Colonial officials held the highest status, although not the greatest wealth. These officials not only profited from office but held significant power as well. They ceased to be household servants of the Crown and began to act as a semi-autonomous body that jealously guarded its prerogatives. These officials formed an interest group comparable to the landed aristocracy, the Church, and the urban elite. Although Spaniards almost always held the top posts, native-born Mexicans of Spanish descent, or Creoles, provided most of the staff for the colonial administration.68
Some plutocrats, bureaucrats, and officers received titles of nobility. The Crown benefited from granting titles by charging a hefty fee for ennobling the wealthy and by taxing the transfer of the title when it passed to the next generation. The Habsburgs ennobled conquerors, administrators, and colonizers. The Bourbons similarly honored administrators, the military, and entrepreneurs. At Independence, about fifty families resident in New Spain had been ennobled. The property of nobles could not be seized for overdue accounts nor could they be tortured or imprisoned for debt.69
Spaniards declared Creoles to be their inferiors to justify the disproportionate numbers of Spaniards serving as judges, provincial magistrates, chief aides to the viceroy, and leaders of missionary orders. They attributed this proclaimed inferiority to the malignant effect of New World land and climate, as well as to non-European genes among those claiming European status. Juan de Manozca, the archbishop of Mexico from 1643 to 1650, attributed this perceived inferiority to Creoles’ use of Indian wet nurses, so that “although creoles do not have Indian blood in them, they have been weaned on the milk of Indian women, and are therefore, like Indians, children of fear.”70 By the end of the seventeenth century, Creoles began to identify with Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past and take pride in the differences between Mexicans and Spaniards. However, they quite carefully separated the idealized Indians of the Aztec past from the abused Indians with whom they shared Mexico. This identification would later undergird the Creole struggle for independence. During the eighteenth century, Creole nationalism remained an elite construct, not a force that could mobilize the masses.71
The Creoles’ ability to comply only partially with Spanish law or to defy it outright prolonged their tolerance for Spanish domination. This maintained the empire intact for centuries, despite its undeniably exploitative character.72
With a few exceptions, European ancestry united the elite. As historian James Lockhart commented, “Wherever wealth and Europeans congregated, things happened quickly; where they did not, slowly.” Both the Spanish-born and the Creoles enjoyed elite status. While Spaniards controlled wholesaling, Creoles dominated retail sales. Elite Creoles also owned land, held positions in the colonial bureaucracy, and undertook military, professional, and ecclesiastic careers.73
Many wealthy families bridged the Creole—Spanish dividing line. Often newly arrived Spaniards married the daughters of wealthy Creoles. The Creoles’ capital would finance Spanish-run ventures, which benefited from the Spaniards’ family ties in Spain. Economic success relied on family ties, and old and new rich families constantly combined. As Lockhart commented, “One can emphasize
World History
