Mexico: A History

by Robert Ryal Miller

Overview

This book is a skillful synthesis of Mexico's complex and colorful history from pre-Columbian times to the present. Utilizing his many years of research and teaching as well as his personal experience in Mexico, the author incorporates recent archaeological evidence, posits fresh interpretations, and analyzes such current problems as foreign debt, dependency on petroleum exports, and providing education and employment for an expanding population.

Combining political events and social history in a smooth narrative, the book describes events, places, and individuals, the daily life of peasants and urban workers, and touches on cultural topics, including architecture, art, literature, and music. As a special feature, each chapter contains excerpts from contemporary letters, books, decrees, or poems, firsthand accounts that lend historical flavor to the discussion of each era.

Mexico has an exciting history: several Indian civilizations; the Spanish conquest; three colonial centuries, during which there was a blending of Old World and New World cultures; a decade of wars for independence; the struggle of the young republic; wars with the United States and France; confrontation between the Indian president, Juárez, and the Austrian born emperor, Maximilian; a long dictatorship under Diaz; the Great Revolution that destroyed debt peonage, confiscated Church property, and reduced foreign economic power; and the recent drive to modernize through industrialization.

Mexico: A History will be an excellent college-level textbook and good reading for the thousands of Americans who have visited Mexico and those who hope to visit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806121789
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	03/28/1989
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	414
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Robert Ryal Miller was Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Hayward. He was the author of Mexico: A History and Juan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836–1842, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Read an Excerpt

Mexico: A History

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By Robert Ryal Miller

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 1985 Robert Ryal Miller
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4883-0

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CHAPTER 1

Early Indian Cultures

MEXICO'S HUMAN HISTORY BEGAN with the aboriginal people we call Indians—American Indians or Amerinds, to distinguish them from East Indians. Their archaeological records go back at least ten thousand years, and circumstantial evidence doubles that figure. Excavated sites reveal the presence of primitive men and women who used fire, had chipped-stone tools, and lived by hunting game and gathering wild plants. Over the centuries, hundreds of native tribes developed their own cultures, but only a few perfected an advanced civilization. Who were these "first Mexicans," and where did they come from? The records are meager; we must rely on scant archaeological evidence, oral traditions, comparison of artistic styles, and informed conjecture.

When Columbus landed in the Caribbean islands, he thought he was near India and called the natives "Indians." Ever since that time the aboriginal people of the New World have been considered to be of Asian or Mongoloid stock. A few writers or investigators proposed other hypotheses that are not generally accepted today: that the natives were emigrants from the mythical continents of Atlantis or Mu, descendants of Phoenicians or Egyptians, or remnants of lost tribes of Israel. According to one theory, man originated in the Americas, but that is highly improbable, because no remains of pre-Homo sapiens men have ever been found here, although they have been uncovered in Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Virtually all scholars believe that the primitive people of the Western Hemisphere originated in Asia. The most commonly held theory is that bands of hunters came to Alaska from northeastern Asia, using a land or ice bridge across the Bering Strait. This gradual movement from Siberia probably occurred thirty to forty thousand years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch (Ice Age), when the level of the oceans was much lower than today. Successive waves of Mongoloids, in pursuit of game or fleeing from danger, penetrated ever deeper into the New World, pushing earlier groups south and east. Assuming that the great majority of the first Americans came to this continent via the Bering Strait does not preclude the possibility of other arrivals by sea along the Aleutian Island chain, or transpacific crossings from Polynesia or Asia. And over the centuries there may have been a few people who crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Europe or Africa, sailing west on purpose or carried that direction by winds and currents. But the red men that the white men encountered in America in 1492 certainly were neither Negroid nor Caucasian—instead they were akin to Orientals.

