Urban Growth and Development

The country's instability, owing to a lack of leadership and goals, to foreign invasions and conspiracies, to epidemics, and most of all, to the lack of national control by the central government, kept urban growth and development at a minimum. Any progress found in the Mexican urban setting during the period from 1821 to 1876—such as in Guadalajara—can be attributed to local officials and elites who were able to manage economic and social issues so that their cities were able to sustain some growth despite the national situation.

Scholar Alejandra Moreno Toscano described the powerful regionalism found in Mexico throughout the nineteenth century in Tres ejemplos de relación entre ciudades y regiones en Nueva España finales del siglo XVIII. She distinguished Mexican cities before the advent of Independence based on their economic activities, development of internal methods of communication, and commercial relations that survived well after 1821, which assured their continuity throughout the nineteenth century. In some cases small cities, such as Cholula, almost disappeared when their importance was corroded by competing confrontations with stronger neighbors. Other cities, such as Orizaba and Córdoba, developed in unison with nearby cities owing to a shared regional concern, such as industrial and agricultural warehousing to surrounding lands. The cities of the Bajío region of north-central Mexico , an important agricultural region, established ranking and connecting links that allowed their common development. Most of these colonial cities were thus able to enter the new era after Independence. However, they did not attain "national" status as their loyalty was given to the political elements in the capital only as long as they supported the local or regional interests. Thus, the relationship between the center and the rest of the country remained very volatile until the late nineteenth century because the cities' primary concerns were local and not national.

Mexican cities and regions began to be integrated into one nation with Porfirio Díaz's revolution in 1876. He took power as the nation's president and except for the years 1880 to 1884 did not relinquish his control until 1911. His dictatorship, organized with the cooperation of military, commercial, and regional urban leaders, enforced a national unity not achieved previously by any other president. His general idea of national development was enforced through a number of officials who identified with the positivist motto "order and progress," so popular in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Díaz placed loyal followers in all the state and city governments of the country and rallied merchants' and businessmen's support by retaining them as members of those local or regional institutions and accommodating their interests. An example can be seen in Tampico, where loyal Porfiristas were members of the city government between 1872 and 1914. The presidents who followed Díaz—Venustiano Carranza, Álvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elías Calles— consistently applied the same centralization activities as those of the Porfiriato.

Changes in Spanish American Empire

The eighteenth century brought great changes to the Spanish American empire. Spain's Bourbon dynasty tried to implement in its colonies a series of economic, political, and financial measures that would guarantee greater commercial and industrial stability and hence a larger income for the Crown. Spain implemented these measures in order to avert a possible economic disaster for the empire. However, the new policies, both in America and Spain, upset many Spaniards, criollos (those of Spanish descent born in the Americas), and indigenous people. The old, established methods had changed, and their incomes were decreasing. Together with the late eighteenth century's growing philosophic and revolutionary mood, these policies led to a growing disaffection of the Spanish authorities.

Napoléon's invasion of Spain and Portugal and the collapse of royal authority in 1808 created a vacuum of political power, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the colonies, which criollos and Spaniards alike in both places rushed to fill. After 1810, war, hunger, diseases, the collapse of the mining industry, and higher taxes overwhelmed the viceroyalty of New Spain. The loss in population and commerce limited the economic and political possibilities of the new country born after the Plan de Iguala, signed by Vicente Guerrero and Agustin de Iturbide in 1821.

Throughout Mexico municipal councils, or cabildos, feared the new situation. For the first time since the viceroyalty's establishment in New Spain, power and authority were not distant forces in Europe, but were closer, in Mexico City. Enormous territories and regions held for centuries by overlapping authorities, mostly named by the king and the Council of Indies in Spain, were now forced to seek approval from a central government installed in the new capital. Spain had not organized a centralized empire but rather a loose one. Most Mexican cities, such as Guadalajara, which were controlled by local merchants and wealthy landowners whose incomes were not necessarily controlled by their relationship to Mexico City, tried to stay autonomous in their urban and regional actions, although they gave lip service to the "nation" and the problems that were dealt by the officials in Mexico City. Regionalism was deeply set in Mexico and was controlled by cities and their leaders throughout most of the early Independence period.

In 1803, the scholar Alexander von Humboldt assigned the viceroyalty of New Spain a total population of 5,800,000. Mexico City, its administrative center and largest city, had approximately 137,000 inhabitants. At the time there was a growing urban population, especially in cities located in mining and commercial regions, such as Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Veracruz, and Morelia. However, studies indicate that the urban growth in those cities and elsewhere stopped or decreased during and after Independence. Few of the studied cities were able to attain the population level reached in 1803 until the last years of the nineteenth century, and some not until after the Revolution of 1910.

