the Spaniards
carried the day for the invaders.

This is not to diminish in any way the strength of character or the valor of the
Aztec military and their allies. There was a fly in the ointment. Moctezuma
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was unsure if Cortez was the incarnate embodiment of Quetzalcoatl—the
plumed white serpent god of learning and knowledge and death and
resurrection who as the mythical Aztec high priest had vowed in an
encomium of farewell to return. In his uncertainty, Moctezuma (like Hamlet
in his uncertainty about his father’s commandment) temporized in his
decision of how to handle Cortez and the Spaniards.

This account of Moctezuma and Cortez is highly speculative with suspicion

falling on Cortez as its propagator, exploiting it in order to suggest the
gullibility of the Aztecs and the ease with which he “conquered” Mexico. Still,
the story persists, figuring prominently in my play Madre del Sol/Mother of
the Sun (1981). The truth of the story may never be known but the story
functions in the narrative of the conquest of Mexico as a way to explain the
delay and vacillation of Moctezuma anent the presence of Cortez in Mexico
at that particular point in time.

The rout of the Spaniards on June 30, 1520 (thereafter identified historically
as “la noche triste”) provides ample evidence of Aztec military resolve to
expel the Spaniards but for the consideration alluded to above. The fighting
was ferocious: accounts of Spanish losses vary. Cortez claimed the loss of
150 Spaniards as well as 2,000 indigenous allies. Other chroniclers put the
loss at 450 Spaniards and 4,000 allies. One source reports the loss of 1,150
Spaniards (more than the number of Spaniards accompanying Cortez).

Subsequent accounts of “la noche triste” report that no man was left
unwounded. That rout strengthened Cortez’ determination to take
Tenochtitlan by force and to claim the Aztec empire for Spain. Survivors
included Doña Marina (la Tlaxcalteca)—thereafter known as “la malinche”
(the traitor) for supporting Cortez against the Aztecs. Later, Mexican history
would pin the downfall of Aztec Mexico on la malinche, a term—malinchismo
—that would come to characterize “treason” in Mexican Spanish. In the latter
half of the 20th century, Octavio Paz, Mexico’s only Nobel Laureate for
literature, would blame the ills of Mexico on la malinche (Labyrinth of
Solitude, New York: Grove Press, 1961).

Returning weeks later with a larger force, Cortez successfully captured and
secured the city of Tenochtitlan. This military victory did not signal the
conquest of Mexico only the conquest of Tenochtitlan—Mexico City.

F
or the Spaniards, the next 300 years (1521-1821) were years of
prolonged conflict with the indigenous populations of Mexico which
included hundreds of indigenous groups. In those 300 years the
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Spaniards changed the face of Mexico. As the Spaniards fanned out over
Mexico, a hybrid population of “Mestizos” (those of Spanish and Indian
“blending”) came into being—products of genetic mixing and intergroup
gene flow between the Spaniards and the Indians of Mexico. In the 20 th
century, these mestizos—homologous beings—would be called “la raza
cosmica” by Jose Vasconcelos the great educator of Mexico.

In the almost 300 year presence (40 BC-260 AD) of Romans in England, the
face of Britannia was changed by the Roman occupation. The 800 year (711-
1492) occupation of Spain by the Moors had a profound effect on Spanish life
and culture. It should be no surprise then that in 300 years the Spanish
presence in New Spain had a profound effect on Mexican life and culture. In a
piece of mine entitled “Montezuma’s Children” published as a cover story in
The Center Magazine (November/December 1970), I wrote:

The face of Mexico is an Indian face. Traveling the length and width of modern
Mexico one is more impressed by the Indian influences on Mexican culture
than the European influences. The imposing pyramids of Teotihuacan are
more impressive than the elegant façade of Cha-pultepec Castle. One is more
fascinated by the legend of Ixtazihuatl than by the exploits of Cortez.
Although the crown and church of Spain almost succeeded in Europeanizing
Montezuma’s children they were unable to convert the Indian masses into
their own physical image. In our time Indian rather than Spanish blood has
become a source of national Mexican pride. To be Spanish is to be gachupin
(from the Aztec word qatzopin), a foreigner, an oppressor, a rapist of the
ancient Indian culture. To be a Mexican is to be a member of la raza, the race
of Montezuma’s children. More than two-fifths of the Mexican population are
pure-blooded Indians, more than half have some Indian blood in them.

