An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

During the later portions of the 16 th century, an administrative reorganization
affected the jurisdictional boundaries of the Sotovento in southern Veracruz and western
Tabasco. The Postclassic señoríos were merged into a series of larger territories called
Alcaldías Mayores (Figure 3.12). The lands surrounding El Marquesillo were
incorporated into the Alcaldía Mayor de Coatzacoalco-Acayucan (Scholes and Warren
1965:776). The governing seat of the province was located in the town of Acayucan, 34
km east-southeast of Marquesillo. Greater control and development of the rural areas
were accomplished through a hierarchal hacienda system that was established at locations
the Spanish believed would protect and promote their agenda. The placement of these
subsidiary political and economic nodes appears to correspond to portions of Late Classic
and Postclassic exchange networks in the region (see Killion and Urcid 2001; Urcid and
Killion 2003).
The hacienda system served to create economic opportunities for the European
settlers, but it also initiated a chain of events that altered the human and ecological
landscape. The consequences of these changes continue to be felt within the region to this
day. The demographic landscape witnessed the decimation of the indigenous population
and the introduction of slaves imported from Africa and the Caribbean (Carroll 2001).
The exceptionally high mortality among indigenous peoples was a result of
introduced diseases, epidemics, and the effects of forced labor. Excessive tribute
demands, seizure of communal lands, and physical abuses forced the survivors to flee
into the Tuxtla Mountains to escape the Spaniards (Cook and Borah 1980). Colonial
accounts report that in the region of Coatzacoalco between AD 1521 to 1580 the number
of tribute payers dropped from about 50,000 to around 3,000. In the provincial center of
90