Meet some 16th-century Mexicans

Modern Noxtepec (formerly Nochtepec)

In 1521 Tomohitecuhtli, the ruler (tlatohuani, in Nahuatl, the Aztec tongue) of Nochtepec, in the modern state of Guerrero, accompanied by various village elders, walked the 160 kilometres to the destroyed Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. They made the journey on foot, because feet were the only available means of transport before the conquering Spaniards had arrived two years earlier. Tomohitecuhtli was accustomed to making this journey because whenever the Aztecs installed a new, more powerful, tlatohuani in Tenochtitlan, or summoned him to some celebration or festival, he would journey to the great city in the lake to demonstrate his loyalty, and his willingness to pay tribute, to the new ruler. Tomohitecuhtli had heard that there was a new, and unfamiliar, kind of ruler now. The document that records his visit calls this man the “tlatohuani Marques”, Hernán Cortés, soon to be honoured as the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca.

Church of Saint James the Apostle, Noxtepec, interior

The tlatohuani Marques received his visitors, offering them “that food of Castile that the elders could not eat”. Instead they took it home and offered it to all the men of the village, but not one could stomach this strange fare. The Marques also introduced the elders to his subordinate tlatohuani, Juan de Cabra de Molina. Cabra, the conquistador explained, would be their encomendero (“trustee”), who would ensure that they were taught the new religion of the Spaniards. In return the people of Nochtepec would pay tribute to him. Cabra ordered the elders to build a temple. Work on the church was completed in 1532, and “thus arrived the religion and our encomendero came” to perform the traditional ceremony of marking the boundaries of the village lands. The church of our Lord Saint James the Apostle still stands, despite earthquake damage over the centuries

 

Church of Saint James the Apostle, Noxtepec

Cabra was a powerful conquistador, who had arrived with Cortés in 1519, and participated in the conquest of Tenochtitlan, as well as the defeat of the warlike Yope people on the Pacific coast of Guerrero. He made his fortune initially in mining, gold on the Pacific coast, but above all in the silver mines of Nochtepec, and nearby Taxco and Zacualpan. His mines were worked by Indian slaves and forced labour provided by the people of Nochtepec and other towns. By 1524 and 1527 he owned properties in Mexico City and a cattle ranch. When he died in 1557 or 1558 he left his properties in Mexico to provide funds “to marry poor orphaned ladies”. His widow, María de Herrera inherited Cabra’s mines and the tribute he received from Nochtepec.

The house of the conquistador Diego de Ordaz in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Cabra's may have been similar

16th-century Mexico City as depicted on a folding screen

Encomenderos were the elite of 16^th-century Mexico. These were rough and ready men, used to fighting, who shared a desire to get rich quick, and to flaunt their wealth. In 1572, the English sailor Henry Hawks described the wealthy mine owners of Mexico City thus:

““The pompe and liberalitie of the owners of the mines is marvellous to beholde: the apparell both of them and of their wives is more to be compared to the apparell of noble persons than otherwise. If their wives goe out of their houses, as unto church, or any other place, they goe out with great majesty, and with as many men and maids as though she were the wife of some noble man. I will assure you, I have seen a miners wife goe to the church with an hundred men. And twenty gentlewomen and maids. They keepe open house: who will, may come to eat their food. They call men with a bell to come to dinner and supper. They are princes in keeping of their houses, and bountiful in all maner of things.”

 

The former house of Hernán Cortés in Coyoacán, Mexico City, now a municipal office building

One such was Gil González de Benavides, who, with his brother Alonso de Ávila (the brothers were born in the Spanish city of Ávila) was among the early adventurers to seek their fortunes in the new continent. In 1509 Gil was in Santo Domingo, in the Caribbean. In 1522 he received a contract from the King to find a route across the Pacific to the Molucas islands. Instead, he landed on the coast of Nicaragua, fought the local Indians and made off with a large amount of gold. However, he made an enemy of Pedrarias Dávila, governor of Golden Castile, as Central America was then known, and fled with his gold. By 1524 Gil was in Honduras, where he founded a town that he immodestly named San Gil de Buenaventura (“Saint Gil of Good Fortune”). Here Gil’s luck seemed to have run out. He was captured by Cristóbal de Olid, who had been sent to conquer Honduras. However, Gil managed to persuade Olid that they should be allies, sat down to dinner with him, and then killed him. He was arrested and sent to Mexico City to be tried for murder, but somehow avoided conviction.

Gil seems to have made a habit of treachery. In Mexico, he was asked by his brother to look after his business interests while Alonso went away to Spain. While Alonso was away, Gil persuaded the Viceroy, the King’s head of government, to transfer all his brother’s wealth to him. Alonso promptly died, leaving his brother with his loot. Gil lived until 1540.

However, the Benavides family did not end well. His youngest son was the first to die unhappily: drowned in a latrine as a child. His daughter, María de Alvarado (she took her mother’s last name), fell in love with a mestizo (mixed race man) of lowly birth. Her two brothers disapproved, gave the man 4,000 ducats and told him to go to Spain and never come back if he wanted to live. Grief stricken, María entered a convent and took vows. In 1566 María’s brothers, Alonso de Ávila and Gil González de Ávila (they took their betrayed uncle’s last name), were executed for their part in a plot against the King’s government. Alonso, apparently, was a dandy who flaunted his wealth and good taste, even on the scaffold. He wore to his execution a velvet doublet, a damask garment embellished with tiger skin, a hat decorated with gold and feathers, a gold chain, a head band with a reliquary, and a rosary. Hearing of the brothers’ deaths, María’s lover returned to Mexico to seek her hand. María could not forsake her vows, so they met secretly in the garden of the convent and agreed to part for ever. The lover stabbed himself to death in the street, while María hanged herself in the convent garden. History does not record in which convent María took her vows. A number of monasteries and convents (in Spanish both are conventos) were founded by wealthy Spaniards in the 16th century. The ex-Convento del Carmen in San Ángel (17th century) and the ex-Convento del Desierto de los Leones (18th-century), were both monasteries of a later date, but perhaps María's convent bore some resemblance to them.

