Aztec Rage by Gary Jennings Read Free Book Online

churches. The Bajío was not in the Valley of Méjico but was still in the heart of the colony, that central expanse called the Plateau of Méjico. New Spain was a vast territory, extending from the Isthmus of Panama to regions far north of the arid deserts of New Méjico and California. The colony’s population was said to be about 6 million, with the greatest portion thereof concentrated in the central plateau. I am told that the entire population of that entity known as the United States, the only independent nation in the Americas, would be almost equal to New Spain’s if that northern nation had not kidnapped a million slaves from Africa.
    What kind of people lived in this place called New Spain? About half—nearly 3 million—were pure-blood indios, the remnants of ten times that many who had occupied the land before Cortés landed nearly three hundred years ago.
    That infelicitous mix of indio and Spanish bloods called mestizos amounted to fewer than half that many. And there was also a small number of mulattos, people of indio and africano blood, and an even smaller number of chinos, people with yellow skin from that mysterious land across the Pacific Ocean called Cathay. Another 1 million of the people in the colony were criollos, colony-born Spaniards who owned most of the haciendas, mines, and businesses.
    The gachupines were the smallest yet mightiest social class of New Spain, that privileged population into which God and our fickle goddess offate, Señora Fortuna, had so fortuitously inserted me. Though we numbered perhaps only ten thousand—a minute portion of the 6 million surrounding us—we were imperially favored by God and the crown. We controlled the government, courts, police, military, church, and commerce.
    Rapacious wearers of our razor-sharp spurs, we drove our rowels into the flanks of not just the Aztecs, mestizos, and others that made up the peon class but also the proud and disdainful criollos, who dreamed of the day when their Spanish blood would make them our equals.
    More than money, horsemanship, skill with weapons, or the sensuous subjugation of señoritas, the “color” of a man’s blood was the sine qua non of status and honor. By any application of the limpieza de sangre—the test of blood—mine was pureza de sangre, pure Spanish blood. Without the purity of my blood, little separated me from the peons.
    Blood was the God-given difference between all people, even those with the same skin color and speech. A vaquero on a hacienda may be a fine horseman in the saddle of a horse or with a woman, he might work cattle and shoot game with deadly aplomb, but he was a peon and could never be a caballero. Caballeros, the knights of New Spain and the Mother Country, had pureza de sangre, pure Spanish blood.
    Purity of blood transcended wealth, nobility, and artistry, for blood alone conferred honor. The tradition arose from the centuries of wars that made the Iberian Peninsula a battleground between Christians and the infidel followers of Allah we call Moors. Like the mestizos of the colony, those with a mixture that included Moorish blood were ostracized.
    Not even skin color was more important than pureza de sangre. Many Spaniards did not have pale white skin. The Iberian Peninsula, where so many cultures have existed and clashed for thousands of years, produced many hues of skin and hair.
    While birth, not lineage, conferred honor, and mixing blood was the ultimate degradation, colonial birth by itself was enough to sully a bloodline.
    The climate in New Spain ranges from deserts in the north to jungles in the south. It is unhealthy for birthing, rendering criollos unfit for high office, whether it be in the government, church, or military.
    Eh, there is grumbling from some criollos that the real reason power was kept only in the tight fist of gachupines was to keep control of the colony in the hands of the Spain-born because they had strong