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

Huaspaltepec (Playa Vicente), between AD 1522 and 1600, 80,000 households were
reduced to 12 families living as refugees in the neighboring village of Mixtán (Paso y
Troncoso 1939; Tren 1992).
The dramatic reduction of indigenous populations meant that the Spanish would
have to look elsewhere for a supplementary workforce if they were to benefit
economically from their conquest. Recent evidence indicates that Africans, either as
slaves or indentured workers, were brought to Mexico early in the 16 th century (Seely
2006). During the Colonial era there were more people of African-Caribbean descent
than Europeans in Mexico (Aguirre-Beltrán 1981). Following the encounter, the earliest
presence of Afro-Caribes is attributed to Hernán Cortés and his heirs who used forced
labor in the Tuxtla area as they initiated sugar production in the region. The imported
laborers eventually infiltrated and settled in the region of the Middle San Juan River.
Indigenous people were eager to befriend them due to their experience and abilities with
European technologies (Delgado-Calderón 1995).
The ecology of the region was also significantly impacted by the implementation
of the hacienda system. Following the military conquest of Mexico, the introduction of
exotic cultivars and Old World grazing animals initiated the biological conquest of New
Spain (Melville 1994). European expansion was facilitated through changes to the
environment created by overgrazing, soil degradation, and vegetation replacement. These
changes to the Mexican ecosystems directly affected social transformations through a
process of land acquisition and indigenous depopulation that assisted in shaping colonial
institutions.
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