The Urban Landscape of Mexico

The urban landscape of Mexico is old and sophisticated. Its major city embodies a broad national ethos: the great Temítistín or Tenochtitlan, capital of the Mexica (Aztec) Empire, major administrative center for the viceroyalty of New Spain, and Federal capital of the United States of Mexico. Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Teotihuacanos, Toltec, and many other civilized nations lived, worked, and prayed in cities that were destroyed or that have been renewed and refounded at different times in history. The Spanish Conquest could not have been accomplished without the creation of a new urban landscape of novel cities different from their Indian predecessors and with skins that could only be shed anew after Independence.

Mexico's urban centers were founded in three cultural, political, and social moments of the nation's past: the preHispanic, colonial, and post-Independence periods. The earliest cities can trace their origins to pre-Hispanic settlements built and designed in accordance with the cultural formations of the Indian civilizations that appeared in Mesoamerica for over 2,000 years. Some were administrative and religious centers, others were living communities; yet all planned differently from those built after the Conquest.

Spaniards founded many new cities between the sixteenth and early nineteenth century. The conquistadors used these cities to colonize the new lands and to control the rural environment and its population. The Spaniards constructed these cities based on traditions of urban architecture and military life found in Renaissance and Modern Europe. Although these cities were modeled on foreign urban ideas, they were immersed in a New World context that affected their planning and objectives. Over 60 Mexican cities, among them Puebla, Taxco, Guadalajara, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Querétaro, have retained historical monuments of the colonial era. These churches, monasteries, and public and private buildings now are protected by nongovernmental, state, and federal organizations in an effort to preserve a legacy of New Spain's viceroyalty and the greatness of its political creation.

A third group of cities, founded after Mexico attained its Independence in 1821, are called, in the words of Argentine historian José Luis Romero, the "national" cities of Mexico. Among them are Tampico, Ciudad del Carmen, Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, Ciudad Madero, and countless others varying in size and importance. Most have had a precarious life until recent years, when population growth or their location—whether on the coasts or frontiers—gave them unexpected importance. These "national" cities have played an important role in the life of the country, especially for their contribution as urban centers where local and regional political life has developed within the context of the nation and as immediate paradigms of the true life of the nation's people and their problems. In addition to these three broad groups of cities are thousands of villages and hamlets, tiny centers of urban-rural life deeply immersed in their natural environments. The great historical classic of Luis González y González, Pueblo en vilo: Microhistoria de San José de Garcia, studies one of these small centers.

Race Mixture

Virtually from the beginning of the Spanish settlement of Mexico, race mixture was quite common. Early on most of the resultant offspring were incorporated into either the Spanish or Indian elements of society. But within two to three generations, especially in the larger cities, a separate classification of mixed-race people, commonly termed mestizos, began to appear in appreciable numbers. This ethnic group grew rapidly, with most of its members holding semiskilled or unskilled positions in the Spanish sphere of urban life. They typically identified with the Spanish colonial world, not the Indian, and preferred urban residence for the most part. Only gradually and later in the colonial period did any significant numbers of these mixed bloods move into the countryside.

With the passage of time, other mixed-blood classifications were formed, but overall the urban dwellers of colonial Mexico effectively organized themselves and recognized three ethnic groups: Spaniards, mixed-bloods (also termed castas and commonly including mulattoes and the most acculturated Indians), and Indians (meaning here those who still substantially followed native ways and characteristically resided in the outlying barrios). In 1792, Antequera in the heavily Indian Oaxaca Valley that contained rather few Spanish-owned estates, had around 7,000 citizens of Spanish descent, only some 5,000 of Indian, fully 3,500 classified as mestizos (or castizos, a variant), and just over 2,100 mulattoes and other African-white mixtures. This is a remarkable mix of ethnic groups and mixed classifications for a city so distant from the colonial heartland in central Mexico.

Cities also served as the primary arena of social and ethnic mobility. A fair number of mixed-bloods and Indians enjoyed some level of economic success and social acceptance. Such people typically then sought to present themselves as a member of a higher ethnic classification: Indians as mestizos, and mestizos as Spaniards. They often succeeded, for in this dynamic urban world ethnic identity was determined as much by one's social category as by one's physical appearance. This process of racial mobility is termed "social race." Because of it, urban censuses in the late colonial period depict a much larger "Spanish" group than would be expected if a significant number of mixed-bloods were not successfully ascending into that category.

Mexican cities of the colonial period were typical of their counterparts worldwide in having higher death than birth rates over the long term. The lack of sanitation and crowded conditions combined with commonly ineffectual medical care to create this state. But cities grew nonetheless— although erratically—because of continual rural-to-urban migration. People from all ethnic categories and different social levels moved from the countryside to cities because of the enhanced economic possibilities they promised and the more vibrant cultural life they offered. In times of famine or rebellion, people tended to flock to the cities in heavy numbers, counting on supplies and safety that urban authorities seemed better able to provide.

