I begin the Mexican Americans’ racial history with an overview of their racial foundations. First, however, I offer a critique on why academics have dismissed this theme as a significant area of research. My aim is to illustrate the textual politics of neglect.
The recovery of the Mexican Americans’ prehistory has largely been neglected due to lack of interest on the part of mainstream archaeologists and anthropologists. In 1988, when Dr. Fred Valdez and I began teaching our class on the indigenous heritage of the Mexican Americans, the only anthropological source we found that specifically made interconnections between Mexican Americans and prehistorical peoples was the text by James Diego Vigil, From Indians to Chicanos: The Dynamics of Mexican American Culture (1980/1984).1 Vigil was part of the first cohort of Mexican American anthropologists who obtained doctoral degrees in the early 1970s and initiated the recovery of the Mexican Americans’ history and prehistoric past. Prior to that time, only a few Mexican Americans had been admitted to U.S. universities (Rosaldo 1985). Among the first to obtain doctoral degrees were Octavio Romano-V and Thomas Weaver (American Anthropological Association 1999). They were soon joined by Renato Rosaldo, Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez, and James Diego Vigil. These pioneering anthropologists approached the study of Mexican Americans from a historical perspective and began challenging the social science assumption that poverty among Mexican Americans was an outcome of their dysfunctional culture.
In a 1968 article Octavio Romano-V urgently called upon Mexican American students—and any person who opposed racism—to contest stereotypic and racist propaganda against his people. In “The Anthropology and Sociology of the Mexican-Americans: The Distortion of Mexican American History,” Romano-V asserted that Anglo-American scholars were generating deficit-thinking discourses in efforts to blame Mexican Americans for the social and economic problems generated by Anglo-American racism. He charged that these scholars, particularly anthropologists, ignored the way in which racism historically had been used by Anglo Americans to obstruct the social, economic, and political mobility of Mexican-origin people. Romano-V argued that Mexican Americans were studied ahistorically in order to ignore the vestiges of Anglo-American racism—such as segregation, employment discrimination, racist laws, and police violence. By treating Mexican Americans ahistorically, he asserted, anthropologists conjured an image of them as an immigrant and peasantlike group who had not contributed to the nation’s infrastructure culturally, technologically, or architecturally. Their antiquity in the Southwest was strategically ignored. Romano-V’s article was widely read and influenced the future direction of Mexican American scholarship (Paredes 1978; Rosaldo 1985). Since then most social scientists, including anthropologists, have approached the study of Mexican Americans from a historical and (post)structural perspective, examining the impact of institutional discrimination on the Mexican American family, individual, and ethnic group.
Though Romano-V and other scholars successfully dismantled most social-scientific myths claiming that familism, Catholicism, honor, and machismo were the basis of the Mexican Americans’ economic problems, the number of Mexican American graduate students accepted into anthropology doctoral programs did not steadily rise. The traditional failure of anthropology departments to recruit and admit Mexican American graduate students is reflected in the ethnic composition of the discipline. In 1996 less than 3 percent of full-time faculty in anthropology departments were of Hispanic descent, and most of these were not of Mexican origin (Givens and Jabloski 1996:5). To this day there are still few Mexican American anthropologists, and Vigil’s book continues to be the only anthropological source on the Mexican Americans’ ancient origins.
In his book entitled The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992) historian David Weber offers observations similar to those of Octavio Romano-V: though abundant literature on the U.S. Southwest has been produced, traditional mainstream scholars have distorted or neglected to recognize the Mexican Americans’ historic roots in the Southwest. Weber argues that this omission has been the result of a political act and a reflection of the power Anglo Americans have in the production of United States history. According to Weber, since the early nineteenth century Mexicans and Spaniards have been historically situated as villains and savage overlords of the southwestern Indians. This portrayal allowed nineteenth and early twentieth century Anglo-American historians to justify the U.S. government’s annexation of Mexico’s northern territories (after the Mexican American War of 1846 to 1848) and to perpetuate the myth that Mexican Americans’ presence in the Southwest was insignificant. Weber writes:
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Englishmen and Anglo Americans who wrote about the Spanish past in North America uniformly condemned Spanish rule …. Anglo Americans had inherited the view that Spaniards were unusually cruel, avaricious, treacherous, fanatical, superstitious, cowardly, corrupt, decadent, indolent, and authoritarian—a unique complex of pejoratives that historians from Spain came to call the Black Legend, la leyenda negra …. Americans who wrote about the Southwest before mid-century interpreted the past in a way that justified their nation’s expansionist aims. (Weber 1992:335, 336, 339)
To make matters worse, not only were the historical contributions of the Mexican Americans ignored, but when their ancestors were identified, the descriptions were essentialized, posing an alleged singular truth that all Mexican mestizos were enemies of the Indians. This monolithic construction failed to describe the colonial encounter accurately. A nominalist fiction was passed on as historical fact, and no room was left to account for the different types of relations that developed between the mestizo colonists and the Indians, including conflict, mutual exploitation, social distance, and peace.
Weber adds that in the early twentieth century Anglo-American historians began criticizing their predecessors’ narratives and a new southwestern historiography was introduced, less politically motivated by the aim of glorifying the superiority of the Anglo-American people. In 1911 Herbert Eugene Bolton and his cadre of doctoral students contested past distortions (Weber 1992:353). Immersing themselves in Spanish and Mexican archives, they generated a new image of the Southwest: they credited Spaniards for the infrastructure they had built and depicted the Indians as noble savages whose complex societies had been disturbed by the arrival of the Europeans. But the Boltonians continued to ignore the multi-faceted and complex social relations that had evolved between the mestizo colonists and the native peoples of the Southwest. Little attention was given to the fact that by the turn of the nineteenth century a large part of the mestizo colonial population was of southwestern American Indian descent. Weber argues that mestizos were depicted by Boltonian historians as uncultured Mexicans and “gente baja” (lower-class people) and were distinguished from the noble savages and the glorious Spaniards (see Bolton 1960:14). This led to the denigration of the mestizos and the perpetuation of the assumption that mestizos and Indians did not have anything in common. In essence, the Boltonians shared the view that to be Indian an individual must be culturally and ethnically pure and not influenced by Spanish or Mexican culture. A fictional border was drawn between mestizos and southwestern Indians, tacitly denying mestizos their historic roots in the Southwest. Weber writes:
The Bolton school dominated American historical scholarship on the borderlands until the 1960s …. Bolton himself simultaneously celebrated “Spain’s frontiering genius,” while suggesting that Mexican “half-breeds—mestizoes or mulattoes” were naturally vicious and unruly. In Bolton’s day, social scientists who studied living Mexican Americans explained the group’s relative poverty as a pathological condition caused by cultural deficiencies, including passivity, laziness, and an inability to look beyond the present. At best the fantasy heritage split the history of Hispanics in the Southwest into two disconnected parts, tacitly denying Mexican Americans their historic roots in the region. At worst, it implied that long-time residents with strong Indian features, or immigrants from Mexico, were inferior aliens in a new land. (Weber 1992:354, 356)
By the late 1960s Mexican American and Anglo-American scholars were contesting Boltonian interpretations and questioning the quasi-monolithic history that had been written (Weber 1992:357). Although Weber disagrees with some of the interpretations presented by Mexican American political activists who assert that most Mexican Americans have ancient roots in the Southwest, he concurs with the more moderate view presented by Mexican American historians. That is, many Mexican Americans with strong Indian features owe their indigenous roots to the Indians of the Southwest (Gutiérrez 1991). Weber attributes the lack of knowledge on this issue to Anglo-American historians’ reluctance to value the history of the Mexican Americans. Ending his critique on a positive note, Weber posits that post-Boltonian Anglo-American historians have begun to find historical value in the view introduced by Mexican American historians that many Mexican Americans are part of the indigenous peoples who have historic roots in the Southwest. According to Weber, this area needs to be researched in order to write a more accurate history of the Southwest that does not focus solely on the Spanish elite, but rather examines the social relations between the mestizos and the colonized Christian Indians. Once this history is reconstituted, it can then be contested, perhaps revised, and eventually accepted as historical fact.
