Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans

Chapter 3: The Move North: THE GRAN CHICHIMECA AND NEW MEXICO

3 The Move North THE GRAN CHICHIMECA AND NEW MEXICO For Mexican Americans the Spanish settlement of the territories that would become the U.S. Southwest was a singular event of monumental consequence. Many of the peoples inhabiting these territories were conquered and came to have a direct influence on the racial history and heritage of the Mexican Americans. In 1598 Spaniards, mestizos, Indians, and afromestizos moved north toward Mexico’s frontier (Hammond 1953:17). Thousands of people left central Mexico in search of land and wealth; for those of color this migratory movement was also highly motivated by the opportunity to flee the restrictions imposed upon them by the casta system (Menchaca 1993; Poyo and Hinojosa 1991). Although people of color were not in charge of the racial projects instituted by Spain, they participated in the conquest of the indigenous peoples they encountered. I concur with Marshall Sahlins (1985) that certain historical moments, such as the settlement of the Southwest, set off a chain of events changing the course of history. Sahlins calls this type of event a historical conjuncture , for it creates ruptures in people’s everyday lives and generates the conditions to restructure social relations.The colonial movement and settlement of the Southwest initiated a social restructuring of the lives of many indigenous peoples and interjected race as a central source of social organization. In areas where indigenous peoples were conquered, the colonists created alliances, instituted technological changes, intermarried with many indigenous peoples, and instituted a racial hierarchy. These practices commenced an era of colonization which Edward Spicer (1981) has called ‘‘cycles of conquest.’’ The first cycle was launched by Spain and the second by Mexico, culminating in the third cycle, when the United States took possession of most of Mexico’s northern frontier. I use the term ‘‘Southwest’’ here to refer to the territories where Spanish settlements were founded in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Cali67 fornia. I do not examine the entire North American region claimed by Spain, because Nevada, Utah, parts of Colorado, and small sections of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming remained under the control of indigenous peoples. My purpose in this chapter is to begin to delineate the political conditions that generated the outmigration of people seeking to better their social position. The irony of this seemingly liberating event was that the colonists of color were able to find a place where the quality of their lives indeed improved, at the cost of entrenching the same colonial order that oppressed them. Afromestizos played a minimal role in the conquest of New Mexico, because they did not migrate in large numbers until the colonization of Texas. The Gran Chichimeca: Indian Resistance Following the fall of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish conquistadores sought to conquer new lands to the north and south. Though militias were commanded by Spanish officers, the vast majority of the invading forces were composed of Indian warriors (Powell 1952). Tlatoques and caciques headed the auxiliaries, under the command of Spanish officers who in turn planned and executed the military maneuvers. In the conquest of the territories lying north of central Mexico the main Indian peoples assisting the Spanish were Tlaxcalans and Tarascans, both longtime enemies of the Aztec (Meyer and Sherman 1995).1 They acted as soldiers, scouts, and intellectual strategists and also served as cartographers , identifying vulnerable villages that could easily be subdued and used as stepping stones to move further north. Otomí soldiers also assisted the Spanish; their most important function was to translate, since they were a multilingual people competent in the languages of many northern Mexican tribes (Gibson 1964). The Otomís were the most recent immigrants in the Valley of Mexico, having migrated after the Mexicas .Their bilingualism served the Spanish well in initiating contact with several of the northern tribes. To repay their allies’ services, the Spanish confirmed the tlatoques titles of nobility and outfitted their armies with Spanish horses and European military artillery (Forbes 1994; Powell 1952). Indian commoners who proved to be valuable assets were also rewarded by being promoted to tlatoques or caciques. The Spanish derogatorily called the northern region between the Valley of Mexico and the present United States–Mexico border the Gran 68 Recovering History, Constructing Race Chichimeca (see Map 2). The word ‘‘Chichimeca’’ meant the land of uncivilized dogs (Powell 1952). The people inhabiting this region were generically termed Chichimec. The Gran...