Colonial Mexican cities certainly had quite high levels of crime, but they also experienced few social disturbances of notable scale or duration. The urban masses generally lacked a compelling grievance or any strong sense of class solidarity. Many lived in close association with their employers or masters. The many rural migrants and the varieties of ethnic identity also served to undercut group identity. Finally, cities usually provided more social services, such as hospitals, however rudimentary, than did the countryside, and municipal authorities sought to assure adequate supplies of basic foodstuffs at low prices to the commoners.

Cities: Ethnicities

Cities presented a far more complex mosaic of ethnicities than did the countryside. In fact, they constituted the arena of the greatest interaction of the different ethnic groups and the generation of yet new classifications. The Spanish element of Mexican society, whether criollo (those born in the Americas) or immigrant, resided overwhelmingly in cities. Although most Spaniards held either some property or some remunerative skill, within a century of settlement an identifiable group of quite poor, working-class Spaniards could be found at least in the biggest cities. These seem to be hardly favored by their ethnic identity and lived in the same conditions and were regarded in the same way as their nonSpanish counterparts. Spaniards resided in or close to the heart of the city. Few of any rank were to be found in outlying neighborhoods.

Blacks and mulattoes, sometimes enslaved and sometimes free, came to Mexicoinsignificant numbers from the earliest days of the colony. Very much part of the Spanish colonial world, many lived in the cities, working as skilled artisans, transporters, marketplace workers, household servants, and the like. Urban slaves enjoyed rather favorable circumstances for manumission, often being on intimate terms with their masters or employed in remunerative occupations. Most people of African descent lived in or close to the Spanish districts near the center of the city. In the several largest cities, some small neighborhoods dominated by free blacks and mulattoes did emerge.

Some Indians always lived in the central part of the cities, typically employed as household servants or as low-level employees in retail stores, artisan shops, or eateries. Most, however, clustered in Indian neighborhoods located in the outskirts of the cities. Many entered the city proper to work as unskilled laborers during the day. Some of these native barrios enjoyed their own political identity and governance by Indian governors. Most, however, sprung up over the decades and were rather casually attached to the city itself and governed by its council. Initially, each barrio tended to have a sharp ethnic identity, being inhabited almost exclusively by one native group or another. But this exclusivity broke down rather rapidly over the decades, and while these neighborhoods remained overwhelmingly Indian, peoples from a variety of native societies would live in each, interacting intimately and intermarrying, and with time some "mixed bloods" would enter the population as well. These outlying neighborhoods were not neatly laid out in regular patterns, as was the central city. Streets wandered in all directions and residences tended to be more ramshackle. But as these cities grew, especially late in the colonial period, they incorporated some of these neighborhoods, with the lower-class native populations moving a bit farther out. The irregular nature of the street system would be retained.

Social Life in Colonial Mexico

The elegant social life of the elites took place within the walls of their houses, not on the streets or in the many taverns and eateries of the city. Life outside of the household included attendance at concerts and performances held in theaters and a quite stylized and controlled social intercourse among the young involving promenades in parks and avenues. Urban merchants completely dominated commerce in colonial Mexico. Many of the major wholesalers—congregated entirely in Mexico City until the second half of the eighteenth century, when some newcomers based themselves in Veracruz—were quite independent of Spanish commercial houses. The staff of these firms was routinely refreshed by new recruits from Spain, some of whom rose rapidly to head the businesses. The offspring of these wholesalers commonly intermarried with established elite families of the colony and became smoothly integrated into the higher ranks of society. Over the course of time, numerous elite families added merchant houses to their diversified set of investments, along with rural estates, and sometimes mills, processing plants, or mines.

At least the several largest cities had substantial middle classes, composed of the many professionals in the society, prominent retail store and mill owners, business managers, and the most successful master artisans. In these cities the several governmental bureaucracies, the diverse agencies of the Catholic Church, the educational institutions, and the medical establishments employed a good number of wellcompensated and respected professionals. Individual families sometimes owned several specialized retail stores or processing plants. Master artisans on occasion expanded their enterprises into a large establishment or several shops.

Such entities as Mexico City, Puebla, Querétaro, and San Miguel employed large numbers of workers in refining mills, textile plants, and other types of processing enterprises. Mining centers such as Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Real del Monte, and Taxco engaged thousands of individuals in refining and transporting silver ore, leaving aside the great numbers who labored in the mines themselves, often earning a rather substantial income through incentive programs. The vast retail sectors of these urban centers, including hundreds of small restaurants and drinking establishments besides stores and market stalls, provided decent livings to many more. Artisan shops commonly employed at least several journeymen and apprentices and even perhaps another master craftsman or two.