Chapel of the ex-Convento del Carmen, San Ángel, Mexico City. Note the pride of place given to the Virgin of Guadalupe

 

 

The ex-Convento del Desierto de los Leones c.1906-1920

Not all those who conquered 16^th-century Mexico were white Spaniards. Juan Garrido (his name means “handsome John”), was an African, or perhaps mulato, freedman who converted to Christianity in Lisbon. About 1510 he arrived in Santo Domingo, where he spent seven years before moving on to Puerto Rico. He participated in the conquest of Tenochtitlan and joined a force of Spaniards that subdued parts of western Mexico and the Pacific coast. On the coast, he participated in mining enterprises and owned slaves, and also raised pigs. He later moved his mining business to

Modern Zumpango del Río, Guerrero (formerly simply Zumpango)

Zumpango in the mountains of central Guerrero. It might seem odd to our 21st-century sensibility that a black man should be a slave owner, especially since the Spaniards imported African slaves, as well as enslaving some Indians, but slaving was a general practice and Juan behaved like any Spanish conquistador. Garrido next joined Hernán Cortés’ expedition along the Pacific coast to conquer Baja California. Juan married Francisca Ramírez and had three daughters. By 1525 he had a house in Mexico City and owned some land, where he planted the first crop of wheat to be harvested in Mexico. So, Juan did quite well for himself, but his race certainly limited his chances of holding influential public offices: he is recorded as the keeper of the Chapultepec aqueduct that supplied water to Mexico City, and as the doorkeeper of the city council, both lowly, poorly paid positions.

Tasco (modern Taxco de Alarcón) where Castilla first made his fortune

Possibly the richest man in 16^th-century Mexico was  Luis de Castilla, the fourth, but illegitimate, son of King Pedro I of Castile, known variously as “the Cruel” or “the Just. Luis was “entrusted” with a number of Indian towns, but the main source of his wealth was his influence in the highest circles of the government of Mexico, and silver mining. He was described thus:

“A Knight of the Order of Santiago, … whose advice and authority was sought by the Viceroys. He kept a great house, as of a great lord, many horses, servants, arms, dependents and companions, with such grandeur, that it showed he was a great man; and such was the wealth that he had from that mine in Tasco, that he could do all this and anything that his heart desired, for even the most basic dishes in the kitchen were of the finest silver; and he gave more in this life to the poor and to noblemen, than a very liberal king could do.”

He also married strategically, to the sister of the Royal Treasurer.

San Agustín Ohuapan (ancient Oapan), Guerrero

Like Luis, most powerful Spaniards made sure they married well, and that their children likewise married rich and powerful spouses. Indigenous notables also continued to marry well, following indigenous practices, but incorporating elements of the new Christian religion.  In 1535, a delegation of notables from Oapan, in central Guerrero, walked 57km, a journey of 12-14 hours, north to Mayanalán. They had been instructed by the ruler of Oapan to ask for the hand in marriage of Ana Conxochil, the daughter of Alonso Taxtetl, the tlatohuani of Mayanalán. Ana must have accepted, since another delegation from Oapan arrived a few days later to draw up the marriage contract. The formalities done, the representatives of Oapan and Ana’s family walked to the Augustinian monastery in Chilapa, about 140km to the south, to celebrate a Christian marriage ceremony. By the time the happy couple arrived home in Oapan, Ana must have walked a good 220km on tracks through mountainous terrain. She was probably glad to put her feet up for a few days.

Modern Chilapa de Álvarez (formerly simply Chilapa), general view

As part of my study of 16^th-century Guerrero, I have attempted to document as many Spaniards and non-indigenous people who were involved in the 16^th-century economy and society of the region in some way. I found 1014 individuals whose names I could identify. Just over a quarter were priests or friars, a fifth were miners and another fifth royal officials. Slightly fewer were encomenderos to whom towns and villages were “entrusted”. About 100 owned or dealt in slaves.

Some of these men and women became very rich indeed, very quickly. Many were less successful in seeking their fortunes. Priests earned between 69 and 200 pesos per year, most officials between 100 and 300. A craftsman (carpenter, metalworker etc.) in the silver mines received 112-150 pesos, a foreman or mining specialist 300-700. The person lucky enough to be appointed repartidor de indios (“distributor of Indian labour”) earned a princely 2,000 pesos. Mining, was big business, unless you were a lowly Indian salaried worker, whose maximum earnings would be 50 pesos. To put these salaries in perspective, an Indian slave could cost as little as four or five, up to 25 pesos. The price of African slaves varied from 42 to as much as 210 pesos. Animals were more costly. There were only two means of transporting goods: on the back of an indigenous man, a horse or a mule. A horse in Zacatula, on the Guerrero coast, in 1525 cost 310 pesos, a costly item, and a mule in Mexico City in 1536 150.