The History of Mexico

From Pre-Conquest to Present

Philip Russell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136968273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present traces the last 500 years of Mexican history, from the indigenous empires that were devastated by the Spanish conquest through the election of 2006 and its aftermath. The book offers a straightforward chronological survey of Mexican history from the pre-colonial times to the present, and includes a glossary as well as numerous tables and images for comprehensive study.

In lively and engaging prose, Philip Russell guides readers through major themes that still resonate today including:

• The role of women in society

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• Environmental change

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• The evolving status of Mexico's indigenous people

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• African slavery and the role of race

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• Government economic policy

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• Foreign relations with the United States and others

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The companion website provides many useful student tools including multiple choice questions, extra book chapters, and links to online resources, as well as digital copies of the maps from the book.

For additional information and classroom resources please visit The History of Mexico companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/russell.

Part One

The First Three Millennia

Chapter 1

Mesoamerica

THE FIRST MEXICANS

By 10000 BC, perhaps much earlier, humans had arrived in the area now forming Mexico. Our knowledge of Mexico’s first inhabitants is limited since few of the utensils, clothes, or buildings they produced have survived.¹

The best known of these early arrivals is an individual known as Tepexpan Man, found on the northeast edge of Lake Texcoco not far from modern Mexico City. The age of the skeleton was never established since it is unclear exactly what soil stratum it came from. In any case, the remains, actually those of a woman about 5 feet 3 inches tall, are often referred to as the first Mexican, since she is likely the earliest individual we know of.

Just to the southeast of Tepexpan Man, the remains of an imperial mammoth were discovered. It was butchered in situ, and flint projectile points were found associated with it. Knife marks scar the bone where meat was cut off. We know little of the culture of Tepexpan Man and of those who killed the mammoth, since no artifacts other than the projectile points were encountered at either site. Presumably these individuals had a widely varied diet in addition to mammoth, as is typical of hunter-gatherers who hunt big game.²

For millennia the descendents of the first arrivals in Mexico survived as hunter-gatherers. They formed loose, egalitarian groups, each one probably numbering fewer than one hundred members who were united by bonds of kinship. Such groups lived in caves and temporary campsites. These highly mobile groups possessed few material goods. They were constantly migrating, skirmishing, and intermarrying with other groups. The imposition of centralized control was impossible since disaffected people could too easily vote with their feet.

From what we know of hunter-gatherer peoples, they enjoyed a comfortable margin of existence and did not have to toil endlessly to survive. A key to their survival was low population density. They also developed superior weaponry. These early hunter-gatherers used the spear thrower, or atlatl, which could launch a projectile at fifteen times the speed of a hand-held spear, giving it more than 200 times the kinetic energy.³

Between 8000 and 2000 BC, the early Mexicans turned to planting, rather merely gathering, seeds. Various plants, including squash, corn, beans, and chile peppers were domesticated. The development of agriculture allowed the formation of permanent villages by the third millennium BC. These villages were quite small, having perhaps twelve households or sixty individuals. Residence in villages allowed the development of such arts as pottery making and loom weaving. Since they were no longer constantly on the move, village dwellers could accumulate a much wider range of goods. These included milling stones (metates) to grind corn, baskets, nets, cordage, mats, and wattle-and-daub huts. This early material culture is remarkably similar to the material culture still found in many homes of those living in isolated rural areas of Mexico.⁴

Figure 1.1 Mesoamerica

Source: Drawn by Philip Winton. From David Stuart and George Stuart (2008), Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya. London and New York: Thames & Hudson

The shift to agriculture occurred over a wide area and was a very slow evolutionary process occurring over millennia. Just as with their hunter-gatherer fore-bears, these early villages remained egalitarian for millennia. A major change produced by agriculture was increased population density.⁵

PRE-CLASSIC MESOAMERICA

These agricultural villages grew larger and developed a more sophisticated material culture. By roughly 1500 BC, there emerged a cultural area known as Mesoamerica, covering some 392,000 square miles. This area extended from the rugged snow-capped volcanoes of central Mexico south to present-day Nicaragua and included the mountains of Guatemala and the limestone plains of Yucatán. Mesoamerican cultures shared a religious tradition and had complex social, economic, and political organizations. Urban centers typically had public buildings arranged around a formal, open plaza adjacent to pyramidal temples. Another shared trait was human sacrifice. All of the Mesoamerican cultures relied on an agricultural surplus generated by cultivating corn. In Mesoamerican cultures, men would typically cultivate the corn, and women would grind the kernels and prepare tortillas—a division of labor that has persisted to the present. Corn was an ideal crop since it has a high yield per unit of land and is easily stored.⁶

The creation myth of the Quiché Maya indicates the intimate relationship between corn and the Mesoamerican societies that bred it. The Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché, describes how Xmucane, one of the divine grandparents, ground yellow corn and white corn nine times and then fashioned the flesh of the first human from the mixture.⁷

There are two theories concerning the origin of corn. One holds that early agriculturists bred a weed, teosinte, for a sufficiently long period to convert it into a greatly improved food source. Others think that the teosinte was crossbred with another plant to produce corn. In any case, in 7000 BC, an ear of corn only measured an inch long. After six millennia of cultivation, the ear attained a length of four inches. As a result of this transformation, the corn plant could no longer propagate itself without human intervention.⁸

Complex Mesoamerican cultures flourished between 2000 BC and AD 1519. Archeologists have divided this 3,500-year span into three time periods, each with its own characteristics. The earliest period, known as the Pre-Classic, lasted from roughly 2000 BC to AD 250. The Pre-Classic is distinguished from earlier village cultures by the emergence of large political entities that demanded that its inhabitants contribute material goods and labor. Entrance into and emergence from the Pre-Classic was a gradual evolutionary process that occurred at varying times in varying locations.⁹