I concur with Weber, but must add that additional research on the Mexican Americans’ prehistory also needs to consider their ancient past in Europe and Africa, because Mexican Americans are a racially mixed people with a complex history of conquest. Thus, I begin with an outline of their prehistory that delineates their racial origins. The prehistorical analysis is based upon various sources, starting with nineteenth-century studies that attempted to describe the racial characteristics used to differentiate people and offer historical trajectories of the periods when contact occurred between the peoples of Europe, the New World, and Africa. Historical literature provides an overview of the peopling of Spain and the influence of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Muslims on Spanish civilization. Archaeological and ethnohistorical studies provide information on settlement patterns in Spain, Mexico, the U.S. Southwest, and Africa. In essence, I have assembled literature that offers a composite overview of the Mexican Americans’ prehistory. The analysis of the arrival of Black people in Mexico closely follows the pioneering ethnohistorical research of anthropologist Alfonso Aguirre Beltrán and those scholars who have built upon his work. The account of the Indians is limited to the cultural complexes identified by archaeologists as having significantly influenced the cultural development and social organization of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.
Mexican Americans are a people with a multiracial prehistorical past (Aguirre Beltrán 1946; Vigil 1984). Their White heritage began in Spain, the Indian in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, and the Black in West Africa. Most Mexican Americans are a predominantly mestizo people: after Spain conquered Mexico in 1521, widespread intermixture of Spaniards and Indians occurred (Meyer and Sherman 1995:126). As David Weber notes, however, not all Mexican Americans are mestizo, since many Spaniards chose not to intermarry. To unravel this account I begin with an analysis of the indigenous background of Mexican Americans.
The intellectual recovery of the Mexican Americans’ racial history started with the production of oral texts by working-class Mexican American college students. Exploring their indigenist roots was the primary concern of many social activists who had turned to the study of race as a means of contesting dehumanizing views that alleged that Brown people were poor because they were culturally deprived and racially inferior. They also entrenched themselves in the study of race to contest the racial aesthetics of the period, which elevated “being White” as the standard of beauty and viewed all Black and Brown phenotypes as markers of abnormality. On 31 March 1969 the Crusade for Justice, a Mexican American civil rights organization, organized the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference held in Denver, Colorado, where Alberto Baltazar Urista, professionally known as Alurista, recited the “Epic Poem of Aztlán” and introduced the seminal outline of the Mexican Americans’ indigenous foundations. His poetics challenged the politics behind the racial aesthetic philosophy of the period (Keller 1972:xiii; Rendón 1971:337).
The conference was organized as a meeting place for Mexican American students to discuss how Anglo-American racism had shaped the Mexican experience in the United States. It was part of a larger national political movement—the Civil Rights Movement—in which people throughout the United States participated in hundreds of organizations to contest racial discrimination, in particular the forced social segregation of racial minorities (Omi and Winant 1994). As part of the Civil Rights Movement, Mexican Americans organized their own organizations to address the particular problems affecting their communities. Demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, and sit-ins became political vehicles that brought to national attention the Mexican-origin people’s poverty level, the farm workers’ struggle against unfair wages and working conditions, and perceived inequalities (e.g., police brutality, limited access to higher education, school segregation). Such ethnic consciousness was also manifested in the birth of the self-imposed label “Chicano” (Gómez-Quiñonez 1978) and the national mobilization of Mexican Americans into local and regional civil rights organizations, such as the United Farm Workers, the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres (Federal Alliance of Free City States), the Crusade for Justice, and the Brown Berets. The Chicano Movement was the national term used for the political organizations founded by Mexican Americans.
The Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was instrumental in mobilizing student groups to political action: when students returned to their colleges and communities, they energized local civic organizations. The conference was also instrumental in the production of historical knowledge. By the time of the Chicano Movement, Mexican American students were aware that the poverty experienced by many members of their ethnic group was a result of multiple problems, including racism, school segregation, their social class background, the recent immigrant status of many Mexicans, and a devastating high school dropout rate (Valencia 1991). During the conference, they discussed these issues as well as strategies to engage the federal government in their resolution (Rendón 1971; Ybarra-Frausto 1978). Though mobilizing for ethnic politics was the goal of the conference, sparking the participants’ sense of peoplehood was also central. When Alurista recited the “Epic Poem of Aztlán,” he outlined the Mexican Americans’ historic roots in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, asserting that they were a Brown people with a long history in the Americas.
Alurista, influenced by sixteenth-century Aztec oral histories collected by Fray Diego Durán, revised and appropriated the Aztec version of Aztlán (Keller 1972). He was one of the first Chicano scholars, if not the first, to have been well versed in Pre-Columbian history. Alurista created a narrative mixed with poetry, fiction, and archaeology to give Mexican Americans a source of pride in their indigenous heritage. This was his attempt to invert the stigma attached to being a Brown people living in the United States and transform that racial heritage into a legacy of pride. It was also Alurista’s attempt to dispute the myth that Mexican Americans were solely a recent immigrant group in the United States and therefore had not contributed to the growth of the nation. He asserted that the first settlers of the Americas were indigenous people and that Mexican Americans were descendants of the Indians. He claimed that thousands of years ago the ancestors of the Mexican Americans left their homeland in Aztlán, a place located somewhere in the Southwest, hidden in sands and riverbeds. By situating Aztlán in the Southwest, rather than northwest Mexico as most scholars propose (see Ganot and Peschard 1995), Alurista identified a location that fit the Mexican American experience. Mexican Americans were a people with an indigenous history in both Mexico and the United States. Sadly, after Alurista revised the Aztec origin myth, many scholars considered his historic analysis to be more fiction than fact (see Weber 1992; Ybarra-Frausto 1979).
The concept of Aztlán originated in Mexico, and since its introduction scholars have debated whether it is myth, history, or mythologized history (see Gillespie 1989; Tibón 1983). In the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Spanish scholars became interested in the Aztec notion of Aztlán (Gillespie 1989). During the mid-sixteenth century, the Catholic Church initiated a historical recovery project to investigate what Aztlán was about. Spanish chroniclers, working with indigenous intellectuals in what is today Mexico City, interviewed hundreds of Aztecs and asked the intellectuals to record their history. Aztlán emerged as one of the most important historical concepts. When the Aztec transmitted their accounts of Aztlán, they conceived it as reality and acknowledged it as their ancient past. They claimed that Aztlán was the place of their birth as a people. No one knew where Aztlán was located; they merely indicated to sixteenth-century cartographers that it was to the north of the Valley of Mexico (see Map 1).2 Though several accounts of the migration out of Aztlán were recovered, all versions share the central idea of a southward migration of the Chichimec people. The Chichimec were the ancestors of many of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, including the Aztec (León-Portilla 1975).
Since the recovery of the oral testimonies, scholars have debated whether Aztlán is based on an actual event or is solely a mythologized story. The dominant perspective proposes that the journey of the Chichimec from Aztlán is based on actual events and persons (Gillespie 1989). Aztlán is perceived as a distorted historical message, however, because it has been revised over time and allegedly fictive accounts have been added. Though some people in Mexico believe it is a myth and others that it is historical fact, today Aztlán is part of Mexico’s official national folklore and indigenous history (Rodríguez Flores 1976). And the sign that Huitzilopochtli gave the Chichimec to mark the place where they should stop migrating—an eagle perched upon a cactus sprouting from a rock—became the emblem of Mexico’s flag.
Map 1. Where Is Aztlán? Map of America by Abraham Ortelius, 1575. Courtesy of the University of Chicago Libraries, Special Collections.
In a series of poems written during the 1960s Alurista strategically revised the Mexican version of Aztlán and added a concluding event that better fit the Mexican American experience in the United States (Alurista 1969, 1970, 1972; see Keller 1972). Since then many Mexican American scholars have maintained Alurista’s central concepts, yet adopted their own particular interpretation of where Aztlán was located (Leal 1985; Rendón 1971; Valdez 1972). All Mexican American versions share the story of the epochs during which the Chichimec migrated south toward central Mexico. The account begins with their departure from Aztlán, after their deity Huitzilopochtli expelled them from their homeland (León-Portilla 1975; Rendón 1971; Valdez 1972). Mexican American scholars, however, disagree on whether Aztlán was located in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, or California. No version claims that Aztlán was located in Texas. The Chichimec migrated for four epochs and only stopped moving when Huitzilopochtli told them to settle and establish villages. When they settled, they built temples to venerate him. As they traveled through northern and central Mexico, the Chichimec met other indigenous peoples with whom they intermarried and who afterward joined them in their southward migration. Huitzilopochtli finally told them to stop migrating when they saw an eagle perched upon a cactus sprouting from a rock. This site is the current location of the center of Mexico City. Huitzilopochtli then ordered the Chichimec to settle, propagate, and establish cities.
