How did Spain Colonize Mexico?

With the fall of the Aztecs, Mexico entered a new 
age of Spanish colonial dominance. Its society, religion, economy, and demographics would 
transform forever as the indigenous population was devastated and a new population 
emerged or arrived to reshape it. In this video, we continue the story 
of Mexico from the brutal beginning to the hard-fought end of the colonial period.
The defeat of the Aztecs was far from the end of Spain’s long quest to capture Mexico. Decades of 
warfare and settlement was needed to complete it. To do this, they needed a centre of power – Mexico 
City, founded upon the ruins of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish demolished many of the existing Aztec 
structures and, in time, filled in Lake Texcoco to create artificial land for the city. A similar 
pattern of turning existing native cities into Spanish colonial centres continued across most 
of Mexico. In 1535, these new settlements were reorganised into a new colonial administrative 
structure known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain, headquartered in Mexico City, with a 
single unified government ruling over them. The Spanish continued their conquest of Mexico 
after 1521. The Zapotecs and the Mixtecs of the Oaxaca Valley submitted quickly. The Maya of the 
Yucatan Peninsula proved far less easy to control. The difficult terrain, the fierce guerrilla 
resistance of the Maya, and a lack of gold or silver to motivate Conquistadores 
meant that most of the Yucatan remained unconquered well into the 1540s, and pockets of 
resistance lingered well into the 17th century. The most fierce resistance 
came in north central Mexico, first from the Caxcan whose resistance to the 
Spanish during the Mixton War from 1540 to 1542 inflicted Spanish casualties comparable to the 
original conquest. After them, the Chichimeca became the most stubbornly resistant of the 
indigenous people. Between 1550 and 1590, the Chichimeca forced Spain to undertake 
its longest continual colonial war and, in the end, the Spanish were never able to crush 
them militarily. The war ended with a series of negotiated settlements that reduced Spanish 
troop and missionary presence in Chichimeca territory and built cooperative relations 
with the Chichimeca leaders. Ultimately, the Chichimeca settled and slowly assimilated 
to Spanish and Catholic culture anyway, but they did so on terms that were much more their 
own than some other native peoples were allowed. Conversion and Coercion
Controlling Mexico required the cooperation of surviving native elites. In the 
years after the conquests, many of the leading figures of pre-colonial Mexica society became the 
cooperative elites of the new colonial Mexican age. They were taught Spanish and their children 
were raised as Spanish-speaking Christians. In exchange, they kept their local power and 
got favorable treatment from the Spanish. Some of these Spanish-speaking indigenous peoples 
would pen the only surviving native accounts of the conquest, although they were heavily 
filtered through their new Spanish lens. For Spain, empire meant wealth and faith above 
all. Missionaries were quick on the heels of the conquerors, with many religious figures 
of the day believing that the opening of the missionary field in the Americas was the final 
step towards the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Franciscans were the first to arrive in Mexico 
starting in 1524, with the Dominicans arriving in 1536, and the Jesuits in 1572. While the orders 
differed on some particulars, there were some similarities in their attitudes. All believed the 
native religion was savage and demonic, but the Mexicans themselves were merely ignorant, almost 
child-like. The missionaries firmly believed that proper instruction in Christianity would build a 
respectable Christian society out of the natives. Missionaries focused first on the destruction of 
non-Christian influences like temples and idols, and then on making new converts. For example, 
the Dominican missionary Diego De Landa who worked among the Maya in the 1560s and 
1570s. He oversaw the torture of around 4,000 Maya people and the deaths of around 
170 for the crimes of idolatry and paganism, along with the total destruction of countless 
Maya books which he condemned as pagan nonsense. The exact approach was often debated. Missionaries 
were constantly concerned that Mexicans were not truly understanding Christianity, and 
there was too much focus on the quantity of baptised Christians rather than the quality 
of them. Much of the European understanding of Mexican languages like Nahuatl, and of the 
Mexicans’ early understanding of Spanish, came through missionaries as they attempted 
to bring Christianity to the Mexicans in terms they’d be able to understand.
