The Exhibition on Your Screen: Selected Images from “A New Spain, 1521–1821”
Financing an Empire — Tribute entry from the Santa María barrio (detail), unidentified Indigenous author, ca. 1550. Genaro García Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection.
BY ALBERT A. PALACIOS
THE VICEROYALTY OF NEW SPAIN was a royal territory in the Spanish Empire formed soon after the invasion and conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521. Even though the viceroyalty was not formally founded until 1535, the Spanish Crown set its administrative bedrock the year after the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlán. In 1522, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V established the Captaincy-General of New Spain, and in 1527, he created the Audiencia of Mexico, a royal court with judicial, executive, and legislative powers. In parallel, the Catholic Church appointed bishops and organized the dioceses of Tlaxcala-Puebla and Mexico in 1525 and 1530 to acculturate the Indigenous people. Collectively, the overlapping royal and ecclesiastical governments instigated and oversaw the colonization of North and Central America.
Throughout the centuries, this colonial bureaucracy became more complex as the imperial expansion unfolded. By the eighteenth century, the viceroyalty comprised five royal audiencias and over twelve Catholic dioceses. Together, these territories covered a vast area that included present-day Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, Florida, the U.S. Midwest and Southwest, California, and the Philippines.
New Spain started its final century when the end of the Hapsburg dynasty led to the ascension of the French Bourbon house in 1700. Through an empire-wide reorganization known as the Bourbon Reforms, the incoming monarchy revoked regional privileges in order to centralize power in Europe. This shift worsened the ongoing marginalization of criollos (American-born Spaniards) in the political, economic, and religious administration of the viceroyalty, straining the king–vassal state relationship. The draining of American coffers to fund the Bourbon Crown’s European wars, coupled with the monarchical crisis caused by the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), eventually sparked an independence movement in Mexico and throughout Latin America. After a protracted war for independence (1810–1821), the Viceroyalty of New Spain dissolved to give way to a new Mexican Empire under a turncoat army general, Agustín de Iturbide.
A New Spain, 1521–1821, an online exhibition, traces the cultural, social, and political evolution of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from the fall of Moctezuma’s Mexico-Tenochtitlán in 1521 until the rise of Iturbide’s Mexican Empire in 1821. Divided into thematic sections, the exhibit explores a wide variety of topics and issues, including imperial expansion and defense; identity formation and negotiation; and cultural continuity, transculturation, and resistance in novohispano society. This following are selected materials from the online exhibition.
Indigenous Worldviews — Nahua calendar cross referenced with the Julian calendar, Fr. Toribio Motolinía, 1549. The Aztec Empire, headed by the Triple Alliance of the Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tlacopan city-states, comprised countless ethnic communities. A shared language—Nahuatl—and the movement of ideas, people, and goods it facilitated, made the Alliance’s sphere of influence and domination into an empire. The text on the left translates the Nahua “months” with Western dates. The wheel diagram charts the intertwined cycles of days and months in relation to the four main Nahua years: Reed (year 1), Flint Knife (year 2), House (year 3), and Rabbit (year 4). Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Indigenous Worldviews section.
Invasion of Mexico — Lienzo de Tlaxcala, ca. 1530–40. The Benson preserves a rare Indigenous perspective of events that led to the downfall of the Aztec Empire—the lienzo (canvas) of Tlaxcala. During the conquest, European invaders forged agreements with powerful Indigenous groups. The item illustrates the 1519 meeting between Xicoténcatl I, the Tlaxcalteca political head, and Hernán Cortés, enabled by the language interpretation of Malintzin, an Indigenous woman. The meeting resulted in the most decisive of these Indigenous-European alliances. Ex-Stendahl Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Invasion of Mexico section.
Cults of the Virgin — Map showing the Virgin of Guadalupe shrine complex and valley, José María Montes de Oca (c. 1780–99). Handmade colored map. The artist included the surrounding towns of Tecoman, Santa Isabel, San Juanico, and Santiago Saculco. The original shrine, atop Tepeyac Hill, and the basilica at the base, occupy the righthand side of the composition. Rare Map Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit Mexico’s North Star section on cults of the Virgin.