Until this point, the Mexican American versions of Aztlán are very similar to the Mexican accounts. The Mexican American versions, however, continue the story, ending after Huitzilopochtli has destined the descendants of the Chichimec to return to Aztlán and reclaim their homeland. This notion of a return migration was introduced by Alurista in 1969 during the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference (Rendón 1971:10). At the conference Alurista poetically declared:
In the spirit of a new people … we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán, from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny …. With our heart in our hand and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo Nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the Bronze Continent, we are a Nation. We are a union of free pueblos. We are Aztlán. (cited in Rendón 1971:10)
At the conference Alurista subtly presented the philosophical base to argue that Mexican Americans, even if they were not born in the Southwest, had a historic claim to Aztlán as part of the original tribes to settle the Southwest. Obviously, his interpretation was a brilliant piece of political poetics, because after the conference, through word of mouth, it became part of the Mexican Americans’ oral tradition (Ybarra-Frausto 1978). During political rallies, cultural festivals, and sit-ins, students used the image of Aztlán to instill a sense of pride in the audiences and to teach Mexican Americans how to respond when they were told their people were foreigners. After the conference, Alurista himself traveled to forty-one universities and community colleges reciting his “Epic Poem of Aztlán” (Keller 1972:xxix).
For many Mexican American academics, Aztlán has become a symbolic trope used to promote racial and cultural pride among college students taking courses on Mexican American studies (see Contreras 1998). Its legacy also continues in textual form: in the last two decades it has been inscribed by literary scholars and preserved for future generations to read, enjoy, and share with others (Leal 1985). Today many of Alurista’s writings on Aztlán are archived at the University of Texas at Austin in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, where I was privileged to find his original manuscript entitled “The History of Aztlán” (Alurista Box II, Part II, Folder 3). His poetic essay was written in 1969; oddly, it was never published in its entirety. Perhaps Alurista was apprehensive about being criticized for using archaeological facts incorrectly. His account is written poetically and, unlike earlier works, is anthropological in content, citing dates and locations. What is fascinating about the manuscript is the near accuracy of the events and the pioneering interconnections he makes between the prehistoric peoples and Mexican Americans. Alurista’s anthropological poetics begins:
aztlán, aztlán
a legend of the people
long ago
50,000 years ago …
Embodied by the sun
the Toltec master artists
and laborers of earth
meet the nomadic
Chichimecs from Asia
southbound following
the great mastodon
and other pre-historic
game which crossed
the Bering Straits
(Alurista 1969:1)
Alurista then unravels events after the Chichimec arrived in the Valley of Mexico. He proposes that several centuries afterward some Chichimec groups returned to Aztlán and mixed with the peoples of the Southwest:
the children of these
Toltecs and Chichimecs
the Tribal Nations of the North
Four nations
followed the Toltec path
of human ways:
the Rio Grande Nation
the Zuñi Nation
the Hopí Nation
and the Pima Nation
Four nations
followed the Chichimec path
of warlike ways:
the Apache Nation
the Ute Nation
the Navajo Nation
and the Comanche Nation …
aztlán, aztlán
very old dream
of Nationhood
North of Mexico
in today’s California,
Arizona, New Mexico
Colorado & Texas
(Alurista 1969:2, 3)
Alurista’s anthropological poetics advanced a seminal outline that can be of aid in unraveling the Mexican Americans’ indigenous prehistory. As an anthropologist whose focus is cultural history, rather than poetics, however, I am critical of Alurista’s analysis. Yet I agree with him that the Mexican Americans’ indigenous past is situated both in Mexico and in the Southwest—a central historical issue that Alurista introduced and that cannot be disputed today. I will develop this central issue throughout my narrative.
My main critique of Alurista’s analysis is that Mexican Americans owe their historic roots less to the preconquest migratory movements from Aztlán to Mexico and more to the subsequent Spanish invasion of the Southwest. Aztecs, Toltecs, and Chichimecs did return to the Southwest, but not in the manner Alurista proposed; sadly, they returned as conquered subjects, in a Spanish invasion launched by the royal crown and rationalized by the Catholic Church. Our historic roots are embedded in a history of conquest, when Mexican mestizos, Tlaxcalans, Aztecs, Otomís, and other Indians from central Mexico joined the Spanish in the conquest of the Gran Chichimeca and the Southwest. Our historic legacy in the Southwest includes conquering Indians, subduing them, lusting over indigenous women, Christianizing them, and establishing mission communities. My aim in the following historical interpretation of the Mexican Americans’ indigenous antecedents is to support Alurista’s assertion of the Mexican Americans’ prehistoric past in Mexico and the Southwest and to show what aspects of the concept of Aztlán are supported by archaeological and ethnohistorical sources.
Though the concept of Aztlán accurately captures the idea of an indigenous migratory southern movement, archaeologists and ethnohistorians propose that Aztlán is about a recent past and not about the origin of the indigenous peoples in the Americas. The migratory movements contained in the account of Aztlán have been dated to approximately A.D. 925 to A.D. 1111, while the date of the arrival of the Indian peoples in the New World is much earlier (Berdan 1982:2; León-Portilla 1975:121).
Indigenous peoples began migrating from the Old World to the New World about 30,000 years ago, during the Ice Age (Fagan 1991:139; Vigil 1984:11). Scholars have classified these ancient peoples and their descendants as Indians (Brinton 1890; Fagan 1991).3 The first people of the Americas crossed over the Bering Strait, a landmass connecting the Old and the New World. Most likely they migrated from Siberia, crossed the Bering Strait, passed through Alaska into Canada, and dispersed themselves throughout North and South America. Migratory movements from the Old World continued for close to 10,000 years (Fagan 1991:138). They stopped at the end of the Ice Age, when the Bering Strait was once again submerged.
In the Southwest and Mexico the earliest sites inhabited by humans are found in California’s Mohave Desert, Lewisville, Texas, and Texpepan, a community on the outskirts of Mexico City. The sites are archaeologically labeled paleo-Indian. The Mohave Desert site dates to approximately 9000 B.C. (Aikens 1978:135), while both the Lewisville and Texpepan sites date between 11,000 B.C. and 8000 B.C. (Hester 1989b: 192; Meyer and Sherman 1995:5; Newcomb 1986:9). By 6000 B.C. paleo-Indians had spread throughout central and southern Mexico, leaving evidence of village dwellings and animal butchering sites (Fagan 1991:196). A few sites of that age have been discovered in the Southwest (see Lipe 1978:335–337), including the California sites in San Diego County and in the Santa Barbara Channel Islands (Aikens 1978:135; Forbes 1982:24–25; King 1990:30). In Texas sites with a similar antiquity are located in Lubbock, Lipscomb, Plainview, Midland, and near the Trinity River in Henderson County (Newcomb 1986:10–11). Several sites in southern Arizona have been identified, such as the Cochise cultural complex (Lipe 1978:337).
Sites in central Mexico indicate that an agricultural revolution had begun by around 5000 B.C. (Meyer and Sherman 1995:6). Cultivated corncobs were first discovered in the Tehuacán Valley. From there farming techniques diffused throughout Mexico, subsequently sparking a sedentary village lifestyle. Approximately 2,000 years later, Indians from Mexico introduced farming into the Southwest and influenced many ancient cultures to lead a sedentary lifestyle (Lipe 1978:50). If people were to be successful farmers, they had to settle down and tend their crops.
Around 1500 B.C. one group of Indians in Mexico, the Olmec, reached a sophisticated level of social organization (Vigil 1984:17). They inhabited the lowland region south of Veracruz, along the eastern coast of Mexico. The Olmec established many villages in the present states of Tabasco and Veracruz. There they built stone temples, established commercial networks, began a maritime canoe culture, and built a large pyramid in La Venta serving the surrounding population. The La Venta region is estimated to have reached a maximum population of 18,000 (Meyer and Sherman 1995:9). The Olmec also invented calendrical systems to mark religious and agricultural events as well as a system of writing and mathematics. These more developed forms of social organization were diffused by conquest or by trade to the surrounding regions, helping other groups reach a similar level of social development.
Map 2. Mesoamerica. Sources: Gillespie 1989; Meyer and Sherman 1995; Powell 1952.
