The Legacy of Mesoamerica History and Culture of a Native American Civilization, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 7 MESOAMERICANS IN THE NEOCOLONIAL ERA 257

Figure 7.1 Political divisions of Mexico and Central America shortly after Independence.
Based on Jorge L. Tamayo, Geografía Moderna de México,2nd ed. Mexico City, Mexico:
Editorial Trillas, 1981, p. 365.

they should be the heirs apparent of the Spanish colonial order. The creole ascen-
dancy effectively produced the map of the modern Mesoamerican region.
The seat of the colonial viceroyalty of Mexico became the dominant new nation.
The colonial Captaincy General of Guatemala, however grudgingly, was broken into
the lesser nations of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
If the first quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the forging of the polit-
ical identity of the modern nations of the Mesoamerican region, their essential eth-
nic composition long antedated their existence as nations. Mexico emerged from
the Colonial period as the quintessential mestizo core of New Spain, with significant
enclaves of unmixed Spanish settlements in the north, and large parts of the central,
southern, and western sections of the region effectively segregated into Indian and
mestizo communities. In particular, the Mexican states of Yucatán, Chiapas, and Oax-
aca contained many thousands of ethnically Indian hamlets and villages. This de-
mographic pattern continued into Guatemala, where the northwestern and central
highlands were overwhelmingly Indian, with large towns and cities being mestizo
and creole (Figure 7.2).
Pacific and Caribbean Guatemala was of mixed Indian and mestizo composi-
tion. By 1800, the colonial southern provinces of New Spain, under the jurisdiction
of the Captaincy General of Guatemala—El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and

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