Of course, all of this occurred in the context of massive Mexican population 
decline. In the decades after the conquest, native population steadily declined, from around 
25 million in 1519 to less than 1 million by 1622. Still, natives significantly outnumbered the 
Spanish for a long time. By 1550 for example, Mexico City was still made up of 90% native 
Mexicans. That number dwindled with the arrival of new Spanish settlers, African slaves, and the 
mestizo children of European and Mexican parents. Control and Economy
While settlement and conversion were important parts of Spanish imperialism, the 
lust for gold and wealth were no less important in shaping colonial Mexico. The silver mines of 
the Zacatecas region and later gold in the Sonora region were the single most valuable areas of 
Mexico and much Spanish effort was put into the extraction and shipment of these resources back 
to Europe. Although Peru would outstrip Mexico in the production of both valuable metals, Mexican 
gold and silver mines remained an invaluable source of wealth through the colonial period.
The economic life blood of early colonial Mexico was the encomienda. The encomienda 
was essentially the right to the labour of native Indians that was awarded to Spanish 
conquistadors and settlers. Under the encomienda, Indians were forced to labour for their Spanish 
masters in terms not far shy of chattel slavery. Most encomienda work was farming or plantation 
related on estates known as haciendas but encomienda labourers could also be found working 
in the gold and silver mines in large numbers. The encomienda system was first used in Mexico 
by Cortes as a reward for his conquistadors. For the first few decades of Spanish rule, it was 
a vital but controversial economic institution. Most of the early Spanish colonial elite relied 
upon it, and it gave individual encomenderos significant local power. Critics of the encomienda 
system called it a cruel and unjust institution, no better than slavery. The Dominican Friar 
Bartolomé de Las Casas was among the fiercest critics of Spanish colonial methods, condemning 
the encomienda as a “moral pestilence… which daily consumes these people” and decrying 
the horrible treatment of native peoples. He still believed in Spain’s imperial right 
to the New World – he simply wanted Spain’s imperialism to be conducted more morally.
Concerns about the ethics of the encomienda and the unrestrained power of the encomenderos 
led King Charles V to more tightly control them with the New Laws of 1542. The encomienda 
system gradually died out over the second half of the 16th century and was replaced with a 
new repartimiento system. It was slightly fairer in that it rotated labor demands between 
native communities and offered at least a paltry wage, but it was still exploitative.
Ultimately, demographics would reshape the economy. As native populations declined, 
encomienda and repartimiento were less viable. African slaves began being imported in 
greater numbers, mostly by trading for them with the Portuguese or later the British. Hand-in-hand 
with this, the growth of the Spanish settler and mestizo populations increased the availability 
of paid labour. As the 17th century progressed, paid labour supplanted forced native labour 
in most areas of agriculture and mining, which allowed a growing working class of Spanish 
and mestizo farmers and citizens to find their place in Mexican colonial society.
Evolution of a Colonial Society This society was defined largely by race. 
Peninsulares and criollos sat at the top, followed by mestizos, below them were the 
indigenous Mexicans, and at the bottom sat the African slaves. Power and wealth remained mostly 
in the hands of the peninsulares and criollos. By the mid-17th century, Mexico was a place 
of flourishing culture with a growing artistic and architectural identity of its own. Grand 
new churches like the Church of Santa María Tonantzintla in Puebla demonstrated a new 
baroque style where European artistic and religious influences blended with native handiwork 
to symbolise a new Mexican culture. Meanwhile Mexican artists like Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 
nun, poet, and intellectual, contributed poems and literature to become founding figures 
of Mexico’s own unique literary tradition. This rising Mexican identity 
coincided with the dwindling of the last independent native resistance too. 
The last independent Maya city at Nojpetén, in modern-day Guatemala fell in March 1697. 