After the Olmec, thousands of Indian groups participated in the making of Mesoamerica, including a zone in Mexico distinguished by archaeologists as exhibiting advanced forms of cultural organization (see Map 2). Mesoamerica has been characterized as a cultural area where the majority of indigenous societies practiced a centralized form of political government (a chieftainship, theocracy, or state system). There it was common for people to establish cities or villages; build pyramids, temples, altars, houses, bureaucratic centers, walkways, and ball courts; and practice large-scale agriculture. These communities were also socially stratified according to occupation, gender, age, and ancestral lineage. This level of social organization, however, coexisted with less highly organized ones; not all groups chose to replicate a Mesoamerican lifestyle. In particular, north of the state of Hidalgo many groups did not live in permanent villages, refused to be governed by a single leader, and did not erect stone monuments (Newcomb 1986; Powell 1952; see also Spicer 1981).
By 200 B.C. the largest ancient urban center of the Americas had been founded near present Mexico City (Meyer and Sherman 1995:20). Teotihuacán covered eight square miles and consisted of avenues, plazas, markets, temples, palaces, apartment buildings, and complex drainage and agricultural systems. Elites lived in the center of the city, and commoners were dispersed in farms throughout the outskirts. Teotihuacán exported its technological and architectural knowledge to other cities through commercial networks or military conquest. By A.D. 650 Teotihuacán had 120,000 to 250,000 inhabitants (Meyer and Sherman 1995:20; Stuart 1995:8). Strangely, around this time the city was burned and abandoned. Most likely it was destroyed by powerful enemies. Its collapse contributed to the rise of other complex societies because when the city was abandoned its population dispersed. Government functionaries, priests, and artisans established new villages or settled among other people, teaching them their ways. In this manner the culture of Teotihuacán was transported throughout Mexico. While Teotihuacán rose and fell, other indigenous peoples established similar complex societies in Oaxaca, Cholula, and various places on the Yucatán Peninsula (Gutiérrez 1992; Meyer and Sherman 1995; Tibón 1983). Among these people were the Maya, Zapotec, Cholulan, and Mixtec. They built impressive cities, left hieroglyphic texts, practiced long-distance trade, and also conquered many of their neighboring villages.
In the Southwest, during the same time span as Teotihuacán, around 200 B.C. to 300 B.C., the Hohokam, a people living in present Sonora, Mexico, migrated further north and settled in southern Arizona (Lipe 1978:342; Molitor 1981:32).4 They became an influential culture, introducing irrigation techniques and contributing to the technological improvement of the region’s agricultural production. At several sites, including Snaketown in Arizona, they introduced Mexican material cultural traits such as mirrors, conch shells, copper bells, formalized town plans, and ball courts (Kelley 1995; Reyman 1995). After the Hohokam peoples entered the Southwest, they dispersed throughout New Mexico and Arizona, where they constructed irrigation ditches, manufactured pottery, erected pit houses on raised superstructures, and built adobe houses above ground (Fish, Fish, and Madsen 1992; Haury 1992b; Molitor 1981).
Approximately a century after the Hohokam entered the Southwest, the Mogollon people settled north of them, inhabiting several sites in Arizona and northern New Mexico (Haury 1992a; Lipe 1978). There they established cultural complexes that were clearly distinct from the Hohokam or Mesoamerican. Their material culture was distinguished by the use of pit houses, kivas, burial traditions, and several ceramic traditions. They did adopt farming techniques from the Hohokam, however, and contributed to the growth of sedentary village life. A few centuries later, the Anasazi migrated to the Southwest, settling north of the Mogollon (Fagan 1991; Lipe 1978). Anasazi sites have been found in northern New Mexico, southwest Colorado, southeast Utah, and northeast Arizona. In these sites people had domesticated turkeys and adopted farming either from the Hohokam or from the Mogollon. They established villages and erected ceremonial centers and irrigation systems. There is also strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that they established long-distance trade with Indians from central Mexico (Fagan 1991; Kelley 1995; Lipe 1978). Mesoamerican copper bells, conch shells, ceramics, and mirrors have been found in Anasazi sites.
In New Mexico the Anasazi cultural complex was widely dispersed, and within a few centuries of their arrival they came to dominate their Mogollon neighbors (Dean 1992; Haury 1992d; LeBlanc 1992). This led to regional consolidation and the concentration of large urban centers ranging in size from 2,000 to 200 inhabitants (Fagan 1991; Haury 1992c, 1992d). Between A.D. 1100 and A.D. 1450, however, the Hohokam and Anasazi-Mogollon cultural complexes began to break down into several ethnic subdivisions and new art forms, pottery styles, and subsistence traditions appeared (Fish, Fish, and Madsen 1992:19; Forbes 1982:26; Lipe 1978:357). The Pima and Papago emerged from the Hohokam, and the Western Pueblo from the Mogollon or the Anasazi.5
During this period, a subdivision of the Hohokam or Mogollon migrated into Texas. The Jumano Indians, who are believed to be related to a village-dwelling culture, appeared in Texas in approximately A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1250 and settled in the area from El Paso to Big Bend (Haury 1992a:403; Newcomb 1986:230). They also settled along the Río Conchos in Chihuahua, Mexico. Since divisions of the Jumano practiced farming and a sedentary lifestyle, archaeologists propose that they must have migrated from New Mexico or Arizona, where such a lifestyle was common.6 Many Jumano Indians established farming villages throughout southwestern Texas and constructed adobe houses with roofs and wall frames made out of wood (Morfí 1780, 1935; Newcomb 1986; Spicer 1981). They also produced various ceramic traditions for utilitarian and luxury consumption. To supplement their harvests, these Jumano groups hunted animals for food and used skins for clothing. Their villages were governed by a chief. Though many Jumano groups were farmers, they coexisted with Jumano groups that were nomadic and had less complex forms of social organization. Most prehistoric peoples in Texas left scant trace of their material culture, and thus very little is known about them (Hester 1989a). Most of the information we have on the Indians of Texas dates to the historic period and is based on sixteenth-century Spanish accounts.
In contrast to the scarce information on the material culture of the prehistoric peoples of Texas, cultural complexes have been well documented in California, indicating that during prehistoric times it was the most widely populated territory in the Southwest (Aikens 1978; Forbes 1982; Heizer and Almquist 1977). Parts of present San Diego County have been continuously populated since around 6000 B.C. and the Santa Barbara Channel Islands for nearly as long (Aikens 1978:134, 148; Fagan 1991:196; Forbes 1982:22).
One of the largest prehistorical cultural complexes of California was that of the Hokan. Due to differences found in their material culture, the Hokan are subdivided into several ethnic subdivisions. The largest subdivision was the Chumash, who inhabited hundreds of villages throughout present Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Santa Maria counties. There were eight Chumash subdivisions: Barbareño, Cuyama, Emigdiano, Island Chumash (San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz Islands), Obispeño, Purisimeño, Santa Inés, and Ventureño (King 1990; Swanton 1984). Doubts have been raised, however, regarding the kinship relationship of the Island Chumash, because they practiced a specialized maritime subsistence lifestyle that emphasized fishing and sea mammal hunting, in contrast to the subsistence patterns of the inland Chumash (Fagan 1991; Forbes 1982). The Chumash who occupied the inland territories subsisted on the animals they hunted and the seeds and roots they gathered. Neither group farmed. Archaeologists estimate that before the arrival of the Europeans, the Island Chumash numbered 3,000, while the rest of the Chumash ranged from 15,000 to 30,000 (Aikens 1978; Fagan 1991; Forbes 1982).
Though the Chumash have been identified as one of the first groups to settle in California, the date and place of entry are uncertain. One hypothesis challenging the Hokan classificatory scheme proposes that the Chumash were an ethnic subdivision of the Hohokam or some other northern Mexico cultural group (Castetter and Bell 1951; Spicer 1981; Spier 1933; Swanton 1984). This hypothesis is supported by archaeological data indicating that the Chumash exhibited northern Mexican Indian traits (e.g., in their chieftain political structure, art forms, and bone and wood artifacts). A competing hypothesis proposes that the Mexican traits must be attributed to the effects of trade or intermarriage (Fagan 1991; Forbes 1982). The eight subdivisions of the Chumash may not share a common ancestral prehistory, as only the Island Chumash left material remains dating to 6000 B.C. (Aikens 1978:134). These questions about the origins of the Chumash remain for future scholars to examine. Although this prehistory needs to be explored, we do know that some of the oldest prehistoric remains are found in the islands inhabited by the Chumash.