The focus of Spain’s progress in Mexico during those 300 years was the
Christianization of the Indians and their transmogrification into Spaniards. To
a large extent Mexico is a Christian nation, and while there are many ways
and mores of Spain visible in Mexico, that visibility is a veneer, for barely
below the surface of everyday Mexican life lies the Indian face of Mexico. The
most enduring success of Spain in Mexico is in the language. The language
of Spain took root in Mexico (as it has in all of Spanish America) and blended
with the indigenous languages of Mexico has become Mexican Spanish.

A Christian element of considerable proportions manifested itself in 1531

that helped in the Spanish campaign to pacify and dominate the Indians of
Mexico. On December 12, 1531, a mysterious lady (in blue) appeared to Juan
Diego an Indian on his way via Tepeyac (on the outskirts of Mexico City) to
visit his sick uncle. The apparition instructed Juan Diego to carry a message
to the Bishop of Mexico to build a church on the site where she appeared.
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Duly carrying out the lady’s instructions, Juan Diego finally convinces the
bishop about the lady’s wishes. The Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe today
receives thousands of visitors annually and displays Juan Diego’s tilma on
which is mysteriously etched the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Subsequent histories of this appearance suggest the apparition could have

been Tonantzin, “the earth mother” of the Aztecs who reportedly appeared
periodically to the Aztecs on that site in Tepeyac. The significance of that
apparition is that the Spanish church in Mexico capitalized on the myth of
Tonantzin by fusing (syncretizing) her myth with the Church’s account of Our
Lady of Guadalupe thus expediting the Christian conversion of the Indians of
Mexico.

Separate but equal was never a consideration for the Spaniards in their
efforts to Hispanicize the Indians of Mexico. Cohabitation of Spanish males
and Indian women was open and encouraged, leading to a taxonomy of
racial categories of which only the category of “mestizo” (product of
miscegenation) survives today unlike the various categories of the
“plantation south” which have survived into our own time.

The consequence of this early period in the 300 year colonial rule of Mexico
by the Spaniards was a marginalization of the Mexican Indians described as
nepantilism—the colonial mentality. Nepantla is a Nahuatl term meaning
“the space between” where endangered people are congregated for forced
acculturation. In modern terms, Gloria Anzaldua defines this space as a place
of healing, a place where one learns the skills of survival. The borderlands is
such a space/place. For Anzaldua, the borderlands as Nepantla is “a place of
power” not a forced confinement.

