Editing New Spain (section)

===Central region===
====Mexico City, capital of the viceroyalty====
{{Main|History of Mexico City}}
[[File:Vista de la Plaza Mayor de la Ciudad de México - Cristobal de Villalpando.jpg|thumb|The [[Zócalo|Plaza Mayor]] of Mexico City, 1695, by [[Cristóbal de Villalpando]]]]
Mexico City was the center of the Central region, and the hub of New Spain. The [[history of Mexico City|development of Mexico City]] itself was vitally important to the development of New Spain as a whole. It was the seat of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, the Holy Office of the [[Inquisition]], the merchants' guild (''consulado''), and home of the most elite families in the Kingdom of New Spain. Mexico City was the single most populous city, not just in New Spain, but for many years the entire Western Hemisphere, with a high concentration of mixed-race [[castas]].

====Veracruz to Mexico City====
Significant regional development grew along the main transportation route from the capital east to the [[port of Veracruz]]. [[Alexander von Humboldt]] called this area, ''Mesa de Anahuac'', which can be defined as the adjacent valleys of Puebla, Mexico, and Toluca, enclosed by high mountains, along with their connections to the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz and the Pacific port of [[Acapulco]], where over half the population of New Spain lived.<ref>{{harvp|Ouweneel|1997|loc=map 2 p. 6; p. 288}}</ref> These valleys were linked trunk lines, or main routes, facilitating the movement of vital goods and people to get to key areas.<ref>{{harvp|Lockhart|1991}}</ref> 
[[File:5829 Paseo de la Viga con la iglesia de Iztacalco.jpg|thumb|The viceroy's walk in the Canal de la Viga in Mexico City, by Pedro Villegas in 1706. [[Museo Soumaya]]]]
Even in the relatively richly endowed region of Mexico, the difficulty of transit of people and goods in the absence of rivers and level terrain remained a major challenge to the economy of New Spain. This challenge persisted during the post-independence years until the late nineteenth-century construction of railroads. In the colonial era and up until the railroads were built in key areas in post-independence in the late nineteenth century, mule trains were the main mode of transporting goods. Pack mules were used because unpaved roads, mountainous terrain, and seasonal flooding could not generally accommodate carts.

In the late eighteenth century, the crown devoted some resources to study and remedy the poor roads. The ''Camino Real'' (royal road) between the port of Veracruz and the capital had some short sections paved and bridges constructed. The construction was done despite protests from some indigenous settlements when the infrastructure improvements, which sometimes included rerouting the road through communal lands. The Spanish crown finally decided that road improvement was in the interests of the state for military purposes, as well as for fostering commerce, agriculture, and industry, but the lack of state involvement in the development of physical infrastructure was to have lasting effects, constraining development until the late nineteenth century.<ref>{{harvp|Castleman|2005|p=10}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Coatsworth|1998|p=34}}</ref> Despite the road improvements, transit was still difficult, particularly for heavy military equipment.

Although the crown had ambitious plans for both the Toluca and Veracruz portions of the king's highway, improvements were limited to a localized network.<ref>{{harvp|Castleman|2005|p=31}}</ref> Even where infrastructure was improved, transit on the Veracruz-Puebla main road had other obstacles, with wolves attacking mule trains, killing animals, and rendering some sacks of foodstuffs unsellable because they were smeared with blood.<ref>{{harvp|Ouweneel|1997|p=90}}</ref> The north-south Acapulco route remained a mule track through mountainous terrain.