The Shoshone are another major cultural group with ancient historic roots in California (Hurtado 1988; Steward 1933). Several ethnic subdivisions were spread throughout eastern California. Two competing hypotheses attempt to explain the Shoshone settlement patterns. One posits that they migrated from northern Mexico approximately 3,000 years ago and settled along the present Arizona-Sonora border (Fowler 1972:110; Lamb 1958:98–99). Approximately a thousand years later they settled in Utah and California (Aikens 1978; Fowler 1972; Lamb 1958, 1964). This hypothesis is supported by seventeenth-century Spanish accounts, which reported that most Shoshone groups in California spoke an Uto-Aztecan language similar to the languages spoken in central Mexico (Steward 1933). The alternate hypothesis concurs on their date of arrival in California, but posits that they migrated from the central or northern plains of the United States rather than from Mexico (Simpson 1986). This hypothesis is supported by similar cultural complexes yielding earlier dates that have been found in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon (Aikens 1978).7
The Penutian cultural complex was spread throughout northern and central California (Costello and Hornbeck 1989; Hurtado 1988). They entered California around 2500 B.C. (Fagan 1991:207). Many ethnic subdivisions of the Penutian family practiced a lifeway based on hunting and gathering and did not recognize a central leader (Aikens 1978). Most groups who inhabited the coast, however, lived in sedentary villages and practiced a more complex form of social organization. They subsisted on fishing, practiced burial ceremonies, and were governed by chiefs.
The archaeological data found in Mexico and the Southwest indicate that these areas were populated as early as 11,000 B.C. (Hester 1989b:192; Meyer and Sherman 1995:5; Newcomb 1986:9). Though migration patterns in Mexico and the Southwest have been difficult to trace and are currently the center of archaeological debates, scholars agree that indigenous groups moved south. The questions of where they came from and what relations evolved between different groups are under investigation. What is certain is that farming first appeared in central Mexico and was later diffused into northern Mexico and finally into the southwestern United States. Villages were established throughout both zones, while urban centers were more common in Mesoamerica. Long-distance trade developed between the peoples of Mexico and the Southwest after the Hohokam appeared there, but it probably was minimal, because only a few Mexican artifacts have been found in southwestern villages. The exact kinship connections between the peoples of the Southwest and Mexico are uncertain.
Outside of the borders of Mesoamerica, most of the land north of present Mexico has been labeled the Gran Chichimeca. Thousands of groups inhabited this region, and the majority of them were Chichimec.8 On the periphery of Mesoamerica, where the present states of Zacatecas and Durango lie, a cultural complex belonging to some of the earliest Chichimec peoples has been identified. Archaeologists call this cultural complex Chalchihuites and date it to around A.D. 200 (Kelley and Kelley 1971:3). By A.D. 950 the number of Chalchihuites sites radically declined. This reduction has been attributed to outmigration and to their absorption within other indigenous societies (ibid., 176). Though many Chichimec people remained in Zacatecas and Durango, others continued a southward migration (Rodríguez Flores 1976).
Around the same time that Chalchihuites sites decrease, a group of Chichimec Indians appeared in the Valley of Mexico, led by Mixcóatl. This branch of the Chichimec has been distinguished as the Toltec-Chichimec (Meyer and Sherman 1995). They settled a few miles north of the ancient city of Teotihuacán. While they were there, they learned from the descendants of the Teotihuacán people their ceramic art, philosophy, astronomy, architectural knowledge, and in particular hieroglyphic and iconographic writing. After living nearly twenty years near Teotihuacán, Mixcóatl’s people were expelled for being hostile and barbarian intruders. They departed to the north and built their own community, incorporating the skills they had learned. The Toltec-Chichimec called their new settlement Tula and erected temples, pyramids, bureaucratic offices, and enormous statues called butterfly warriors to venerate their deity Quetzalcoatl. Glyphic texts were inscribed on buildings and monuments. The city did not last long; a century later, the inhabitants abandoned it and moved on, thus continuing a migratory pattern.
The fate of the people from Tula is uncertain. Archaeologists propose that some migrated north, while another branch sailed south, landing in the Yucatán Peninsula and eventually conquering a group of Maya people (Adams 1991; Meyer and Sherman 1995). Those who settled among the Maya are believed to have contributed to the renaissance of Chichén Itzá. Maya mythology as well as wall paintings in Chichén Itzá depicting a Toltec-Chichimec invasion support this theory. Toltec-Chichimec iconography and three-dimensional bas-relief sculptures found in Chichén Itzá offer further supporting evidence (Gillespie 1989; see also Tibón 1983). Though convincing data support the Maya-Toltec-Chichimec connections, archaeologists have been unable to prove or disprove this claim, and the debate continues. Similar diffusionist hypotheses have been advanced about other peoples in the Valley of Mexico, Veracruz, and Michoacán (Tibón 1983).
What is historically certain is that a Chichimec group called the Mexica claimed their homeland was Aztlán and identified the Toltec-Chichimec as their ancestors. The Mexica were one of the seven Chichimec tribes of northern Mexico that migrated south and settled in the Valley of Mexico in approximately A.D. 1111 (Meyer and Sherman 1995:56). Most of the fertile land was already inhabited by many peoples organized into kingdoms, and the Mexica were treated as intruders. They were allowed to settle in Chapultepec, but their neighbors soon expelled them for their allegedly barbarous ways. They collected their belongings and sought refuge in the Kingdom of Chulhuacán (Gillespie 1989). The Chulhuacán people protected them because they acknowledged a distant kin relation, and their king allowed them to settle in Tizaapan. In return for this hospitality the Mexica were expected to act as mercenaries and attack the enemies of the Kingdom of Chulhuacán. Over several generations the military efficiency of the Mexica became well known, which led to their acceptance in the area. Mexica warriors began to marry members of the royal families of the Valley.
Mexica prestige continued to rise, and around A.D. 1325 Achitometl, king of Chulhuacán, allowed the leader of the Mexica, Tonachca, to marry his daughter Yaocihuatl (Berdan 1982:7). In this way, Tonachca became part of the royal family of Chulhuacán. Achitometl claimed to be a direct descendant of the last Toltec-Chichimec king of Tula. Once Yaocihuatl had been given to Tonachca, a Mexica priest received a vision from Huitzilopochtli ordering them to kill her and remove her skin from her body. Afterward her father was asked to join Tenochca and Yaocihuatl in a ceremony. To Achitometl’s shock, a priest dressed in his daughter’s skin appeared and danced in front of him. Horrified by the barbarous cruelty committed against his daughter, Achitometl immediately expelled the Mexica from Tizaapan. They refused to leave the Valley and instead settled in the middle of Lake Texcoco, on uninhabited land infested with snakes and insects. To the surprise of their neighbors, the Mexica adapted and incorporated snakes and insects as part of their basic cuisine. This further stigmatized them, yet ironically it also aided them, because they became a feared people. The Mexica flourished, increasing their population and continuing to strengthen their military.
Knowing they were feared and unwelcome in the Valley, the Mexica began a war of conquest, attacking their neighbors. By A.D. 1430 they had formed alliances with the kingdoms of Texcoco and Tlacopan (Berdan 1982:10). With this military aid, the Mexica conquered the entire Valley. Those conquered kingdoms who vowed allegiance to the Mexica were incorporated as allies and came to constitute a confederacy of states which subsequently became the Aztec Empire. The Mexica became the ruling kingdom and their king the emperor. Each allied kingdom was allowed to retain its king, but was obliged to follow the rules of the Mexica, participate in the confederacy’s military, and pay tribute. After the Mexica subdued their neighbors, they embarked on the conquest of the peoples outside the Valley of Mexico.
Anthropologist Susan Gillespie (1989) argues in The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History that when the Mexica ascended to power they removed the stigma of their humble roots by appropriating the account of Aztlán, which was believed to be the homeland of some of the most powerful groups in the Valley of Mexico.9 She attributes the survival of the oral account of Aztlán to the Aztec. Under Aztec rule it became part of the official history of the people of the Aztec Empire.
There is much more to say about Aztlán, but I must stop here. For me personally, Aztlán has been an ideological site since I was a child, although I am still undecided about whether it is a mythological or historical location. I do know that it has given me a source of pride and is part of my oral tradition that was handed down to me by my brother, Blas Menchaca, who was very active in the Chicano Movement. Blas, who was present at several of Alurista’s poetry readings, shared the account of Aztlán as a historical fact. Though I learned the Chicano version from my brother, my parents taught me that Aztlán was a myth. To them, Aztlán was a story about unity and nationhood. To Blas, Aztlán was one of the most important public historical memories that Spain had been unable to erase after defeating the Aztec. My parents disagreed and did not view Spaniards in the same way. On the contrary, they taught me to value my White heritage—which came from Spain.