Still, native resistance did not entirely vanish. Through the latter half of the 17th 
century, the Tarahumara in Chihuahua and the Pueblo in New Mexico denied the Spanish the 
comfortable territorial control they craved. Now, with wealth and culture of its own and the 
indigenous communities sidelined or destroyed, Mexico had a growing sense of itself as 
a unique and distinct nation. Naturally, tension between this rising colonial 
society and its distant imperial master would emerge in time. But by the 
late 17th and early 18th centuries, colonial elites were less dependent on 
Spanish power and the colonial administrators increasingly served the interest of 
local elites over imperial leaders. Spain was not ignorant of this growing rift. 
The Bourbon Reforms of the mid-1700s, named for the Bourbon Dynasty who secured their power 
with the War of the Spanish Succession in 1715, attempted to reassert Spanish control. They 
took greater control of taxes and coinage, modernised the military, and overhauled 
administration, signalling a new centralised age of Spanish control. Any obstacles 
to the crown’s control were disposed of, such as the independently-minded Jesuits, 
who were expelled from Mexico and the rest of Spanish America in 1767 and their 
missions taken over by the crown. The problem with centralisation, however, is 
that it makes the entire empire vulnerable if the centre is weak, and that’s exactly 
what happened. Constant warfare on the European continent in the wake of the French 
Revolution in 1789 drained Spain’s resources, making Spain more dependent on Mexican riches 
than Mexico was upon Spanish protection. Royal Treasury debt almost tripled 
between 1791 and 1815 as Spain fell into an irrecoverable financial spiral that 
made controlling Mexico all but impossible. Mexico itself was plagued by contrasts. 
Social unrest arising from wealth inequality, where beggars sat outside richly funded 
churches paid for by generous local elites. Agriculture was most people’s 
livelihood and it was insecure, with crop failures and unreliable prices causing 
havoc and despair for Mexican farmers in the late 1700s. There was also great unrest thanks 
to ongoing tension with France and Britain that created demand for an army to defend 
Mexico that Spain could simply not afford. The shatterpoint arrived in 1808 with 
Napoleon’s invasion of Spain which toppled the ruling Bourbons and left Mexico 
and the rest of Spanish America in a state of limbo. Mexico’s viceregal government refused 
to recognize the newly installed French usurper, but the legitimate king Ferdinand VII was 
unable to exercise any real authority either. Mexico’s imperial master effectively collapsed for 
several years, leaving Mexico to fend for itself. Decades of Spanish mismanagement 
and a growing sense of Mexican identity combined to seize the opportunity this 
imperial weakness presented. On September 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla 
gave a speech at Dolores urging Mexico to throw off Spanish control and declare 
independence. He invoked Our Lady of Guadulupe, a uniquely Mexican vision of the Virgin Mary, 
as a rallying symbol for the fight. This was the spark that lit the fire of a revolutionary 
fight that would rage for the next decade. Hidalgo was captured and killed by the Mexican 
government the following year, but his message for independence was taken up by countless others. 
Another priest, José María Morelos spearheaded a rebellion centered in Southern Mexico. On 
November 6th 1813 he led the Congress of Anahuac to declare Mexican independence, and 
a year later drafted its first constitution. The Spanish refused to accept Morelos’ 
declaration. With Ferdinand VII’s restoration to the Spanish throne in 1814, he ordered 
fresh troops to Mexico who defeated and captured Morelos, who was executed in December 
1815. The torch of the revolution then passed to his second-in-command, Vicente Gurrero, 
who led the movement for the next 5 years. In 1820 however, policy changes in Spain 
towards a liberal, anti-clerical attitude turned conservative Mexicans against the Spanish 
crown. Agustin de Iturbide, commander of the Spanish Crown’s forces in Mexico and the man 
tasked with the ongoing fight against Gurrero and the Republicans, opened secret negotiations with 
him instead. The two men agreed to declare Mexican Independence with protections for Catholicism, 
racial equality, and the elimination of the Spanish crown’s power. Lacking the resources 
to raise a new army and lacking the support in Mexico to make such opposition worthwhile, Spanish 
authorities signed the Treaty of Cordoba on August 24th 1821, marking the end of Spanish rule in 
Mexico and the birth of an independent Mexico. There were many challenges for 
this new nation to conquer, but for the first time in 300 years, Mexico 
would face those challenges on its own terms.