====Veracruz, port city and province====
Veracruz was the first Spanish settlement founded in what became New Spain, and it endured as the only viable Gulf Coast port, the gateway for Spain to New Spain. The difficult topography around the port affected local development and New Spain as a whole. Going from the port to the central plateau entailed a daunting 2000 meter climb from the narrow tropical coastal plain in just over a hundred kilometers. The narrow, slippery road in the mountain mists was treacherous for mule trains, and in some cases mules were hoisted by ropes. Many tumbled with their cargo to their deaths.<ref>{{harvp|Ouweneel|1997|p=68}}</ref> 

Given the transport constraints, only high-value, low-bulk goods continued to be shipped in the transatlantic trade, which stimulated local production of foodstuffs, rough textiles, and other products for a mass market. Although New Spain produced considerable sugar and wheat, these were consumed exclusively in the colony even though there was demand elsewhere. Philadelphia, not New Spain, supplied Cuba with wheat.<ref>{{harvp|Ouweneel|1997|p=67}}, quoting Alexander von Humboldt.</ref>

The Caribbean port of Veracruz was small, with its hot, pestilential climate not a draw for permanent settlers: its population never topped 10,000.<ref>{{harvp|Carroll|1991|p=3}}</ref> Many Spanish merchants preferred living in the pleasant highland town of Jalapa (1,500 m). For a brief period (1722–76) the town of Jalapa became even more important than Veracruz, after it was granted the right to hold the royal trade fair for New Spain, serving as the entre for goods from Asia via [[Manila galleon]] through the port of Acapulco and European goods via the flota (convoy) from the Spanish port of [[Cádiz]].<ref>{{harvp|Carroll|1979|p=124}}</ref> 

Spaniards also settled in the temperate area of [[Orizaba]], east of the [[Citlaltepetl]] volcano. Orizaba varied considerably in elevation from {{convert|800|m}} to {{convert|5700|m}} (the summit of the Citlaltepetl volcano), but "most of the inhabited part is temperate".<ref>{{harvp|Gerhard|1993|p=205}}</ref> Some Spaniards lived in semitropical [[Córdoba, Veracruz|Córdoba]], which was founded as a villa in 1618, to serve as a Spanish base against runaway slave ([[cimarrónes|cimarrón]]) predations on mule trains traveling the route from the port to the capital. Some cimarrón settlements sought autonomy, such as one led by [[Gaspar Yanga]], with whom the crown concluded a treaty leading to the recognition of a largely black town, San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo, later called the municipality of Yanga.<ref>{{harvp|Gerhard|1993|pp=83–85}}</ref>

European diseases immediately affected the multiethnic Indian populations in the Veracruz area and for that reason Spaniards imported black slaves as either an alternative to indigenous labor or its complete replacement in the event of a repetition of the Caribbean die-off. A few Spaniards acquired prime agricultural lands left vacant by the indigenous demographic disaster. Portions of the province could support sugar cultivation and as early as the 1530s sugar production was underway. New Spain's first viceroy, Don [[Antonio de Mendoza]] established an hacienda on lands taken from Orizaba.<ref>{{harvp|Gerhard|1993|p=206}}</ref>

Indians resisted cultivating sugarcane themselves, preferring to tend their subsistence crops. As in the Caribbean, black slave labor became crucial to the development of sugar estates. During the period 1580–1640 when Spain and Portugal were ruled by the same monarch and Portuguese slave traders had access to Spanish markets, African slaves were imported in large numbers to New Spain and many of them remained in the region of Veracruz. But even when that connection was broken and prices rose, black slaves remained an important component of Córdoba's labor sector even after 1700. Rural estates in Córdoba depended on African slave labor, who were 20% of the population there, a far greater proportion than any other area of New Spain, and greater than even nearby Jalapa.<ref>{{harvp|Carroll|1991|p=93}}</ref>