Spaniards traditionally have been classified as White. This point is extremely significant in analyzing the Mexican Americans’ racial history. Throughout history the Mexican Americans’ Spanish ancestry protected them many times from the full impact of racial discrimination because they were part White.
The racial schema of the peoples of the world was introduced in 1684 (Banton and Harwood 1975:15). By the early 1700s scholars classified the native inhabitants of Europe as Caucasian, the term used to refer to people with White skin (with brown, yellow, or rosy undertones), a narrow and prominent nose, a prognathic (protruding) or orthognathic (straight) jaw, and blond or brunet hair (Brinton 1890; Stanton 1966). Caucasian peoples were subdivided into four family stocks: Teutonic-Aryan, Cymric, Celtic, and Euscarian (Bravo Lira 1970; Brinton 1890; Feagin and Feagin 1999; Stanton 1966). The four families exhibited variations in appearance, yet preserved the aforementioned color and facial structure. The Teutonic-Aryan people were credited with having been the first settlers of northern Europe (Gossett 1977; Hechter 1977; Howe 1989). The Celtic people were indigenous to Ireland and England and the Cymric and Celtic people to parts of France and the border of northern Spain. The Euscarians were indigenous to central Spain and to parts of France, Italy, and Greece.
During the late eighteenth century, the term “Caucasian” fell out of popular academic use and was often replaced by the term “White” (see Brinton 1890; Stanton 1966). Many scholars preferred to use skin color as a racial classifier because the term “Caucasian” had come under scrutiny when scholars charged that its correct linguistic definition applied to a hybrid Asian and White people. Linguistic disagreements over which word was more appropriate to describe the indigenous peoples of Europe persisted. It was generally accepted, however, that the term “Caucasian” metaphorically referred to people who had no Black, Indian, or Asian ancestors, such as the four family stocks indigenous to Europe. “White” became a more inclusive term applied to the family stocks indigenous to Europe and to the Hamitic and Semitic peoples who were also part of these subdivisions, but were racially mixed.
The flexible definition that scholars assigned to the term “White” continues in use today (Feagin and Feagin 1999). Within the legal domain, however, each country encodes its own definition based on the meaning accorded to biological characteristics (Omi and Winant 1994). In the United States identifying people on the basis of race continues for various academic and legal record-keeping purposes. Over the generations the legal intent for using racial categories has varied, ranging from denying people citizenship to enumerating the U.S. population for census purposes. Mexican Americans are one of the peoples of the world who are of mixed racial origins. This racial background has historically placed Mexican Americans and their ancestors in ambiguous social and legal positions—they are discriminated against because they are only partly White, yet they have been spared the full impact of discrimination because they descend from Spaniards, one of the White peoples of Europe.
Spain and Portugal today occupy the Iberian Peninsula, which was first populated by Tartessians. The ethnic affiliations of the Tartessians are unknown; scholars disagree as to whether they entered the Iberian Peninsula from Asia, North Africa, or other parts of Europe. Though the Tartessians’ point of origin is uncertain, eighteenth-century scholars overwhelmingly proposed that they must have been White and thus classified them as Euscarian. This hypothesis is supported by Phoenician inscriptions on ceramics and hieroglyphic texts (Blazquez 1975). Their date of arrival in the peninsula is also uncertain, although it is estimated to have taken place between 40,000 B.C. and 20,000 B.C. (Altamira 1988:71; Vinces Vives 1972:2). About 7000 B.C. the Tartessians’ social organization began to change radically (Vinces Vives 1972:6). They spread throughout the peninsula, and most abandoned their cave dwellings in favor of huts. In a few areas some people began farming and preferred a sedentary village life over nomadism. Accompanying this shift was the production of ceramics, arrows, and lances. During the same period, maritime cultures with a similar sedentary village lifestyle flourished along the coast. By 2500 B.C. the coastal regions of Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia exhibited the most complex forms of social organization (Vinces Vives 1972:8). Chieftainship (leadership by one individual) became the standard form of political governance, which in turn stimulated many technological innovations, such as the large-scale construction of stone buildings with iconographic art and a metal tool industry (e.g., hatchets, knives, lances, and swords).
About 1000 B.C. to 500 B.C. Iberians and Basques entered the peninsula (Altamira 1988:73; Bravo Lira 1970:30).10 They have been classified as part of the Euscarian stock (Lynch 1964; Nott and Gliddon 1857). Bernardino Bravo Lira (1970), however, questions this classification, arguing that the Basques came from Morocco in North Africa, a highly diversified region of racially mixed Euscarian and Hamitic groups. Hamitics were classified by eighteenth-century scholars as a mixed stock branching from Euscarian and Black peoples. Bravo Lira’s hypothesis is based upon Phoenician legal records describing the Basques as a heterogeneous people. Part of the population was fair-skinned, while others were dark, indicating a Black racial influence.
The Iberians moved throughout the peninsula. Many settled near Tartessian villages, where intermarriage commonly took place. In Spain’s present southern region of Andalusia, Iberians built fortified cities, wove fine textiles, produced ceramics, and introduced new agricultural techniques. Many Tartessian villages began adopting their Iberian neighbors’ cultural traditions (Blazquez 1975; Bravo Lira 1970; Carpenter 1925). Unlike the Iberians, the Basques retained their distance from the Tartessians and Iberians, finally settling in northeastern Spain (Bravo Lira 1970; Brinton 1890; Lynch 1964).
During this same period, Phoenician soldiers conquered many Tartessian villages along the southern and eastern coasts and established military posts that lasted for nearly 400 years (Blazquez 1975). Local chiefs were allowed to retain power as long as they paid tribute and did not revolt. The Phoenicians influenced architecture and textile production in Cádiz as well as the artistic production of jewelry and ceramics; they also introduced hieroglyphic writing and a monetary exchange system. Their hieroglyphic writings contain historical information on the populations living in southern and eastern Spain, in particular drawings of the Tartessians (Altamira 1988; Blazquez 1975). Though their presence in Spain was long-lasting, the Phoenicians, who have been classified as Hamitic (Brinton 1890), did not intermarry with the local inhabitants in great numbers.
In 600 B.C. the Phoenicians were overthrown by their subjects; within a few years, the Greeks conquered the eastern coast as well as several inland Tartessian villages (Altamira 1988:73). Along the eastern coast they established military outposts (Carpenter 1925). Rhys Carpenter (1925) and Bernardino Bravo Lira (1970) propose that intermarriage between the Greeks and the Tartessians was highly unlikely, as the new invaders’ purpose was to extract tribute and not to mix with the natives. Scholars have concluded that the Greeks belonged to the Euscarian stock; thus they would not have introduced any new racial mixture into the peninsula even if they did intermarry with the local population (Brinton 1890; Nott and Gliddon 1857). After less than forty years of domination, the Greeks were defeated by Tartessian chieftains and forced to leave. They had a radical influence on the conquered zones, however, giving these regions a distinct Hellenic cultural style in sculptures, ceramics, mosaic paintings, and architecture (Altamira 1988; Carpenter 1925), especially in Valencia (Wetterau 1994). Greek theater was also introduced.
Following the Greeks’ exodus, the Celtic people arrived, not as conquerors but as refugees. Most Celtic groups came from present-day England (Altamira 1988; Wetterau 1994), pushed out of their homeland by a Teutonic invasion. Celtic groups first settled in northern Spain between Basque and Iberian villages (Bravo Lira 1970). Peaceful alliances evolved between Iberian and Celtic villagers, leading to large-scale intermarriage and eventually influencing the culture of many Iberian villages. The Celtic people did not intermarry with the Tartessians or the Basques in any significant numbers.
In approximately 236 B.C. the Iberian Peninsula was once again invaded (Altamira 1988:82; Livermore 1971:11). The southern and eastern coasts came under the military control of Carthaginian groups from present-day Morocco. The Carthaginians were ousted by Romans a few decades later. Roman rule lasted for over 600 years (Bravo Lira 1970; Fletcher 1992; Glick 1979). The Romans, a Euscarian people, conquered most of the peninsula, but intermarriage with the local population was uncommon. The Romans instituted structural changes, the most important modification being a centralized form of government and a standard legal system in the areas of local government, property, marriage, and inheritance. Local chiefs were allowed to retain control of their villages as long as they adopted Roman laws, pledged allegiance, and paid tribute to the emperor. Many chiefs revolted and subsequently lost their power; their positions were awarded to loyal chiefs. This led to political centralization of larger regions under the control of fewer chiefs (Bravo Lira 1970).
