Hernán Cortés, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca

Cortés realized that his de facto kingdom needed both a queen and royal recognition, so he traveled to Spain in 1528 to get both. A year later he returned with his young noble bride, Juana de Zúñiga, and the grand title of Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca, which included a singularly generous grant of land, subjects, and privileges. For many years thereafter, he and his heirs received upward of 80,000 gold pesos a year from tens of thousands of indigenous subjects on three million acres of domain scattered from the Valley of Mexico through the present states of Morelos, Mexico, Guerrero, and Veracruz to Oaxaca.

Cortés’s Valley of Oaxaca holdings, the crown jewel of his domain, encompassed most of the best valley land. In a wide, 350,000-acre swath, it stretched 25 miles, including 34 villages and towns, from Etla in the north to Coyotopec in the south. Excluded, however, was the one-league square (two square miles) of the town of Antequera, which grew into the present-day Oaxaca City.

The Missionaries

While the conquistadores scoured the countryside for gold and subjugated the local people, missionaries began arriving to heal, teach, and baptize them. The Dominicans were the first and most numerous in Oaxaca. Padre Minaya built the first Oaxaca convent, dedicated to Saint Paul, in Antequera around 1530. Other Dominicans settled in Tlaxiaco, Etla, and Tehuántepec, where King Cosijopí financed a church for them in 1538. Other orders—Franciscans, Augustinians, Bethlehemites, and more—soon joined them. Missionary authorities customarily enjoyed a sympathetic ear from Charles V and his successors, who earnestly pursued Spain’s Christian mission, especially when it coincided with their political and economic goals.

Besides saving souls, the missionaries introduced new plants, flowers, and vegetables, and useful European crafts, such as ironwork, glassmaking, wool processing, and pottery glazing. They learned native tongues and wrote catechisms in Zapotec, Mixtec, and other local dialects. Within a few dozen years, the fields, orchards, and vineyards dotted with dozens of churches around the Valley of Oaxaca and beyond testified to the dedication of both the missionaries and their native converts.

Unfortunately, in order to speed the process of conversion, which the missionaries viewed as a sort of divine manifest destiny, native temples, idols, and paintings were destroyed. Historical records were irretrievably lost. The Spaniards also banned native song and dance, fearing that they kept alive old beliefs.

Although the missionaries on the whole provided a kinder, gentler counterbalance to the often brutal and exploitative conquistadores and colonists, they were not entirely blameless. In their zeal to build churches, convents, and monasteries, they also demanded the backbreaking labor of the newly converted. Moreover, those resistant to conversion were dealt with harshly, sometimes beaten, tortured, or killed.

In Oaxaca, however, which was primarily a Dominican stronghold, indígenas were spared the worst excesses of the more zealous Franciscans. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar, devoted his life to fighting for the rights of the native people. This champion of social justice earned the sobriquet “Apostle of the Indians.”

The King Takes Control

By 1530, the crown, through the Council of the Indies, had begun to wrest power away from Cortés and his conquistador lieutenants. Cortés had granted many of them rights of encomienda: taxes and labor of an indigenous district. In exchange, the encomendero, who often enjoyed the status of feudal lord, pledged to look after the welfare and souls of his native charges.

From the king’s point of view, though, tribute pesos collected by encomenderos translated into losses to the crown. Moreover, many encomenderos callously exploited their indigenous wards for quick profit, sometimes selling them as slave labor in mines and on plantations. Such abuses, coupled with European-introduced diseases, began to reduce the native population at an alarming rate.

By 1540, strongly influenced by Dominican padre Bartolomé de las Casas, the outspoken “Apostle of the Indians,” the king and his councilors realized that the native Mexicans were in peril, and without their labor New Spain would vanish.

They acted decisively. New laws would shift power toward the crown and limit abuses to the king’s native subjects. Decreed in 1542 and enforced by a powerful visitador (inspector general), the New Laws of the Indies abolished perpetual rights of encomienda, outlawed slavery of native Mexicans, and limited their labor and tribute payments.

Although Oaxacan colonists protested vehemently, some native groups benefited. With the support of the new bishop of Antequera, Juan López de Zárate, and the missionary padres, Zapotecs around the Valley of Oaxaca mounted a legal fight against excessive encomienda payments.

© Bruce Whipperman from Moon Oaxaca, 5th edition