In 1765 the crown created a monopoly on tobacco, which directly affected agriculture and manufacturing in the Veracruz region. Tobacco was a valuable, high-demand product. Men, women, and even children smoked, something commented on by foreign travelers and depicted in eighteenth-century [[casta]] paintings.<ref>{{harvp|Ouweneel|1997|pp=188–189}}</ref> The crown calculated that tobacco could produce a steady stream of tax revenues by supplying the huge Mexican demand, so the crown limited zones of tobacco cultivation. It also established a small number of factories of finished products, and licensed distribution outlets (''estanquillos'').<ref>{{harvp|Deans-Smith|1992}} (a definitive study of the tobacco monopoly)</ref> The crown also set up warehouses to store up to a year's worth of supplies, including paper for cigarettes, for the factories.<ref>{{harvp|Deans-Smith|1992|p=106}}</ref> With the establishment of the monopoly, crown revenues increased and there is evidence that despite high prices and expanding rates of poverty, tobacco consumption rose while at the same time, general consumption fell.<ref>{{harvp|Deans-Smith|1992|p=157}}</ref>

In 1787 during the [[Bourbon Reforms]] Veracruz became an [[intendancy]], a new administrative unit.

====Valley of Puebla====
Founded in 1531 as a Spanish settlement, [[Puebla de los Angeles]] quickly rose to the status of Mexico's second-most important city. Its location on the main route between the viceregal capital and the port of Veracruz, in a fertile basin with a dense indigenous population, largely not held in [[encomienda]], made Puebla a destination for later arriving Spaniards. If there had been significant mineral wealth in Puebla, it could have been even more prominent a center for New Spain, but its first century established its importance. In 1786 it became the capital of an [[intendancy]] of the same name.<ref>{{harvp|Gerhard|1993|pp=220–224}}</ref>

It became the seat of the richest diocese in New Spain in its first century, with the seat of the first diocese, formerly in Tlaxcala, moved there in 1543.<ref>{{harvp|Gibson|1952|pp=55–56}}</ref> Bishop [[Juan de Palafox]] asserted that the income from the diocese of Puebla was twice that of the archbishopic of Mexico, due to the tithe income derived from agriculture.<ref>{{harvp|Israel|1975|p=219}}</ref> In its first hundred years, Puebla was prosperous from wheat farming and other agriculture, as the ample tithe income indicates, plus manufacturing woolen cloth for the domestic market. Merchants, manufacturers, and artisans were important to the city's economic fortunes, but its early prosperity was followed by stagnation and decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.<ref>{{harvp|Thomson|1989|p=16}}</ref>

The foundation of the town of Puebla was a pragmatic social experiment to settle Spanish immigrants without encomiendas to pursue farming and industry.<ref name="Hirschberg">{{harvp|Hirschberg|1979}}</ref> Puebla was privileged in a number of ways, starting with its status as a Spanish settlement not founded on existing indigenous city-state, but with a significant indigenous population. It was located in a fertile basin on a temperate plateau in the nexus of the key trade triangle of Veracruz–Mexico City–Antequera (Oaxaca). Although there were no encomiendas in Puebla itself, encomenderos with nearby labor grants settled in Puebla. And despite its foundation as a Spanish city, sixteenth-century Puebla had Indians resident in the central core.<ref name="Hirschberg"/>

Administratively Puebla was far enough from Mexico City (approximately {{convert|160|km|abbr=on|disp=or|-1}}) so as not to be under its direct influence. Puebla's Spanish town council (cabildo) had considerable autonomy and was not dominated by encomenderos. The administrative structure of Puebla "may be seen as a subtle expression of royal absolutism, the granting of extensive privileges to a town of commoners, amounting almost to republican self-government, in order to curtail the potential authority of encomenderos and the religious orders, as well as to counterbalance the power of the viceregal capital."<ref>{{harvp|Thomson|1989|p=6}}</ref>

[[File:WLA lacma 1690 folding screen.jpg|thumb|260px|An Indian Wedding and [[Danza de los Voladores|Flying Pole]], {{Circa|1690}}]]
During the "golden century" from its founding in 1531 until the early 1600s, Puebla's agricultural sector flourished, with small-scale Spanish farmers plowing the land for the first time, planting wheat and vaulting Puebla to importance as New Spain's breadbasket, a role assumed by the [[Bajío]] (including Querétaro) in the seventeenth century, and Guadalajara in the eighteenth.<ref>{{harvp|Thomson|1989|p=12}}</ref> Puebla's wheat production was the initial source of its prosperity, but it emerged as a manufacturing and commercial center, "serving as the inland port of Mexico's Atlantic trade".<ref>{{harvp|Thomson|1989}}, citing Pierre Chaunu ''Seville et l'Atlantique 1504–1650'', Pt. 2, vol. VIII 1959, 714.</ref> Economically, the city was exempted from the ''alcabala'' (sales tax) and ''almojarifazgo'' (import/export duties) for its first century (1531–1630), which helped promote commerce.