The political innovations introduced by the Romans were accompanied by a rigid tax system. Chiefs were expected to collect a set quota irrespective of the conquered subjects’ ability to pay tribute. During times of drought or when the harvest seasons were poor, the Romans did not lower their quotas, and people were left near starvation. This inhumane practice generated intolerable economic stress and eventually sparked political turmoil. In A.D. 409 the peoples of the peninsula revolted, with the assistance of their new neighbors the Visigoths; together they overthrew the Romans (Altamira 1988:96; Bravo Lira 1970:125). The Visigoths had recently entered the peninsula as part of a military movement to challenge Roman rule in Europe (Altamira 1988; Bravo Lira 1970; Vinces Vives 1972). They offered military assistance to local chiefs who changed allegiances and accepted Visigoth rule. In exchange the local leaders were promised greater autonomy and reduced taxes. In the southern and coastal regions many local chiefs changed allegiances, whereas in the central and northern regions most Tartessian and Basque chiefs resisted.
During the next three hundred years, the Visigoths’ hold over the peninsula spread, and most villages fell under their rule. Thousands of Visigoths left Germany and settled in the occupied zones. Unlike the Romans, who had retained their social distance from the indigenous inhabitants, the Visigoths intermarried with the locals, adding to the peninsula’s racial mixture (Bravo Lira 1970). Though most Visigoths have been classified as Teutonic-Aryan, they were diverse; some of the migrating peoples had Asian ancestors (Brinton 1890; Nott and Gliddon 1854).
In A.D. 711 Visigoth political hegemony was challenged by several Muslim dynasties from North Africa (Altamira 1988:114; Bravo Lira 1970: 176). These people have been classified as Semitic and Hamitic. The Hamitic stock is a Euscarian and Black blend and the Semitic is White with Black and Asian influences. Though Muslim peoples, under the leadership of the Syrians, took control of the southern region, the Basque northeast and the Tartessian central regions remained independent.11 Continuous political battles against Muslim rule forced Basque and Tartessian chiefs to consolidate tribal alliances and unify regions. By A.D. 1085 the threat of a Muslim invasion sparked by the military intrusion of the Moroccan Almoravid Dynasty further accelerated the consolidation of regions. Navarre, Castile, Portugal, León, Valencia, Catalonia, Aragon, Asturias, and Vizcaya evolved into fortified kingdoms (see Glick 1979:32–46), with Aragon, Castile, and Portugal emerging as the most powerful ones. Though kingdoms arose throughout Spain, the Almoravid Dynasty entrenched itself in the southern region, further strengthening the Muslim presence in Andalusia and Granada.
In 1469 Queen Isabella of Castile married King Ferdinand of Aragon and united their kingdoms, making them the most powerful monarchs of the Iberian Peninsula (Lynch 1964:1). Their marriage led to the unification of the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and León into the Empire of Spain.12 The centralization of power under imperial rule resulted in a powerful military consolidation. In 1492 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand defeated the Muslims in the battle over Granada and ended their rule. The southern region was immediately annexed to the Spanish Empire (ibid., 19).
Although Muslims lost economic and political power, the crown allowed them to remain in their homes if they converted to Christianity.13 Most people refused to abandon their Islamic faith and were soon expelled to Morocco. The refugees settled in the present cities of Tangiers and Rabat. Those who remained behind were predominantly part of the gentry and chose not to flee in order to retain their estates.14 Though the lands of converted Muslims were to remain in their hands, within a few generations they lost most property through an unfair tax system. Nonetheless, in Granada a hybrid Castilian-Muslim culture evolved, becoming evident in architecture, cuisine, and music.15
The same year the Muslims were defeated, Queen Isabella commissioned Christopher Columbus to explore and conquer new lands in her name and on behalf of the Catholic Church. Columbus’s voyage proved to be the most important event of that century and perhaps of the millennium. On his voyage Columbus encountered the peoples of the Caribbean and led the pathway to interaction with the peoples of Mexico and Latin America. For Spain the discovery of the Americas led to economic prosperity, but for the people of the Americas it marked the demise of their civilizations and a legacy of discrimination based on racial difference. Thousands of Spaniards crossed the Atlantic in search of wealth and land.
A few years after Columbus’s voyage to the Caribbean Islands, Cuba became Spain’s colonial center in the New World and Diego Velázquez was appointed as its governor. From Cuba the sea voyage explorations of Mexico were launched. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba reached the Yucatán Peninsula in 1517 (Díaz del Castillo 1963:17). Two years later Velázquez commissioned Hernán Cortés to explore Mexico and to conquer the Indians (ibid., 57). Cortés and his army of approximately 508 soldiers began their trek into Mexico on the Island of Cozumel, near the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula, and moved by sea and land throughout the eastern coast. Within a year, Cortés was joined by Captain Pánfilo Narváez and 1,400 men sent by Velázquez to take command of the military conquest of Mexico.
After many battles and coerced treaties, the Spanish conquistadores reached Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire, on 8 November 1519 (ibid., 219). By then Cortés had solicited the alliance of the most powerful enemies of the Aztec, the Tlaxcalans, who lived about 100 miles to the south. When Cortés’s army arrived in Tenochtitlán, the Aztec emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin ordered that they be treated cordially. They were given gifts and comfortable quarters. Relations began to worsen after Moctezuma’s generals decided that Cortés was a military threat. Approximately eight months later, the Aztec military conspired and rebelled against Moctezuma. They attacked and forced the Spanish to retreat to Tlaxcala. Several months later, Cortés and his captains returned, fortified by an army of Tlaxcalan soldiers. They attempted the siege of Tenochtitlán, but were repeatedly defeated. After approximately a year of ongoing battles, Cortés’s army and 10,000 to 15,000 Tlaxcalan warriors defeated the Aztec, and Tenochtitlán fell on 13 August 1521 (Meyer and Sherman 1995:126, 128; cf. Díaz del Castillo 1963:326).
This event changed the course of history: the Spanish Empire was now successfully entrenched in building a colony. To do so, it was necessary to send thousands of Spaniards and a sizable slave population. Nearly 200,000 Black slaves from Africa were exported to assist in the restructuring of Mexico (Aguirre Beltrán 1944:431). This Black population was comparable to the number of migrants from Spain.
Mexico’s participation in the slave trade peaked between 1542 and 1650 (Aguirre Beltrán 1946:10–39).16 The exact number of Black people brought from Africa is uncertain because the count of slaves was based on their health and age. A healthy adult was counted as one piece, children as one-quarter piece, and others were counted on the basis of a full piece depending on their health and whether their bodies were undamaged (Cortes 1964). Estimates of the number of Black slaves introduced to Mexico range from 150,000 to approximately 200,000 (Aguirre Beltrán 1944:431; cf. Meyer and Sherman 1995:215).
Registries indicate that throughout Mexico’s participation in the slave trade the majority of slaves were Malinkés from the Kingdom of Mali and spoke the Mandé-Tan language (Aguirre Beltrán 1946; Thornton 1996). Mali was located on the inland coast of West Africa. Because the primary function of slaves in Mexico was to perform domestic duties and serve in occupations in the cities (Cope 1994; Seed 1988), Spaniards preferred to import Malinké slaves.17 In particular, they preferred slaves trained in the North African island slave factories of Cape Verde and San Tomé. Though the Spanish recorded linguistic variances among Malinké captives, noting that slaves spoke different versions of Mandé, people who spoke similar languages (such as the Soninké of Songhay, who spoke Mandé-Tamu) were often registered as Malinké. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Malinké continued to be Mexico’s main slave source; however, Wolof and Soso slaves also began to appear in large numbers during the 1600s (Palacios 1988). These two peoples were also from West Africa and lived in close proximity to the Malinké. By the 1700s, when the main source of slaves shipped to Latin America shifted to the African Congo, in particular present Angola, Mexico’s participation in the slave trade had nearly ceased; less than 3,800 Bantu slaves arrived in Mexico (Palmer 1981:104).
The Malinké are a Black people indigenous to West Africa (Levtzion 1973; Stocking 1968). The first written accounts of the Malinké date to approximately A.D. 800, when North African Muslim scholars wrote about the Kingdom of Ghana and the peoples of West Africa (Levtzion 1973; Oliver and Fagan 1975). Though Ghana is believed to have been the first West African society that evolved into a kingdom, it benefited from the technological innovations of earlier societies.