There are a number of suggestive links between the peoples and cultures of Asia and those of aboriginal America. Native Americans do have physical body similarities to Asians—brownish complexions, straight black hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones set in a broad face, prominent teeth, and scant body hair. Many Oriental and some Amerind babies, especially Maya, are born with the blue "Mongolian spot" at the base of their spine. Philologists have pointed out linguistic parallels: Chinese is monosyllabic and tonal, so are the Otomían languages spoken in Mexico; and there are similarities in their origin legends and fairy tales. The ancient Hindu board game of pachisi (the modern Parcheesi) is almost identical to patolli, a game played by the Toltec and Aztec Indians. Art historians have noted common designs, such as the lotus motif, in Asian and American Indian architecture and pottery, along with the prizing of jade over all other materials—an Oriental and Amerind phenomenon. Aboriginal burial sites containing jade associated with human skeletons have been unearthed in various parts of Mexico.

The scattered groups of nomadic hunters who first came to what is now called Mexico were in the Paleolithic (Stone Age) stage of development. Using traps, slings, throwing sticks (atlatls), and stone-tipped spears they slaughtered the now extinct species of mammoth, camel, and wild horse, as well as bison, bear, deer, and smaller mammals. A veritable zoo of these animal bones has been found near Puebla, where archaeologists have unearthed associated stone and bone artifacts and remains of 20,000-year-old campfires, but no human skeletal remains. In 1947 they did find fossilized human bones near Tepexpán, northeast of Mexico City, and nearby in the same geological stratum were skeletons of two mammoths with chipped-stone points imbedded in their ribs. These fossils, and other artifacts found not far away, are estimated to be about ten thousand years old.

As food gatherers and hunters, these earliest Mexicans wandered in bands or family groups, foraging for fruits, seeds, or roots of wild plants. They collected various berries, mesquite beans, onion bulbs, piñon nuts, sunflower seeds, and prickly pear cactus fruit (tunas). After the big game became extinct about 7000 B.C.—probably because of the dramatic shift to a desert-like climate that affected northern and central Mexico at that time—they hunted deer, peccary, and smaller game, fished in lakes or streams, and trapped armadillos, birds, gophers, iguanas, rabbits, serpents, and turtles. Over the millennia, the bands were incorporated into tribes that grew in numbers, developed distinct languages, and elaborated more complex cultures. In domestic arts the Indians fabricated nets for snaring fish and animals; made baskets; fashioned clothing from fur, feathers, or hides; and wove fibers of cotton, yucca, sisal, and maguey.

About 7000 B.C. some ancestral Mexicans discovered agriculture—that is, that seeds and roots could be planted to produce more of the same kind. Very gradually they domesticated several plants: beans, squash, and eventually maize or Indian corn. Maize cultivation was a crucial step toward agriculture and an advanced civilization. They planted the corn along with squash and bean seeds in holes made with a fire-hardened digging stick. Their first ears of maize were less than three centimeters (about an inch) long and bore about fifty small kernels, but as time went on, the cobs grew larger because of seed selection and careful cultivation. Eventually, the hybrid would not reproduce without man's intervention. Indian women discovered several ways to prepare maize for eating. They roasted or boiled the ears, or hulled the corn and ground the dry kernels on a flat stone metate quern. Parched, ground corn, sometimes mixed with spices, was added to water for a nutritious drink, pinole; corn flour dough was used for tamales or in a porridge called atole; but most often the dough was patted out as tortillas, the thin unleavened cakes widely used as bread (even today), which they cooked on stone slabs heated by charcoal fires.

Ultimately, the practice of agriculture liberated some of the nomadic tribes from a constant search for food and permitted them to settle down. They acquired additional land for cultivation by burning undergrowth or jungle, by terracing the slopes, and by draining or filling suitable plots. This development was accompanied by an increase in population. The combination of an agricultural basis and village life gave the people more leisure time, made possible vast public projects, and led to chiefdoms, or hierarchical social systems wherein certain groups, such as the chief and his relatives, were supported by the rest of the population. It also became necessary to develop more elaborate rules or laws for land and water usage and to regulate societal behavior.

By 2000 B.C., many of the former hunter-gatherers had become farmers, dependent on agriculture and living in villages. Enjoying a regular food supply and sedentary life, they constructed thatch-roofed houses of poles or wattle daubed with mud. About this time they began to make fired clay cult objects and ceramic vessels used for dishes and to store foodstuffs and liquids. In some areas farmers irrigated their fields using crude dams and ditches, an innovation that increased their food supply. Eventually, their dams were impressive masonry structures. The American Indians never did invent the plow or make practical use of the wheel, except for some wheeled toys or cult objects; nor did the Middle American natives have any draft animals to help work their fields or carry their loads—human beings performed all the labor.