II
D
espite the ferocious start of the Spanish entrada (incusion) into Mexico
(1519-1521), the next 300 years were frenetic years during which the
Spaniards transformed Mexico into a veritable New Spain (Spain in
America). The development and spread of Spanish hegemony over its claimed
territories in the Americas was fairly rapid albeit less effective than its hegemony in
the motherland, but effective nevertheless in establishing a social order that
mirrored in little the mores, customs, and architecture of the homeland.
In literature, Spanish literature of the New World was in the same tradition as
Spanish literature of the Old World (See Mariano Picon-Salas, A Cultural History of
Spanish America, Translated by Irving A Leonard, University of California Press,
1968). In terms of literary output, Spain in America is a substantial subject (See
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Henry P. Wagner, Compiler, The Spanish southwest 1542-1794, 2 vols. annonated
bibliography, New York: 1967).
The Spaniards in America documented all activities, due perhaps to the
bureaucratized nature of Spanish royal authority. Letters and their attendant
protocols were indispensable to the march of Spanish empire in America, though at
times that march was ground to a halt between communications from the Old World
to the New. The numerous entradas into what is now the southwest of the United
States were carefully authenticated by the esribanos (recording secretaries)
accompanying the conquistadores.
The literature of Spain in Mexico consisted mostly of diaries, travel accounts, and
relaciones (narratives). During the Spanish colonial period, Mexico produced such
writers as Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (1581-1639), the noted dramatist of Spain’s Golden
Age, author of La Verdad Sospechosa (Suspicious Truth); the nun Sor Juana Inez de
la Cruz (1648-1695), sometimes called the Mexican Keats or the Tenth Muse of
Mexico; and Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora (1645-1700), one of the first great
Mexican born intellectuals. There would be others, but none of later generations
would equal the stature of Peninsular and Criollo writers of this period.
In other aspects of Mexican society Indigenous Mexicans were educated in schools
expressly designed for the education of Indians who were on the upper rungs of the
social ladder. Indians at the bottom of the social ladder were not educated.
Peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain) and Criollos (Spaniards born in the Americas
or outside of Spain) sent their children to exclusive schools for Peninsulares and
Criollos. For education in the professions, Criollos and select Mexican Indians
studied in Spain or elsewhere in Europe. Mexican Indians were limited in the
professions they could enter.
Surprisingly there sprang up in Mexico over the 300 years of Spanish colonial rule a
dual track of social symbiosis that worked out well for the Spaniards and tolerably
well for the Indians. While not perfect, this co-existence allowed for the expansion of
each group and for their eventual amelioration—such as it was for the Indians.
Needless to say, the Columbian Exchange produced more benefit for the Spaniards
than for the Indians mostly because of steel over stone at first, then numbers and
religion, not counting the diminution of Indian populations due to diseases spread
by the Spaniards. Between 1520 and 1600 as many as 14 epidemics whittled away
the populations of Indians in the Americas—the deadliest of which were smallpox
(viruelas), chicken pox measles (sarampión), scarlet fever, and syphilis. The
lugubrious catalogs “of every European people who have had prolonged contact
with the native peoples of America are full of references to the devastating impact
of Old World diseases” (Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological
and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Greenwood Press, 1972, 42). Of the million
Indians on Santo Domingo when the Spaniards first arrived, by 1548 only 500 had
survived (45).