The outstanding culture of the Pre-Classic period is known as the Olmec, a name given to its inhabitants by archeologists, since no one knows what they called themselves. The term means “dweller in the land of rubber,” since rubber is a major export of the 125-by-50-mile area they inhabited in the steamy swamplands of coastal Tabasco. Between 1500 BC and 400 BC, the Olmec created one of the six pristine civilizations in human history. A pristine civilization is the earliest civilization in its respective region. The other pristine civilizations were the Chavin culture in Peru, China’s Shang culture, the Indus civilization in modern Indian and Pakistan, and the Egyptian and Sumerian cultures in the Near East.¹⁰

Between 1500 BC and 1200 BC, the Olmec settled San Lorenzo, which was perhaps the first urban center in the Americas. San Lorenzo was a hilltop ceremonial center overlooking the Coatzacoalcos River. The site was several times larger than any other Mesoamerican urban center existing at the time. It covered roughly two square miles and had several thousand permanent residents. At San Lorenzo, highly skilled craftspeople produced planned public architecture and a variety of artistic works. Extensive interregional trade networks supplied these craftspeople with materials. Around 900 BC, San Lorenzo declined for reasons unknown.¹¹

Radiocarbon dates indicate that a subsequent Olmec urban center, La Venta, flourished between 1200 BC and 400 BC. At its apogee, around 500 BC, its population was perhaps 2,000. It contained several plazas and the largest Mesoamerican structure yet built, whose original shape is still a matter of controversy. There the Olmec created awe-inspiring sculptures, finished without the benefit of metal tools. Much of the basalt they carved was quarried fifty miles away and presumably floated to La Venta on rafts. Today the most recognizable Olmec works are the magnificent stone heads representing their rulers. These sculptures measure as much as nine feet high and weigh up to forty tons.¹²

Even though they constructed San Lorenzo and later La Venta, most of the Olmec lived in small villages, fished, and raised corn, beans, squash, sweet potatoes, cotton, and various tree crops. Linking these villages was an elite that oversaw large-scale projects such as earthen and stone monument construction.¹³

Between 1300 BC and 500 BC, the Olmec culture influenced others throughout and beyond Mesoamerica. Trade routes, which connected areas of different resource endowments, were one of the main channels through which this influence spread. Recent archeological investigation has indicated that the Olmec influence in Mesoamerica was by no means unidirectional. Various other centers were developing and innovating at the same time and passing their knowledge to the Olmec. Major centers of this cultural network include the Valley of Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the area to the east of the Olmec where the classic Maya civilization would emerge.¹⁴

For reasons that are poorly understood, the Olmec centers collapsed. At La Venta, the altars and stone heads were systematically defaced and ceremoniously interred. Artisans ceased producing distinctive Olmec artistic works, and the extensive trade networks uniting the Olmec with surrounding regions no longer functioned. The causes for this decline have yet to be determined. Various explanations have been offered for this decline, including peasant revolt, disease, invasion, and agricultural exhaustion.¹⁵

THE CLASSIC PERIOD

The Classic Period of Mesoamerican culture extended from roughly AD 250 to AD 900 and saw two of the marvels of the pre-Conquest New World, the city Teotihuacan on the central Mexican plateau and the Mayan cities of southeastern Mexico. The AD 250 date corresponds to the earliest date in the Mayan calendar appearing on a carved monument, or stela, in the area. Classic cultures differed from their forebears in having more complex political organization, larger populations, full-time craft specialization, increased social stratification, and more centralized political authority.¹⁶

By the fourth century of the Christian era, a new civilization had emerged in central Mexico. When the Aztecs later encountered the remains of its capital, located thirty miles northeast of the present site of Mexico City, they named it Teotihuacan (the City of the Gods). The ethnic identity of the city’s builders remains unclear. This city, with a population of 100,000 or more, covered eight square miles, an area larger than Rome, which flourished at the same time. Between AD 250 and AD 700, Teotihuacan’s trading and tribute empire dominated central Mexico, and its influence was felt from present-day Guatemala to the dry non-agricultural areas far north of the city. The city relied on the highly fertile lands of the Valley of Mexico and a special resource—obsidian—for tool making. Obsidian was so far superior to other available stones for producing cutting tools that archeologist Robert Cobean noted that obsidian was to ancient Mesoamerica what steel is to modern civilization. More than 10 percent of the city’s labor force appear to have been obsidian workers. In addition to the city’s distinctive architectural style, its ceramic style influenced potters throughout Mesoamerica.¹⁷

The city’s planners laid out more than 2,000 rectangular city blocks. Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun, whose construction required an estimated 10,000 laborers working for twenty years, still inspires visitors. Its base covers an area equal to that of the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. Archeological evidence also indicates that the notion of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, which had a temple built there in its honor, originated in the city. Along with the Virgin of Guadalupe, Quetzalcoatl is a quintessential symbol of Mexico.¹⁸

Figure 1.2 Teotihuacan

Source: Copyright Michael E. Calderwood

The city met its end in the seventh century through deliberate burning by the hand of unknown invaders. By AD 750, its population had fallen below 10,000. A likely culprit for the city’s decline is deforestation. Trees were felled to supply fuel to burn the lime used in constructing the city. The loss of forests may have led to erosion and desiccation, thus undermining Teotihuacan’s agricultural base.¹⁹

At the same time as the Olmec culture was flourishing, a distinctive Maya culture was emerging to its east. This culture developed over a 39,000-square-mile area extending from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to modern Honduras. By 1000 BC the inhabitants of this region had settled in villages and were making pottery, and by 800 BC they were erecting small...