Archaeologists propose that agriculture was first practiced in West Africa by 2000 B.C. (Oliver and Fagan 1975:19). The technology to cultivate crops may have been diffused from northeast Africa, near the Nile River region, as agriculture was practiced there over 4,000 years earlier (Desmond 1973:54).18 Agriculture may have developed independently in West Africa, however. The first farmers in the area were the Kintampoo people. Though they lived in the same region where the kingdoms of Ghana and Mali arose thousands of years later, it is uncertain if they were ancestors of the Malinké. The Kintampoo people introduced innovations to this part of West Africa: they domesticated cattle and goats, developed a microlithic axe/tool technology, lived in mud houses, and occupied permanent settlements (Oliver and Fagan 1975).
Around 1000 B.C. another region in West Africa exhibited similar forms of social organization (McIntosh 1995:377). Near the coast of the Upper Guinea River and north of the Senegal River, the Tichitt people manufactured pottery, cultivated plants, performed burial ceremonies, and developed a subsistence-base herding economy. By A.D. 100 farming and a subsistence herding economy had become common in West Africa (ibid.). Most peoples also manufactured copper and metal utensils. Few were hunters and gatherers. In particular, the Upper Inland Niger Delta north of the Niger River was heavily populated. People lived in towns, which were not unified under a state system. The largest town was Jennéjeno, which by A.D. 300 had become an important trading center for the surrounding region and had established trade relations with North and West African peoples (ibid., 377, 390, 397). Most notable were the Berber-speaking traders from the present-day North African states of Mauritania and Morocco. In A.D. 800 the Kingdom of Ghana became the most powerful state in West Africa (Levtzion 1973:22). No one knows when the peoples of Ghana organized their kingdom. Tenth-century Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Yūsuf al-Warrāq wrote that North African Berbers were told by people from Ghana that eight generations of kings had ruled Ghana before that time (Levtzion 1973).
The Soninké were the ruling ethnic group of Ghana. A confederacy of Soninké chiefs controlled a region extending from the bend of the Niger to the headwaters of the Senegal (ibid., 2; see Map 3). The Malinké were ruled by Soninké chiefs and lived in villages dispersed between Soninké settlements. They were also forced to pay tribute. Co-existing with the Kingdom of Ghana were the neighboring kingdoms of Song-hay and Kanem. Songhay was also a Soninké kingdom, while the Sao lived in Kanem. These kingdoms were not as powerful and experienced political flux when they were conquered by Ghana. Songhay and Kanem retained independence most of the time, but many villages were unable to resist domination and were continuously forced to pay tribute to Ghana. The Wolof and Fulani, who lived south of Ghana in the Kingdom of Takrur, were able to maintain their independence, however (Levtzion 1973; Oliver and Fagan 1975). Jenné-jeno and most of the towns in the Upper Niger Inland Delta also retained their independence.
Map 3. Ghana A.D. 1050 and Mali A.D. 1300. Sources: Cortes 1964; McIntosh 1995; Oliver and Fagan 1975; Thornton 1996.
Scholars have attributed Ghana’s political hegemony to the rulers’ ability to unify Soninké villages and maintain a cohesive confederacy of chiefs under the command of one king. Ongoing raids launched by North African Berbers searching for gold and slaves also served to maintain Ghana’s unification. Though many North African groups raided the kingdom throughout its existence, Ghana developed alliances with one Berber people—the Magrib. Many Magrib Berbers established trade relations with Ghana chiefs and lived among their allies. Several trading posts were established in the Soninké villages near Kumbí, the main center of Ghana, as well as in the south and north of the Gambia River (Levtzion 1973:24, 28, 104). Other major Ghana trading posts included Timbuktu, Wagadugu, Gundiuru, and Awdaghustic. Magrib Berbers traded horses, brass, copper, glassware, beads, leather, textiles, tailored clothing, and preserved food to the Soninké in exchange for gold, ivory, cloth, pepper, kola nuts, and sometimes slaves. In these trading centers it became common for Magrib Berbers to marry Soninké women. Furthermore, the alliances between Ghana chiefs and Magrib Berbers helped Ghana retain its domination over Malinké and Songhay villages; when revolts erupted, the Magrib Berbers assisted their allies.
By A.D. 1076 the Magrib Berbers demanded that the Soninké people convert to Islam (Levtzion 1973: 44; Oliver and Fagan 1975:166). The king of Ghana complied, yet many villages resisted. The pressures to convert increased when Sanhaja tribes from various regions of North Africa united in a religious movement to convert people to Islam and attack those who resisted. The Sanhaja, like the Berbers, were a racially mixed Hamitic people, who were unified under the religious Almoravid Movement, centered in Morocco. Unlike the Magrib Berbers, the Sanhaja were enemies of Ghana and took over some of the Magrib Berber trading posts. Many Soninké villages converted to Islam as a means of averting Islamic attacks. This did not stop the Sanhaja from demanding tribute from Ghana villages and taking people as slaves. By A.D. 1250 the Almoravid Movement had provoked conflict and religious factionalism in the Kingdom of Ghana (Levtzion 1973:51; Oliver and Fagan 1975:169). Most Ghana chiefs refused to convert to Islam and instead chose to end the confederacy.
Many successor states emerged out of Ghana. By this time a large part of West Africa had converted to Islam. The Soso, who had been conquered by Ghana, emerged as the most powerful kingdom. They conquered many Soninké villages and also began preying upon the Malinké villages, which were not unified under one kingdom. Some Malinké villages were able to retain their independence and were subsequently unified by a man called Sundjata. Sundjata then launched a successful military campaign against the Soso people and replaced them as the military power of West Africa. By A.D. 1250 Malinké chiefs had united in a confederacy, with Sundjata as their king (Oliver and Fagan 1975:169). Sundjata’s clan, the Keita, became the ruling family, and his confederacy evolved into the Kingdom of Mali. The power of the Kingdom of Mali expanded, and it came to encompass the entire region that had formerly been Ghana (see Map 3). The Malinké also conquered the peoples from the Kingdom of Songhay. Mali prospered as the most successful trading kingdom of the time, its main commodity being gold. Malinké villages became successful farming communities, and their towns and cities became known for textile production.
By the 1400s Mali had come under sustained attacks by rival North African groups attempting to take over trade routes (Levtzion 1973:94–96; Oliver and Fagan 1975:174–179). Mali’s attention was diverted to defense, rather than maintaining control of the peoples it had conquered. The people of Songhay and others took advantage of Mali’s weakened position and launched successful wars of independence. Unfortunately for Mali, these liberation movements coincided with a drought that affected many Malinké villages and thus prompted thousands of people to migrate in search of food. The Kingdom of Mali disintegrated, and Malinké villages became independent. Some villages formed regional military alliances, however. By 1540 the Kingdom of Songhay had emerged as the military power of West Africa and conquered most of the Malinké people (Levtzion 1973:97). Only one Malinké region near the Niger River remained fortified and independent of Songhay.
The ecological disaster and military attacks experienced by the Malinké converged with a worse threat—organized Portuguese slave expeditions. The Portuguese first made contact with a Malinké group in 1445 when João Fernandes sailed into the mouth of the Gambia River on an exploratory trip (Levtzion 1973:94–95). Within ten years Portuguese pirates descended upon the west coast of Africa, capturing people. In 1487 the royal crown of Portugal commissioned its military to commence a large-scale slave project in West Africa, as the European slave trade had become a lucrative business (Cortes 1964:57; Levtzion 1973:94–95). The Malinké, with no unified military state system, fell prey to the activities of Portugal and other European countries who joined in the exploitation of Africa.
The fall of Mali and the institutionalization of the Portuguese slave trade converged with Spain’s discovery of the New World. Spain began to import thousands of slaves for its domestic population and for its New World colonies. Slaves were needed to work on the newly founded plantations in the Spanish Caribbean as well as to work as domestics. Black slaves first arrived in Mexico in 1519 as part of the Pánfilo Narváez expedition (Díaz del Castillo 1963:282; Meyer and Sherman 1995:214). It is uncertain whether they assisted Hernán Cortés in the conquest of the Aztec Empire. We do know that Esteban, one of the slaves introduced by Narváez, participated in the first expedition to set foot in Texas (see Chapter 3). Now we must turn to the aftermath of the conquest and examine how race relations unfolded in Mexico.