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Important to bear in mind is not only the psychological effect of epidemic diseases
but the fact that the pandemics “killed great numbers in the Indian empire [that]
affected their power structures, striking down the leaders and disrupting the
processes by which they were normally replaced” (54). Spaniards capitalized on the
botanical knowledge of the Indians which is why so many of the New World fruits
and vegetables and bean products such as chocolate made their way to Spain and
Europe. Reciprocally, the Old World brought fruits and vegetables to the New World.
The pig and the horse were two of Spain’s more notable contributions to the New
World. It was the pig that was responsible in modern parlance for the word
“barbeque”—from the Spanish “barbacola” meaning from snout (barba) to tail
(cola) [in the word “cola” the intervocalic consonant “l” was dropped and
pronounced “coa” which has become the “que” part of the word “barbeque.”
“The society of colonial Spanish America was one of the most equestrian in all
history” (Crosby, 81-82). Horses were so plentiful that Spaniards, Mestizos, and
Indians became accustomed to the saddle. By the 17th century, Spaniards had
carried cattle everywhere in Spanish America and became one of New Spain’s
greatest economic assets (88). Ironically, “the greatest effect of the horse on the
Indian was to enhance his ability to resist the advance of Europeans” (104). The
impact of livestock on the Indians is generally gauged as positive—they went from
being plant eater to meat eaters. According to Crosby, “the Europeans and their
animals changed the rules of the battle for the survival of the fittest” (111).
Though decimated at first by epidemics of European origin, by the 18 th century the
Indian populations of Mexico exceeded the Spanish populations in the country.
Crosby contends that “the one factor that will promote population growth . . . is the
increase and improvement of the food supply” (167). The food sources for both
Spaniards and Indians underwent an amalgamation as significant as the genetic
fusion of the two populations.
An aspect of the Spanish colonial period of Mexico (1521-1821) not given much
notice is the role of dogs. Mexican dogs (xoloitzcuintle) were hairless, did not bark,
resembled guinea pigs, and, according to an account by Columbus, were castrated,
fattened, and raised for eating (John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner,
Dogs of the Conquest, University of Oklahoma Press, 1983, 7). Interestingly, there
is the word “esquintle” in the Mexican language (Spanish blended with Nahuatl)
which comes from the Aztec word “xoloitzcuintle” for dog and is used in the
Mexican language to describe “children.”
Spanish dogs were ferocious, many of them bred as weapons in the Spanish
arsenal. The first “dogging” of Indians is recorded on the island of Jamaica on May
5, 1494 with Columbus using Irish wolfhounds. Like the Indians, when faced with
starvation, Spanish soldiers ate their dogs. Dogs were used by the Spaniards to
control the Indians who came to fear Spanish dogs that were bred as trackers and
killers. The Conquistadores found justification for their use of dogs in warfare from
the Greeks and the Romans who used mastiffs, greyhounds and Molassian hounds.
6
The Spaniards also used greyhounds as hunters of meat. In time, the Indians came
to bond with dogs just as the Spaniards had bonded with their dogs.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century Mexico were centuries of slow progress for the
Spaniards in their efforts to “civilize’ the country. The history of Mexico abounds
with accounts of Spanish battles with the various Indian tribes in their march north
toward what is now the Hispanic Southwest. The Spanish efforts in Mexico seem
now to have been prologue for the Mexican War of Independence which did not turn
out well for the Indians but did for the Criollos who had fomented the crisis.
Indeed, the Spaniards overlaid on Mexico a veneer of Spanish culture and
architectural accoutrements uniquely Spanish, but at the expense of the Mexican
culture and architectural splendor that was there before the arrival of the
Spaniards. By the end of the 18th century, much of Mexico had been transformed
into Spain in America—not entirely. In rebuilding Mexico into the image of Spain in
America, the Spaniards simply covered over Aztec buildings and monuments and
built on top of them which, only in the 20th century, was discovered and uncovered
by Mexicans in their search for their indigenous past.
Paradoxically, towards the end of the 18th century, Spain allied itself with the
rebellious American colonies in their efforts to free themselves from England, little
realizing perhaps that the seeds of independence were being scattered across the
Americas. Thirty-four years later on the 16th of September of 1810, Mexico would
embark on the road to independence and, like England in 1776, Spain would be
forced to defend its Mexican colony in a war that ended in 1821.
By and large, the American War for Independence was supported by Spain and its
American colonies since Spain also had a quarrel with England for its constant
intrusions into Spanish territories. On the 21st of June, 1779, Spain officially declared
war on England and pressed hard on the British fleet blockading the ports of
England’s American colonies. In fact, Spanish regiments fought side by side with
Washington’s troops (passim, Thomas E. Chávez, Spain and the Independence of
the United States, University of New Mexico Press, 2002).
In the Atlantic, Spanish forces in Cuba and the Caribbean led by José de Gálvez, his
nephew Bernardo de Gálvez and Francisco de Miranda effectively obstructed
English strategies to hem in the Ame-rican colonists. Miranda distinguished himself
fighting against the English at the battle of Pensacola in 1781, among the last
battles against England. The city of Galveston, Texas, would later be named for
Bernardo de Gálvez; Miranda became president of Venezuela in 1810 the same year
the Criollos of Mexico declared their independence from Spain.
By the end of the 18th century, the political situation in Mexico had become a
tinderbox. Independence seemed like the only solution for the Spanish colonists. For
the Indians, independence would come a hundred years later after the bloody
Mexican Civil War of 1810-1821.

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 III

T
axonomizing the 300 year rule of Spain in Mexico, one can label the first 100
years as the period of transition for both Spaniards and Indians; the second
100 years as the period of dysphoria (for the Indians) and grandeur (for the
Spaniards); and the third 100 years as the period of discontent (principally for
ambitious Criollos and dissident Indians).

All together, the Spanish colonial period in Mexico established centers of power that
persist in various guises today. Inhibited by the Mexican Constitution of 1924, the
Catholic Church nevertheless continues to wield considerable power in Mexico,
though not as openly as it did in the 19th and early 20th century. Though no longer
visible as it once was, per se, the landed gentry of latifundias (spacious plantations)
abound in Mexico—controlled and administered now by modern protocols of
business—and still affect the daily lives of Mexicans. The elite classes of Mexicans
that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries have consolidated their interests and
control of Mexico’s resources into cartels, giving them more power today than they
exerted in times past.