An array of construction and transportation businesses flourished in these cities. Buildings, streets, roads, canals, and aqueducts were being constructed continually in and around urban centers. Humans also conducted much of the portage of goods around the city and directed the mule teams that characteristically transported goods over any long distance. But even this vast spectrum of employment possibilities could not accommodate the large unskilled urban population. Probably between one-fifth and one-third of the population of the major cities had no regular employment and lived from day to day, soliciting temporary jobs and sometimes engaging in petty crime, the latter being rampant in the streets and retail establishments.

Colonial Cities

The dual economic motors of silver mining and commercial agriculture and ranching drove the rapid population growth of the Mexican north throughout the eighteenth century, an expansion notably greater than the healthy growth experienced by the larger colony in that era. Guadalajara grew sixfold in the eighteenth century to a city of roughly 35,000 in 1805. As cities, Durango and Chihuahua were largely creations of the eighteenth century, each reaching a size of about 10,000 by 1800. New mining centers, such as Parral, emerged as well.

Even in the south Antequera grew rapidly in the second half of the eighteenth century. A city of a mere 6,000 or so in 1700, it had tripled its population by the late 1770s. Previously an administrative center, Antequera at this time became a commercial and manufacturing center, shipping a local dye northward to Mexico City and Veracruz in massive amounts for subsequent shipment to Europe , and weaving silk and cotton goods for sale mostly in the center and north of the colony.

Cities of any size served as administrative and marketing centers for substantial regions. All governmental and ecclesiastical hierarchies were invariably based in cities. No administrator or cleric located in the countryside could claim any status at all. And the cities had their own ranked order. Overall, any movement to a bigger city or to the capital constituted a promotion. All social welfare institutions in the colony—hospitals, orphanages, and asylums, most of which were operated by agencies of the Catholic Church—were urban based. Secondary schools (colegios) and religious seminaries always were located in a major provincial center, and the only university was situated in Mexico City.

Virtually all of the economic and social elite of colonial Mexico resided in great urban houses, including those who made their fortunes in commercial agriculture. Few hacienda complexes contained luxurious houses, for the owners would reside on these estates only for delimited periods as their businesses demanded. Most of their business could be conducted better in the cities, where deals were made and markets developed, and the social and cultural opportunities were vastly superior. Professional administrators could operate the hacienda or mine on a day-to-day basis. These elite families, along with those of commercial wholesalers, whose enterprises invariably were centered in the major cities, constructed great houses for their extended families and armies of retainers and servants as close to the city center as they could. These beautiful mansions, designed by architects, and often highly ornate, commonly occupied a quarter or even a half of an entire city block. They were not segregated from the commercial and productive segments of the city, however. Instead they were surrounded by stores and artisan shops of all types, and the mansions might themselves include self-contained stores on the street level.

The Largest City in the Colony

From the very beginning Mexico City was easily the largest city in the colony, maintaining a population advantage of nearly three-to-one over its nearest competitor, Puebla. By the 1790s Mexico City contained around 130,000 people, and Puebla perhaps 55,000. In the eighteenth century Puebla's immediate region developed significantly through commercial agriculture, and the city itself prospered as a processing and cotton-textile production center. Despite being the colony's major port, Veracruz had a population of only 15,000 at the same time, suffering from its unhealthy, tropical climate and from Spaniards' traditional dislike for residing along a coast. Hardly a single other city in Mexico developed significantly in the seventeenth century, so the networks of Mexico, Puebla, and Veracruz from the center of the colony to the east coast and of Mexico City to Zacatecas in the north remained dominant and rather stable for about one and one-half centuries.

These patterns were modified only incrementally even late in the colonial period. On the west coast, Acapulco languished in a quite primitive state as a port for the Manila Galleon, which came from the Philippines only once or twice a year, with some incidental coastal trade, and as a naval fortress to protect the colony from attack on the Pacific side. Other ports such as San Blas, Tampico, and Campeche hardly merited designations as towns and barely survived conducting a modest amount of commerce for their regions.

The rapid growth of a complex of cities along the plain known as the Bajío a couple hundred miles north of Mexico City in the eighteenth century constitute the most significant modification of the pattern of urbanization that had prevailed in colonial Mexico until that time. Querétaro, near the southern end of the region, had been the first of its cities to grow to any size. Its early importance derived from its location along the route from Zacatecas to Mexico City. Eventually several major routes through the north converged at Querétaro, but in size and importance it did not earn the official designation of "city" with its own municipal council until 1656. In the eighteenth century, Querétaro developed a major woolen textile industry supplying the now-substantial population of the region. By the 1790s it had a population over 30,000. But the city in the Bajío that led the growth spurt in the eighteenth century was Guanajuato. A secondary silver-mining camp since the mid-sixteenth century, it had a population of only some 16,000 in 1700. Then the rapid development of its mines in the middle and late decades of the eighteenth century sent its urban population to over 32,000, and its larger municipal population to some 55,000 by 1792.

