Once the Spanish completed the conquest of Tenochtitlan, they began rebuilding the city. Just as its Aztec defenders had prophesied, the reconstruction used forced Indian labor under Spanish supervision. Rebuilding a Spanish city on the ruins of Tenochtitlan created a monument to the Spanish triumph over the Aztecs. The new city, which had the same rectilinear plan as the old, borrowed from its predecessor in that it had a market plaza in Tlatelolco, a street of large houses leading to the west causeway, and an ensemble of structures surrounding the former central plaza of Tenochtitlan, today’s Zocalo. The rebuilt city, known as Mexico City, became the capital of Mexico.261
Cortes established a municipal government to administer the newly founded colony. He asked that bishops and priests be sent from Spain to convert the Indian population to Christianity. Cortes specifically requested that Jewish and Moorish converts, physicians, and lawyers should not be allowed to come.262
By 1560, Mexico City had become New Spain’s trade and financial center. It provided a substantial market for foodstuffs, fuel, textiles, and luxury goods. Not only was it New Spain’s largest market but it was the nexus for a trading network extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and from Guatemala in the south to northern mines. In addition, silks, porcelains, and other oriental goods passed through the city on their way to Europe, and slaves arrived there from Africa.263
During the sixteenth century, Mexico City became renowned for its architecture. A book published in 1554 by university professor Francisco Cervantes de Salazar wrote that the houses of the elite “match the nobility of those who reside in them” and that Tacuba Street “extends so far that the end cannot be seen, even by the eyes of a lynx.” He noted that carpenters, blacksmiths, clocksmiths, weavers, barbers, bakers, painters, stone-cutters, tailors, shoe-makers, armorers, candle-makers, bow makers, sword cutlers, inn-keepers, and lath turners served the European
Population.264
While Spaniards in Mexico City replicated European civilization, some 20,000 Indians patronized the municipal market daily. The goods they traded included zapotes, beans, chiles, guavas, mameys, camotes, ji'camas, prickly-pear cactus fruit, earthenware jars, atole, clothing, various seeds, medicinal plants, and aquatic worms for eating. Indians engaged in barter or used cacao beans as currency.265
A vast agricultural hinterland occupying most of the Valley of Mexico surrounded mid-sixteenth century Mexico City. Cervantes de Salazar described this area:
Of the lands that approach nearest the city, some are common pastures that produce much herbage for cattle, mules, and herds. Others are bountiful in fruit-bearing trees, and so appropriate to every kind of cultivation that, save vines, whatever is planted brings forth returns with incredible interest. Among these are both rural and urban estates, individual ones being of such splendor and fertility that they refresh the mind and at the same time support families in sufficient abundance. Lest anything be wanting to make the spectacle the most pleasing of all, a lake abounding in fish. . . extends from the foot of the mountain and spreads out far and wide from the east toward the south and west, bearing many Indian barks with nets for catching fish.266
By the seventeenth century, the consequences of upsetting the ecological balance in the Valley of Mexico were becoming apparent. During the siege of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish dismantled dikes to allow their brigantines to sail freely. They also filled canals to allow for the passage of cavalry. Later, Spaniards’ occupation of the fertile floor of the Valley of Mexico forced many Indians onto the surrounding hillsides where they engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture. This contributed to deforestation and erosion. The introduction of the Spanish plow led to additional erosion. Burning wood to make charcoal also contributed to deforestation, as did Spanish construction techniques. Builders required some 25,000 trees a year to provide pilings for construction on reclaimed lake beds. As these pilings rotted and had to be replaced, more trees were felled. Scaffolding, walls, roofs, and doors required additional wood. This deforestation inevitably resulted in erosion and increased run-off. As silt washed into the lakes, it reduced their storage capacity and exacerbated the problem of flooding.267
Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who returned to Mexico City forty years after the Conquest, commented on his earlier visit:
I was never tired of looking at the diversity of the trees, and noting the scent which each one had, and the paths full of roses and flowers, and the many fruit trees. . . Of all these wonders that I then beheld, today all is overgrown and lost, nothing is left standing.268
Shortly after Diaz del Castillo’s return, Martin Enriquez, who served as viceroy between 1568 and 1580, described deforestation near Chalco southeast of Mexico City:
In that the Indians of the village of Tlalmanalco have informed me that the Spanish and other people cut and destroy the forest in a manner in which if there is no remedy soon one will finish said forests, which would be of great harm and loss of all the republic being where principally one provides wood for the building of this city.269
In 1550, to prevent the cutting of wood for charcoal, authorities decreed that trees could only be felled with a permit. In 1570, they prohibited any cutting within five leagues of the city and banned slash-and-burn agriculture. Despite municipal and viceregal bans on felling trees, cutting
Continued.270
In 1607, to address the problem of flooding, excavation began on a channel to drain the closed basin formed by the Valley of Mexico. Some 40,000 Indians, working in shifts, toiled for ten months to excavate a 4.2-mile trench and a four-mile tunnel—the biggest single use of repartimiento labor.
The system diverted the Rio Cuautitlan north from Lake Zumpango, the northernmost lake in the Valley of Mexico, into the Tula River valley. Humboldt, who visited Mexico early in the nineteenth century, commented that the drainage system constituted “a hydraulic operation which in our times, even in Europe, would claim the admiration of engineers.”271
After 1623, authorities would not finance the maintenance of the drainage system. Soon debris and cave-ins rendered the trench and tunnel useless. In 1629, a flood that left the city under six feet of water demonstrated the folly of this neglect. After earlier floods, the waters receded. However, after the 1629 flood, the city remained submerged for five years. Priests held masses from the belfries of churches, shouting down to the faithful congregated in boats. At the time, officials seriously considered abandoning the capital. However, the owners of urban real estate, including the Church, successfully lobbied against the relocation.272
During the eighteenth century, Mexico City increased in influence and grandeur, a result of its being the seat of the viceregal government, the audiencia, the archbishopric, the Inquisition, and the mint and of its being surrounded by an extremely fertile valley. In the period before independence, as the Bourbons centralized power, Mexico City’s population increased by 1.4 percent annually, well above the rate of population increase for Mexico as a whole. The city served as Mexico’s major commercial crossroads. Some goods were transshipped to other locations. After entering the city, many of the raw materials, such as grain, meat, wool, and cotton, were transformed into products of utility to the urban population, such as bread and cloth. Merchants sold finished goods in a vast and diversified retail sector that supported thousands of business owners and even more managers, sales personnel, and commercial apprentices. Retail establishments, some general and some specialized, provided imported and domestic merchandise to all social classes. Most of Mexico’s elite lived in the city and transacted business there.273
The population of the city increased during the second half of the eighteenth century as many migrated from neighboring areas due to crop failures, to population increase, and to haciendas encroaching on village lands. Its population of 137,000 surpassed that of any other city in the western hemisphere. Mexico City continued to be bicultural, although its racial proportions shifted. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, 2 percent of the population were native-born Spaniards, 48 percent were Creoles, 27 percent Indian, and 23 percent of mixed race.274
The magnificence of Mexico City’s public buildings and the increase in its population and wealth caused Spaniards to worry that the capital of New Spain would eclipse Madrid. An upper class that not only possessed unprecedented wealth but had remarkably good architectural taste constructed many mansions. Some forty of these homes of the very rich still survive, the best known being the former home of the Conde del Valle de Orizaba, now known as the House of Tiles, in downtown Mexico City.275
World History