Spiritual Conquest — “Nova delineatio serictissimae San Didaci Provinciae in Nova Hispania,” Antonio Isarti (engraver), 1682. Catholic priests arrived on the heels of the European invaders to start the religious conversion of the Indigenous. Throughout the sixteenth century, the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian religious orders grew, establishing convents throughout New Spain. This map delineates the Discalced Franciscan Province of San Diego of Mexico in 1682, which contained fourteen convents across the region between Aguascalientes and Oaxaca. Published in Baltasar de Medina, Chronica de la santa provincia de San Diego de Mexico (Mexico: 1682). Rare Map Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Spiritual Conquest section.
Reading the Sky for Signs — Diagram tracing the trajectory of the Great Comet of 1680 through the skies, with a depiction of nearby constellations, Eusebio Francisco Kino, 1681. A particular star—Kirsch’s Comet—would divide Mexico’s lettered elite when it crossed the American skies in 1680. Attempting to appease the masses, Creole polymath Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora wrote the polemic Philosophical Manifest against the Comets (1681) to demystify these celestial bodies. Defending conventional thought, Italian Jesuit priest Eusebio Kino wrote Astronomical Exposition of the Comet (1681), in which he illustrated the comet’s trajectory. Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit The Lettered City.
Financing an Empire — Tribute entry from the Santa María barrio (detail), unidentified Indigenous author, ca. 1550. Tribute from the Indigenous communities funded New Spain’s colonial power structures. They contributed foodstuffs, textiles, cacao beans, and animals to encomenderos and royal officials, who would then affix a monetary value to the goods. The communities of Altlaca (San Pablos), Tula, Santa María, and Iztacalco paid tribute with birds, cacao beans, fish, game, and clothing adornments. This illustration shows accounting entries 16–18 and is part of a larger record of tributes that also contains hand-colored figures. Genaro García Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Financing an Empire section.
Illustrating Nobility — La Virgen con el niño y la familia González Becerra, unidentified artist, 1775. Spaniards had to prove “blood purity”—or the absence of Jewish, Muslim, and African ancestry in their lineage—to qualify not only for nobility, but also for religious and civic offices in New Spain. This painting, which depicts the González Becerra family with the Madonna and Child, was appended to the “legitimacy and blood purity” file of Ramón González Becerra. Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Illustrating Nobility section.
Printed Weapons — “Spiritus divini suprime: Evangelizare paupribus misitme esa” (The Supreme Holy Spirit Has Sent Me to Evangelize), Jerónimo de Mendieta, 1571, in Historia Eclesiástica Indiana. A Franciscan friar points at depictions of the Via Crucis, or the Stations of the Cross, as he preaches at Indigenous catechumens. The printed book was key to the “spiritual conquest” of the Indigenous. The Spanish Catholic monarchy contracted with Sevillian publisher Juan Cromberger to bring printing technology to Mexico City in 1539. Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Printed Weapons section.
The Power of Indigenous Blood — Genealogía de Don Francisco Cortés, “Yzquiguacal,” unidentified artist, ca. 1724–1727. Indigenous elites often presented genealogical diagrams as evidence in viceregal courts to support land claims, appending them to maps to prove their connection to pre-conquest nobility and to disputed territory. This genealogy from Tepeojuma, Puebla, gives special emphasis to Yzquiguacal, ancestor of Don Diego de Ordás, who is pictured center-left with a symbol of three pink flowers. It also contains numerous representations of Indigenous persons with symbols of animals, plants, structures, and flowers. Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection. Visit the Power of Indigenous Blood section.
The online exhibition opened in spring 2021, with new installments released over the course of several months. The materials on display are from the Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin, with contributions from the C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, The University of Texas at El Paso, through a collaboration funded by a Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant.
Albert A. Palacios, PhD, is a historian and the LLILAS Benson digital scholarship coordinator. He is curator of the online exhibition series A New Spain, 1521–1821.