Through experiments in utilization of wild plants—their seeds, leaves, fruit, roots, bark, fiber, or resin—and the domestication of various wild vegetables, the more advanced Indian groups gradually acquired a sizable pharmacopoeia as well as additional foodstuffs to complement the trinity of maize, beans, and squash. The dozens of edible plants they tamed or used included avocados, chile peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, amaranth, sunflowers, papaya, vanilla and cacao (chocolate). They supplemented their vegetarian diet with occasional game as well as eggs, fish, turtles and meat from domesticated dogs, ducks, and turkeys. For pleasure they smoked the rolled-up leaves of a native plant called tabaco, drank a fermented beer made from a species of agave, and some of them chewed chicle gum from the chicozapote tree.

As their society became more complex, so did their religion. To regulate planting and harvesting, shaman priests made astronomical observations and developed a calendar that involved mathematical calculations and some kind of record keeping. Priests organized celebrations related to fertility, rainmaking, and harvesting, and they presided over ceremonies connected with human birth, death, illness, and with civic affairs. Indian priests directed the construction of sacred mounds, usually built in the form of flat-topped pyramids, as centers for religious observances. At the pyramids and in their homes, Indians had idols made of wood, fired clay, bone, or stone to honor their deities or to serve as cult amulets. Evidence of human sacrifices shows an early concern with appeasing the forces of nature, and items associated with burials suggest that they had the concept of an afterlife.

Civilizations—generally defined as a relatively high level of human cultural and technological development—evolved in several parts of Mexico. Prominent features of these advanced cultures included: social stratification, labor specialization, monumental architecture, elaborate religious hierarchies closely integrated with the political structure, intensive agriculture, efficient methods for the distribution of food and other products, and a system of writing or record keeping. The evolution of civilized society was the culmination of millennia of cultural developments and ecological adaptation.

Many archaeologists and historians divide pre-Columbian cultures into three distinct phases of development. The first, called the Formative or pre-Classic, dates from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 1; next is the Classic period, which embraced the first nine centuries of the Christian era; and finally the post-Classic from A.D. 900 to 1520. This scheme is useful for classifying artifacts and making cross-cultural comparisons, but since some of the civilizations span more than one period, it will be more convenient here to narrate the history of the principal advanced cultures, identifying them by their tribal names. Actually, we do not know what some of the people called themselves; for them we use names applied much later.

The term Mesoamerica, or Middle America, refers to the region from central Mexico southward through Guatemala, western Honduras and Nicaragua, to the Gulf of Nicoya in Costa Rica, where similar higher Amerind civilizations flourished. (It runs from about 22° to 10° North Latitude.) Except for a few small river valleys, the desert-like lands north of the "civilized frontier" were unsuitable for agriculture and were inhabited by the Chichimecs and other semi-nomadic barbarian tribes. By contrast, the high plateaus of Mesoamerica, where fertile valleys and plains lie between higher mountains, were ecologically favorable for planting and for supporting a dense population. So were some lowland regions of Mesoamerica that had good soil and adequate rainfall. Here various Indian groups developed advanced cultures. They did not rise and thrive at the same time; indeed, some were long gone when others flowered, but the later ones often borrowed ideas, techniques, and sometimes even gods from the earlier ones.

Each Middle American Indian civilization had distinctive traits, but all had several things in common. They depended on maize as a staple food, as Mexicans still do; they cultivated maguey (agave) plants for fiber and for a beer-like beverage (octli or pulque ); their polytheism was based on worshiping the forces of nature; they built truncated pyramids which served as platforms for their temples and in at least one case also served as a burial place for a dignitary; they had dual calendars, ceremonial and solar; and their crafts had reached a high level of artistic style and technical competence. Most of the advanced Indian societies had outdoor ball courts where games were played for the amusement of the upper class. A typical ball court had two stone rings or goals, one set vertically on each sidewall. Players were not permitted to use their hands—they maneuvered the rubber ball with feet, legs, hips, shoulders, and head. Sometimes they played a ball game to determine a question of state. Native leaders believed that the gods would show their preference by aiding one side or the other.