Puebla built significant textile production in workshops (obrajes) supplying New Spain and markets as far away as Guatemala and Peru. Transatlantic ties between a particular Spanish town, [[Brihuega]], and Puebla demonstrated the close connection between the two settlements. The growth in Puebla's manufacturing sector did not simply coincide with immigration from Brihuega but was crucial to "shaping and driving Puebla's economic development".<ref>{{harvp|Altman|2000|p=51}}</ref> 

Brihuega immigrants came to Mexico with expertise in textile production, and the transplanted briocenses provided capital to create large-scale obrajes. Although obrajes in Brihuega were small-scale enterprises, quite a number of them in Puebla employed up to 100 workers. Supplies of wool, water for fulling mills, and labor (free indigenous, incarcerated Indians, black slaves) were available. Although much of Puebla's textile output was rough cloth, it also produced higher quality dyed cloth with [[cochineal]] from Oaxaca and [[indigo]] from [[Guatemala]].<ref>{{harvp|Altman|2000|p=62}}</ref> But by the eighteenth century, [[Querétaro]] had displaced Puebla as the mainstay of woolen textile production.<ref>{{harvp|Salvucci|1987|p=80}}</ref>

In 1787, Puebla became an [[intendancy]] as part of the new administrative structuring of the [[Bourbon Reforms]].

====Valley of Mexico====
Mexico City dominated the Valley of Mexico, but the valley continued to have dense indigenous populations challenged by growing, increasingly dense Spanish settlement. The Valley of Mexico had many former Indian city-states that became Indian towns in the colonial era. These towns continued to be ruled by indigenous elites under the Spanish crown, with an indigenous governor and a town councils.<ref>{{harvp|Gibson|1964}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Lockhart|1992}}</ref> The Indian towns close to the capital were the most desirable ones for encomenderos to hold and for the friars to evangelize.

The capital was provisioned by the indigenous towns, and its labor was available for enterprises that ultimately created a colonial economy. The gradual drying up of the central lake system created more dry land for farming, but the sixteenth-century population declines allowed Spaniards to expand their acquisition of land. One region that retained strong Indian land holding was the southern fresh water area, with important suppliers of fresh produce to the capital. The area was characterized by intensely cultivated chinampas, human-made extensions of cultivable land into the lake system. These chinampa towns retained a strong indigenous character, and Indians continued to hold the majority of that land, despite its closeness to the Spanish capital. A key example is [[Xochimilco]].<ref>{{harvp|Gibson|1964|p=409}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Cline|1991|pp=265–274}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Rojas Rabiela|1991}}</ref>

Texcoco in the pre-conquest period was one of the three members of the Aztec Triple Alliance and the cultural center of the empire. It fell on hard times in the colonial period as an economic backwater. Spaniards with any ambition or connections would be lured by the closeness of Mexico City, so that the Spanish presence was minimal and marginal.<ref>{{harvp|Lewis|1976}}</ref>

[[Tlaxcala de Xicohténcatl|Tlaxcala]], the major ally of the Spanish against the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, also became something of a backwater, but like Puebla it did not come under the control of Spanish encomenderos. No elite Spaniards settled there, but like many other Indian towns in the Valley of Mexico, it had an assortment of small-scale merchants, artisans, farmers and ranchers, and textile workshops (obrajes).<ref>{{harvp|Szewczyk|1976}}</ref>