Colonial Mexican Cities

As the Spaniards moved into the north starting in the 1540s to establish communities based around silver mining or ranching—plus a scattering of agricultural marketing centers-they founded cities within vast regions previously uninhabited by sedentary Indians. Querétaro, Guanajuato, and León in the extensive Bajío region to the near north of Mexico City, and Guadalajara and Zacatecas yet farther to the north grew to notable size without any significant indigenous population clusters near them. Most colonial Mexican cities had been settled by 1580 (although in some cases they did not receive Crown recognition as towns or cities until some decades later), and the overwhelming majority of these endured and increased in size. Of course, mining communities continued to spring up even later than this as ore deposits were discovered. Also, as the arid north developed much later in the colonial period, some new cities emerged, Chihuahua and Durango being the most prominent of these.

Mining towns were the primary exception to the Spanish pattern of laying out colonial cities in a grid-like fashion. First, silver deposits tended to be found in rather rugged country that was not conducive to geometrically regular town plans, and the settlers of these towns anticipated that the ore and hence their residence would be quite temporary. Thus such important cities as Zacatecas and Guanajuato were laid out in very disorderly fashion, with streets following the terrain and wandering hither and yon. While the Spanish in Mexico rarely established themselves in preexisting Indian towns, they understandably situated themselves overwhelmingly in the sedentary Indian zone of central Mexico. Despite the demographic catastrophe, great numbers of natives survived to provide an inexpensive labor source. And central Mexico contained most of the immediately arable soil in the colony. Thus the earliest, largescale commercial agriculture proliferated in this region.

Mexico exported rather little agricultural produce during the colonial period. The cities of the society itself, with their large wage-earning populations, overwhelmingly constituted the markets for these rural enterprises. The development of any colonial city immediately reverberated through its hinterland, stimulating a vast increase in production and improvement of the land. The strip of territory stretching from Mexico City through Puebla to the port of Veracruz quickly emerged as the colony's trunk line, the central network of production and exchange with the rest of the world. The discovery of a major silver deposit in Zacatecas in the mid-sixteenth century established that city as the northern extreme of a new branch of the trunk line. Other mining centers gradually emerged, primarily in the arid, sparsely settled northern part of the colony, but like their predecessors they funneled their production and commerce through Mexico City and then on to Veracruz.

Events in the Conquest of Mexico

One of the most significant events in the Conquest of Mexico by Fernando ( Hernán) Cortés's expedition involved the founding of a city. Upon arriving on the coast of Mexico, the leaders of the expedition declared in a solemn document that they were founding the city of Veracruz and that this new city's council had chosen Cortés as its leader. The municipality then dispatched a couple of well-connected representatives to the royal court in Spain to secure acceptance of their actions. These steps asserted the expedition's juridical separation from the control of the governor of Cuba, who initially had authorized and dispatched the fleet to this unexplored territory. By constituting themselves as a municipality, the expeditionaries had formed themselves into the essential Iberian political unit. Further, nothing would be more immediately recognizable to the royal government than a petition by a municipality presenting a dispute with another governmental agency, in this case the governor of Cuba.

Of course, the peoples of central Mexico enjoyed an urban tradition of their own that dated back thousands of years, with some urban complexes having populations in the tens of thousands—and in a few exceptional cases, in the hundreds of thousands. The great island city of Tenochtitlan contained a population of around 200,000 when the Spaniards arrived. But the devastation of the Conquest, which took well over two years and whose success required the leveling of the Mexica (Aztec) capital, combined with the horrendous demographic collapse of the indigenous population to destroy the largest Indian urban centers.

Those urban centers that survived the Conquest period physically intact only contained a fraction of their pre-Contact population within a generation or two after the encounter. But the Spaniards respected indigenous civil governance, and native councils continued to rule their communities. The Tlaxcalan municipal council carefully recorded its proceedings in written Nahuatl beginning only 20 years after the Spanish Conquest. Numerous other native councils did the same.

Throughout Mexico, Spaniards commonly established their communities as new cities on unoccupied sites, sometimes just a few miles away from an extant indigenous community. Puebla was founded in 1531 within easy reach of Cholula, but was still quite distinct from it. Antequera emerged as a new community in 1529 in the densely populated Oaxaca Valley, assuming the site of a former Mexica fortress rather than any of the nearby native settlements. On the Yucatán Peninsula, Mérida was raised well apart from the numerous sites. In Michoacán, the provincial capital was situated first at the traditional native centers of Tzintzuntzan and Pátzcuaro, but before the end of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards there established a new capital, Valladolid (which was renamed Morelia in 1826), somewhat away from any Indian community. Although these cities did not build upon preexisting Indian settlements, quite soon after their establishment they were ringed by outlying neighborhoods of indigenous peoples drawn by the economic promise of these commercial and administrative centers.