Ironically, one of the oldest pre-Columbian civilizations, the Olmec, is also the newest; that is, it was "discovered" and studied only since the late 1930s. This pre-Classic culture, which gradually emerged in the swampy lowlands of the Veracruz-Tabasco coast, flourished for hundreds of years in the first millennium B.C.; the most frequently cited dates are 1200 to 400 B.C. We do not know what these early people called themselves, but later dwellers in their homeland were called Olmecs (People of the Rubber Country). That area was long known for the latex extracted from native rubber trees (guayule) which was used for rubber balls and for waterproofing baskets and cloth. Olmecs ate seafood, aquatic birds, and toads, and they cultivated maize as well as harvested cacao trees. Their rise to civilization was related to an extensive trade network that may have been responsible for the emergence of a wealthy elite and the stratification of society.

The Olmecs did not build great cities, but they embellished their splendid, well-planned ceremonial centers with massive basalt monoliths. Three principal Olmec sites are called La Venta, San Lorenzo, and Tres Zapotes. At the first place, located on a small, swampy island in the Tonolá River, these founders built a complex of temples, mounds, and ceremonial markers around rectangular plazas neatly oriented along a north-south axis. The dominant cone-shaped pyramid, built of packed clay and rising over thirty meters (one hundred feet) high, probably represented a volcano. The principal plaza was enclosed by rows of naturally shaped hexagonal pillars of basalt placed side by side to form a solid wall; these columns were quarried almost one hundred kilometers (sixty miles) away, as were the six enormous stone altars. Carved on the altars are scenes depicting important personages wearing elaborate headdresses, and on one altar the central figure, undoubtedly a priest, is shown emerging from a niche with a baby in arms. A motif of squalling babies carved on other altars hints at infant sacrifice, and the image of a man with Semitic features and a triangular beard suggests the possibility of a visitor from the Near East. Olmec ruins also have burial tombs, serpentine mosaic floors, hematite mirrors, and exquisitely carved jade figurines.

Colossal stone heads, some measuring three meters (nine feet) high and weighing eighteen metric tons, are the most spectacular feature of Olmec art. Archaeologists have found more than a dozen of these enormous ovoid monuments, which are believed to be portraits of actual Olmec leaders. The carved heads are topped by helmet-like caps that may have been worn in ritualistic ball games, and the faces have broad nostrils and thick lips like some Totonac Indians who still live in the general area. The question of how these monoliths were transported can only be answered with a guess that the ancients used rafts on artificial canals or waterways that have since disappeared.

The distinctive Olmec art style is recognized by figures with pear-shaped heads, wide noses, baby faces, large lips, drooping mouths, and sometimes with jaguar fangs. Pathological beings—dwarfs, hunchbacks, club-footed individuals—were often the subject matter, along with nude males and jaguar-man figures. The latter have been identified with the rain god. Olmec-style artifacts also have been found in the high plateaus of Mesoamerica. They are seen in clay figurines at Tlatilco in the Valley of Mexico, on the contorted life-sized figures carved on large slabs at Monte Albán in Oaxaca, in southwestern Mexico, and on objects as far south as Guatemala and El Salvador. The objects or the style itself may have been diffused by traders, missionaries, or warriors. In addition to their artistic accomplishments, the Olmecs pioneered in astronomy, mathematics, and glyph writing. They also had Mesoamerica's earliest-known ball court.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Mexico: A History by Robert Ryal Miller. Copyright © 1985 Robert Ryal Miller. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface,
1. Early Indian Cultures,
2. The Aztec Civilization,
3. The Spanish Conquest,
4. New Spain Established,
5. Colonial Institutions and Life,
6. Enlightenment and Independence,
7. First Empire and Early Republic,
8. Juárez and Maximilian,
9. The Age of Porfirio Díaz,
10. The Great Revolution,
11. The Modern Era,
Addendum to the 1996 Printing,
Appendix. Demographic and Economic Tables,
Notes,
Glossary,
Bibliography,
Index,