New Spain and the making of a mestizo society
For three centuries Mexico is the Viceroyalty of New Spain, a Catholic colonial society built on silver and Indigenous labour, where Spanish, Indigenous and African peoples mix under a hierarchy of caste.
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
- Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020 — INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía) (2021)
- El laberinto de la soledad — Octavio Paz, Cuadernos Americanos (1950)
After the conquest, Mexico became the heart of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, ruled from Mexico City for the Spanish Crown. Silver from mines such as Zacatecas and Guanajuato made it one of the richest parts of the Spanish empire, and Mexican silver pesos circulated as far as China. Indigenous communities, decimated by epidemics, worked for Spanish landowners and mines under systems of forced labour and tribute, while friars converted them to Catholicism, often building churches on the sites of temples.
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
Spain also brought perhaps a couple of hundred thousand enslaved Africans to New Spain, mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and over time Spaniards, Indigenous people and Africans intermarried. Colonial society ranked people by ancestry in a system of castas (painted in famous “casta paintings”), with Spanish-born peninsulares at the top, American-born Spaniards (criollos) resentfully below them, and Indigenous and African-descended people at the bottom.
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
- Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020 — INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía) (2021)
After the Revolution, thinkers like José Vasconcelos celebrated the mestizo, the mixture of Spanish and Indigenous, as the essence of the nation, a "cosmic race". This became official ideology and still shapes how many Mexicans see themselves.
- Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810–1996 — Enrique Krauze, HarperCollins (1997)
- El laberinto de la soledad — Octavio Paz, Cuadernos Americanos (1950)
The celebration of mestizaje erased those who did not fit it: Indigenous peoples were expected to assimilate, and Afro-Mexicans, descendants of enslaved Africans, were left out of the national story until a 2015 national survey and then the 2020 census finally counted them.
- Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020 — INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía) (2021)
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
Why it matters today
Much of what feels Mexican was formed in these centuries: the Catholic faith, the Spanish language, the baroque churches and town squares, the food that blends maize and chile with pork and wheat. So were lasting inequalities: lighter skin still tends to go with wealth and status, a legacy many Mexicans now discuss openly.