Urbanism and Urbanization: Colonial

The Spanish brought a profoundly strong urban tradition with them to Mexico. Spaniards had for centuries considered the city as the fundamental unit in government and as the arena of social and cultural progress. They held a rather negative view of rural life and of persons who dwelled and labored in the countryside. People of any stature who made their living from rural enterprises, whether ranching or agriculture, nonetheless typically resided in cities and identified strongly with them, operating their enterprises from these urban settings. In the Spanish tradition, municipal boundaries extended far into the hinterland. Hence municipios might reach the size of English counties or even of small provinces. All political, social, business, and religious organizations were centered in the city proper, and all ascent, whether social or bureaucratic, led toward the city. Members of municipal councils typically belonged to the most prominent and wealthy families in the community. This urban emphasis transferred readily to the New World, even in the initial period of exploration and conquest.

The first Spaniards in a new region characteristically organized themselves into a city complete with a formal name, often derived from their home province in Spain, and a municipal council, which would be comprised of the leaders of the expedition. Such cities as Santo Domingo in Hispaniola and Santiago in Cuba had been founded before any Spaniards reached the shores of Mexico. And in the Caribbean, where the Spaniards could construct brand-new cities in largely unoccupied, open territory, they laid out gridlike street patterns, with the city center dominated by a large plaza surrounded on each side by the cathedral, the governmental palace, the municipal government's headquarters, and (on the last side) some combination of mansions belonging to the leading families and of large merchant stores.

A municipality was governed by a cabildo, a town council consisting of a group of aldermen and magistrates. From very early in the colonial period, such positions could be purchased from the colonial government. This reinforced the traditional pattern of the council being dominated by representatives from the most prominent families in the community. Once a town was firmly established, the cabildo had considerably less of importance to attend to. Much of its attention and funds were expended in sponsoring public festivals and processions. It also attended to crime control, but quite ineffectually, as it devoted few resources or personnel to the activity. The council understandably devoted itself to the upkeep of public streets, facilities, and buildings, but here again its success was mixed at best. A cabildo had only modest resources available to it, as it relied on the rental of public lands, judicial fines, and other such meager sources for its income.

Commerce and Tribute

Tenochtitlan received raw materials and manufactured goods from the tributary regions of the Mexica state as well as products obtained by specialized merchants known as pochteca. The conquered provinces brought gold, cochineal, cloth and textiles, warrior attire, and many other sumptuary goods as well as chía, amaranth, maize, and other subsistence items. Some goods were redistributed to warriors and functionaries at special fiestas, while others were sold in the market. Goods from the palace, from long-distance trading, from professional traders, and some products brought by agricultural workers and small artisans all were brought to the market. These included dyes, unguents, medicinal plants, tobacco, raw and cooked foods, live and dead animals, skins, gold and silver jewelry, feather adornments, cotton, rich vestments, knives, objects of daily use (pottery, salt, carbon, firewood, flowers), maize, frijol, chía, amaranth, chile, vegetables, fruit, and cacao. Items such as dogs, pottery, textiles, jewels, birds, and slaves were sold in specialized local markets.

Over 70 neighborhoods existed in Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco combined. Some were occupied by foreigners (e.g., Otomis, Xochimilcas) but the majority were inhabited by groups dedicated to certain trades that were passed from father to son and based around the cult of a particular deity. Silversmiths and goldsmiths lived in Yopico; fisherman in Huitnahua; weavers, feather workers, and painters in Amantla; merchants in Pochtlan; and pulque brewers in Tlamatzinco.

Tenochtitlan society consisted of three great groups: the nobility, agricultural workers, and slaves. The nobles possessed their own lands, did not pay tribute, could be polygamous, and sent their sons to calmécac (special schools). This group was comprised of the tlaloque (rulers), the tetechutin (nobles), the pipiltin (sons of the two previous categories), the quauhpipiltin (those whose came from common stock but ascended through their merits as warriors), and the capuleque (lords of the calpulli). The macehuales (common people) consisted of the free men, who paid tribute, and the mayeque, who paid rent. At the bottom of the list were the tlacohtin (slaves), who were prisoners of war, purchased slaves, or slaves as a result of punishment.

Tenochtitlan was the capital of a vast and powerful state and a city that amazed both Mesoamericans and Spaniards when the latter encountered it in 1521. It was also the culmination of a tradition in which urbanism represented the model of civilized life and in which the city was a miniature version of the cosmos. Despite regional differences, the Mesoamerican city was multiethnic, the result of urban planning, and a center for the distribution of goods and services.