These loci of power were adamant in their resistance to independence which was
essentially driven by liberal Criollos. For Conservatives in Mexico, the status quo
suited them just fine. This is not to say there were no dissident voices from
Conservative quarters. In the main, however, these centers of power were content
with the social order as it had evolved in Mexico. While they conceded that there
was much to be gained by independence, they also saw independence as the
upheaval of what they perceived as a smoothly functioning status quo. Why disturb
it?

According to James Diego vigil, “the most crucial forms of change” are ideas (From
Indians to Chicanos: The Dynamics of Mexican American Culture,” Waveland Press,
1998, 107). That the idea of independence “caught the attention of every
disenchanted person in the New World” (108) is a bit of embroidery. As an idea,
Independence did catch the attention of many in the New World. In the events
leading up to the American Revolution, the idea of independence caught the
attention of Thomas Paine who took up the cause of independence with zeal in
pamphlets that ignited the zeal of many Americans. On the other hand, many
American loyalists simply moved to Canada than participate in the revolutionary
fray.
So too, on the eve of Mexican independence, many Mexicans simply moved
elsewhere than be party to the “chaos” of independence. Surprisingly a fair number
of Mexicans relocated to the United States to cities like San Diego, Los Angeles,
Tucson, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville, and San Antionio. Those who stayed in Mexico

8
suffered through a war of independence that lasted 11 years at a considerable loss
of life. For many it was a War of Independence to no avail.
On the eve of the War for Independence, the Indians of Mexico were highly
Hispanicized and rapidly losing their identity as Indians. In the cities of Mexico, large
numbers of them roamed the streets as vagrants. (Rámon Eduardo Ruiz, Triumphs
and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People, Norton, 1992, 144).

From San Miguel de Allende in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, on the evening of
September 15, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla called out to Mexicans with a
cry for liberty in what has become known as the Grito de Dolores. At dawn on
September 16, the motley army of insurgents struck for independence by marching
euphorically on the city of Guanajuato, a major colonial mining center. They were
victorious in their first battle.

In the following months a number of battles ensued between Spanish royal forces
and insurgents, and, despite the odds, it appeared that the insurgents had the
upper hand. But in January of 1811 Father Hidalgo and his forces were captured by
the Spanish army. Court-martialed, defrocked, and tortured, Father Hidalgo was
found guilty of treason and executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, on July 31,
1811. Thereafter, his head was cut off and displayed in Guanajuato as a warning to
the rebels. With this martyrdom Father Hidalgo became the father of his country.

Essential to the Royalist cause was sustained power over Mexico City which
represented the central authority of the Spanish government. In retrospect, some
historians contend that an assault on Mexico City by the insurgents could have
precipitated an early end to the War for Independence. But that strategy seems not
to have emerged as part of the plan for them. So, too, the Royalists seemed to be
defending their authority without a plan. According to Ruiz, the War for
Independence left the Mexicans with “a formidable burden of wrack and ruin” (186).
Six hundred thousand perished during the war.

What started out as a revolt against the crown by discontented Mexican Criollos
turned into a rebellion for social justice with the alliance of the Indians called by
Father Hidalgo to defend la patria (the homeland). But that alliance was tenuous at
best. The cabal of Criollos heading the revolt against the crown had no intention of
elevating the Indians to their level no matter how moreno claro (light) their skin.
They did not give “a tinker’s damn for the plight of the poor” (Ruiz, 150).

Key to Father Hidalgo’s success in rallying Indians and Mestizos to his side was the
banner he chose to symbolize his call for freedom—a banner with the image of la
Virgin de Guadalupe (the Virgin of Guadalupe), the patron saint of Mexico (See
“Madre del Sol/Mother of the Sun: Our Lady of Guadalupe—the Play” by Felipe de
Ortego y Gasca). La Guadalupana as the Virgin of Guadalupe became known was
the cornerstone of Mexican nationalism, turning the War for Independence into a
9
religious war and into a war against slavery which is why Mexico abolished slavery
in 1829.

In many ways the Mexican war for independence was a war of los letrados
(intellectuals) against the lemmings (small arctic rodents who follow their leaders to
the point of suicide)—the Royalists who to the end defended the crown and its
policies in Mexico.

As for the Criollos, they believed that by their victory over Spain, “God had
enthroned them as the chosen people” (Ruiz, 166).

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