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Appendix C Bajío Population, 1600–1800 The Bajío was a region of diverse communities, cities, towns, villages, and estates , settled in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest. Population figures are essential to understanding its historical development. They are also scarce and often uncertain, are open to various interpretations, and require manipulation before they can become the basis for comparisons across zones within the region and for measuring change over the centuries.This appendix examines the available figures, discusses their uncertainties and implications, and presents tables to support the analysis presented in the text. I begin with Querétaro and its district. Under Spanish rule that jurisdiction was smaller than the state that emerged after independence in 1821. It included the City of Querétaro and its surrounding basins, San Juan del Río to the southeast and its countryside, and San Pedro Tolimán in the drier and hillier country to the northeast. The colonial jurisdiction of Querétaro thus included the key southeastern extension of the Bajío, and little of the rugged uplands that became part of the state in the nineteenth century. There are no known censuses for Querétaro and its district before the middle of the eighteenth century. John Super estimates a population of one thousand for the late sixteenth century and an increase to five thousand by the middle of the seventeenth. Those figures are accurate for the town and perhaps its immediate vicinity, but do not represent the larger jurisdiction, including San Juan del Río and its outlying pueblos. I propose a district population of three thousand for the late sixteenth century, based on the more than three hundred adult workers in the labor contracts detailed in appendix A, and the knowledge that such workers were but part of a community primarily cultivating huertas. I use a population figure of eighteen thousand for 1630, presuming that Querétaro’s population was over half that reported for Celaya in the census of 1631, a jurisdiction just west that included outlying towns. 530 appendix C The first good report of Querétaro’s population came in 1743 from the Corregidor, don José Gómez de Acosta. He reported the number of families or households, and suggested that each included an average of eight residents. Diverse sources, including other regional censuses from the eighteenth century, suggest that five was a more appropriate average household size. Thus I have multiplied Gómez’s figures by five to produce the following population figures: A far more detailed census is available for Querétaro and its jurisdiction for 1778. It reports the populations of the city, rural villages, and estates, separating Spaniards, mestizos, mulattoes, and indios. It documents the substantial population growth of the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Subsequent population figures are less detailed and sometimes uncertain, but still suggestive. In his mid-nineteenth-century report on Querétaro, José del Raso offered regional totals for 1790.They suggest some decline since 1778, a possibility given the great famine years of 1785 and 1786. If Raso’s figures for 1790 seem low, those offered by Carlos de Urrutía in 1794 appear high. Without additional breakdown he reports a population of 46,388 for Querétaro and its district, and another 42,393 for San Juan del Río and San Pedro Tolimán and their district, bringing the jurisdiction total to 88,781. Urrutía’s report seems more credible when we note that his report for Querétaro and its district closely parallels Raso’s from 1790. What is different is Urrutía’s far higher population for the outlying districts. It seems reasonable , then, to use a mean of Raso’s and Urrutía’s totals—80,246—as a population estimate for the early 1790s. Raso added that the population of the city and its district alone rose to 58,000 by 1810, suggesting a population for the entire jurisdiction of about 93,000 that year. The result of this combination of estimates, censuses, and calculations is an outline of the population history of the Querétaro jurisdiction from 1590 to 1810: 1590 3,000 1630 18,000 1743 50,000 1778 76,000 1792 80,000 1810 93,000 TaBle C.1 Querétaro District Population, 1743 Jurisdiction Spaniards Mestizos, Mulattoes Indios Total Querétaro 5,745 9,475 14,025 29,245 San Juan del Río 1,515 1,865 13,310 16,690 San Pedro Tolim...

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