Ecology/Power/Culture/Mexico

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Europeans brought smallpox to Mesoamerica in 1520, starting waves of epidemics that destroyed 90 percent of the population, breaking states, communities, and cultures, opening lands for uncertain newcomers and desperate survivors. From the 1550s, Chinese demand for silver stimulated a new economy that drove mining, commercial cultivation, and global trades—grounded in Spanish-sanctioned self-governing landed communities forging Christian cultures. Economically dynamic while sparsely populated, New Spain became the richest society in the Americas: capitalist while ethnically diverse, stratified while stabilized by judicial mediations. Around 1800, silver soared as population grew during imperial wars. Deepening social predations amid regime crisis drove insurgencies proclaiming devotion Guadalupe—breaking silver capitalism after 1810. Armed forces defended Spanish power, property, and the Church for a decade more, then proclaimed Mexico independent in 1821. Decades of economic collapse, political conflict, and foreign invasions followed—while communities and their cultures held strong on the land. After 1870, political consolidation, commercial revival, and new population growth came with assaults on community lands and religious cultures, fueling revolution from 1910. In the 1920s, a new regime promised land, attacked the Church, and provoked new risings in deeply Christian communities. Depression-era reforms delivered land and secular education. Post-war times saw population explosion, urbanization, deepening inequities, cultural conflicts, and a globalization that profited a few and marginalized many. New Spain began in a disease-driven demographic collapse that framed centuries of power and community autonomies. Mexico’s history has culminated in demographic explosion, urban dependencies, global immersions, and pandemic inequities.