The Urban Plan of Tenochtitlan

Tenochtitlan housed 200,000 inhabitants by the year 1519. The city had been constructed within the lake in an area of freshwater springs, on an oval-shaped island. It had a netlike arrangement of canals and streets crossed by numerous bridges creating clear divisions into different blocks.The sacred precinct lay in the center, housing 78 buildings, notably the main temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, temples to other deities arranged around plazas, schools, the ballcourt, and the skull rack (tzompantli). This area was squared off by a defensive wall adorned with serpent heads. It had three entrances that linked it to the three main avenues. Around this nucleus were arranged the palaces of the rulers and the nobility (with their multiple rooms, ponds, and baths). Further out lay the houses of the leading members of Mexica society, multifamily housing, and finally the agricultural population on the chinampas. The land belonging to the nobles lay outside the city.

The division of Tenochtitlan into four sectors is a reflection of the ancient Mesoamerican tradition of constructing cities on a cosmological basis. The four cardinal points represent the horizontal map of the world: Atzacoalco to the northeast (the modern-day San Sebastián barrio), Cuepopan to the northwest (the Santa María barrio), Zoquiapan to the southeast (the barrio of San Pablo), and Moyotlan to the southwest (the San Juan barrio). The Templo Mayor (Great Temple) also represented the vertical axis of the cosmos with an underworld, a terrestrial level, and a celestial world.

Tlatelolco, the twin city of the Mexica capital, had a rectangular precinct to the east of which lay the great market, which was famous as a center for the distribution of goods from diverse regions of Mesoamerica. It was an open space surrounded by stores, from which seeds, flowers, dogs, birds, slaves, gold, feathers, and other goods were sold.

Tenochtitlan and Its Environs

Tenochtitlan- Mexico City was founded by the Mexica (Aztecs) in the year 1325 or 1345. It originally lay in the center of a lagoon as if it were the heart of the Valley of Mexico. Its arteries—avenues and dikes—connected it to dry land. To the south the Ixtapalapa causeway split at the level of Mexicaltzingo, that of Tepeyac went north to the temple of Tonantzin, and the Tlacopán causeway ran parallel to an aqueduct to Chapultepec. To the east communication with dry land was achieved through the use of canoes and moorings. This traffic of canoes and craft on the waterways gave Tenochtitlan a Venetian appearance. The four principal canals were oriented toward the cardinal directions.

Tenochtitlan suffered disasters caused by terrible floods and severe drought. Barricades and public works were undertaken, many planned by Nezahuacoyotl, to avoid the violent rush of water. On some occasions the need to provide water to the city and desalinate the lagoon provoked powerful floods. There was also a complex system of bulwarks that kept back the salt-water lagoon to regulate the springs and act as waterways. Along two great axes, those of TeayucaCulhuacan and Los Remedio-Tepetzingo (now Peñón de los Baños), lay the main temples of the settlements.

The Valley of Mexico was then a great river basin filled with lakes and freshwater lagoons (to the north and south) and brackish water in the center. The various inhabitants of the region fished, hunted, collected, and cultivated. The varied diet included freshwater fish, acociles, gusanillos, frogs, axolotles, algae, hemiptera, and their eggs. Various migratory birds were trapped, and maize, frijol, squash, chile, tomato, amaranth, and flowers were cultivated in the chinamlpa system that occasionally was fertilized with guano. These chinampas were anchored by fences of huejote trees (a species of willow) and had a framework constructed of aquatic plants and the mud of the lake.

Many springs fed the lower zones, which were ringed with sierras covered with pine and oak and on which deer, hare, rabbit, opossum, and other animals were hunted. Wood was felled here both for construction purposes and firewood, which also was employed to burn limestone to produce stucco. Various waterside houses located in settlements such as Ixtapalapa, Mexicaltzingo, and Coyoacán, were constructed on stakes set in the water. Artificial islands, such as Tláhuac, also were created.

Specialization of Labor

Paleobotanic remains have revealed the existence of maize, quenopodium, amaranth, nopal, verdolaga, capulín, and mesquite, as well as maguey and various varieties of wood. A total of 70 percent of the animal remains belong to deer and domestic dog. The earliest manufacturing activity detected so far is the removal of fibers from the maguey plant and obsidian carving. There is evidence of areas in the Coyotlatelco settlement area that specialized in obsidian work and perhaps pottery and small figurines. During the period of its greatest expansion, Tula was producing obsidian both for its own use and for export, 90 percent comprised of green obsidian from Pachuca. Houses also existed that manufactured ceramic conduits for drainage, figurines, vases of tecali (travertine), and textile products.

The archaeological record reveals that Tula received goods from Soconusco in southeast Chiapas (lead ware), as well as Central America (polichrome pottery), the northwest of Mexico (cloisonné enamel ware), serpentine from Guerrero, jadeite from Honduras, and sea conch from both the Pacific and Gulf Coasts. Huastec pottery also has been found in a barrio believed to have been occupied by this group. Exports included obsidian from Pachuca, large incense burners representing Tlaloc, figurines, bowls of tecali and perhaps limestone, all of which, scholars believe, were part of the commercial exchange with the Gulf Coast.

Dan M. Healan has established the existence of three social units within the domestic structure: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the barrios, all of which also reveal socioeconomic differences. To date, the "barrio" unit has only been noted as having a function within a ritual context. The existence of a sole civic-religious precinct could be an indication of the centralization of authority. The abandonment of such areas and alterations in orientation or urban planning have been attributed to struggles for power. There are various opinions on the macroregional organization of the Toltec Empire. Kirchoff, as previously mentioned, proposes a quadripartite division with Tula as the axis. Others suggest the existence of an early "Triple Alliance" of which Tula was a member.

Urban Development

The settlements of the Classic period (Chingú and the northern sector of the zone that would be occupied by the city of Tula) demonstrate a similar arrangement and use of construction techniques as that seen at Teotihuacan. Later settlements were located on the summits of steep hills, on the flanks of Monte Xicuco, or on slopes, as in the case of Tula Chico. This sites covered an area of 2 square miles (5 to 6 square kilometers) and included specialized production areas and a central precinct containing ballcourts, small mounds, and residential platforms. Unlike Magoni, another settlement in the same valley, which shows evidence of links with the Bajfo region, Tula Chico also has indications of the remnants of the Teotihuacan population.

The boundaries of the city were altered radically during the development of the Toltec State ( A.D. 900-1150). Settlements were relocated to the alluvial valley on the banks of the Tula and Salado Rivers and areas with limestone deposits. The urban area covered at this time a total of 5 square miles (13 square kilometers), and a new precinct was built, that of Tula Grande, with pyramids, temples, ballcourts, and palaces. Tula Chico subsequently was abandoned. These changes have been linked to the battle between Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl and the subsequent flight of the latter.

The period of maximum expansion of the Toltec Empire was between A.D. 1000 and 1200. The city covered 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) and included, according to Robert H. Cobean and Alba Guadalupe Mastache, areas for worship, administration, exchange, meetings, housing, production, and circulation (streets, avenues, and plazas). Varieties of dwellings included palaces, elite dwellings around the plazas, residential complexes of various rooms (similar to those of Teotihuacan), and groups of houses. Although Tula lacked the urban design of Teotihuacan or Tenochtitlan, it nevertheless conserved the Teotihuacan tradition of being a unique great urban settlement in a rural context. As in the case of many pre-Hispanic capital cities, Tula was multiethnic; it had strong Nahua, Huastec, and Otomi components.

Tula

Tula is located in a valley in the modern-day state of Hidalgo near the Sierra de Pachuca, and is watered by the Saldo and Tula Rivers. There is some evidence to suggest that Teotihuacan groups already had contact with the Tula region during the Classic period at sites such as Chingú, probably to obtain certain resources such as limestone from which to produce stucco. The first occupation at Tula might have taken place as early as A.D. 650, when a group coming from the north or west settled in Tula together with the local population. According to certain historical documents, the migratory groups were the Tolteca-Chichimeca (Toltecs), who established themselves near modern Tulancingo prior to populating Tula. Tula's foundation also is linked in some sources to a celebrated group of artisans (the Nonoalca) from the Gulf Coast.

The first substantial occupation (especially in Tula Chico) took place during the Corral phase ( A.D. 800-900). The entire Coyotlatelco complex, from the Bajío to the Valley of Mexico, is integrally related. The end of the Corral phase is critical since it prefigures Tula's appearance as a powerful state.

The wealth of their palaces, the talent of their artisans, their knowledge of herbs, medicine, minerals, calendars, and astronomy, their wisdom and devotion to gods such as Quetzalcoatl, all are characteristics attributed to the Toltecs. According to the scholar Paul Kirchoff, the Toltec Empire, composed of peoples of different origins, languages, and customs, was made up of four external provinces and four interior ones with Tula at the center, thus corresponding to the "four directions" of the universe. Kirchoff attributes the end of Tula not to the invasion of the Chichimeca (who had arrived at the site when it was already in ruins) but to a migration of Culhua people who lived to the west of the empire. There is evidence that Tula Grande was sacked and burned around A.D. 1150-1200. There are also some indications of the decline in city life prior to abandonment of the site. Tula reached its greatest extent during the Tollan phase ( A.D. 950-1150/1200). The Tula Chico complex was abandoned completely, a cult center dedicated to the Huastec deity Ehecatl was established near the El Corral complex, and Tula Grande became the sociopolitical axis of the city