INDIGENOUS MEXICO: AN OVERVIEW

By John P. Schmal
- © 2003 John P. Schmal
His Bio -

The Republic of Mexico is a very large country, boasting a total area of almost 1,978,000 square kilometers (760,000 square miles) and a population of 103,400,165 (July 2002 estimate). With its central government located in Mexico City, Mexico has a national culture, held together by the Spanish language, which is the primary means of communication across this large land mass. However, the Mexico of five centuries ago was, in fact, a collection of many indigenous nations.

Throughout every corner of pre-Hispanic Mexico lived hundreds of indigenous groups scattered across mountains, valleys, plateaus, deserts and tropical forests of the lower third of the North American continent. The delicate balance of power that existed between these aboriginal states was forever altered in 1519, when a small band of Spanish soldiers made their way into the heart of the continent and - with the help of indigenous allies - engineered the destruction of the formidable Aztec Empire two years later.

Between 1519 and 1600, the Spanish encountered dozens of indigenous groups speaking a plethora of languages, worshipping a pantheon of Gods, and practicing a multitude of cultures. In essence, Mexico was a collection of many nations and autonomous states. But this diversity is a phenomenon that developed slowly and over time.

The key to understanding Mexico's incredible diversity is to realize that Mexico possesses a great variety of landscapes and climates. While mountains and plateaus cover more than two-thirds of her landmass, the rest of Mexico's environment is made up of deserts, tropical forests, and fertile valleys. Mexico's many mountain ranges tend to split the country into countless smaller valleys, each forming a world of its own.

Mexico's "fragmentation into countless mountain valleys, each with its own mini-ecology," according to the historian Nigel Davies, led the Indians within each geographical unit to develop their own language and culture. This is a key to understanding Mexico's unique and fascinating diversity.

Individual ethnic groups - as their component parts became isolated geographically from one another - would undergo linguistic differentiation and cultural divergence. The result was that one linguistic group would slowly - over a period of centuries - splinter into smaller communities, each of which spoke dialects that became incomprehensible to one another. This would eventually lead to one ethnic group - for example the Zapotec Indians - speaking dozens of languages, all of which evolved from the original mother tongue, perhaps thousands of years ago.

Today, however, one might be tempted to ask the following questions: "Where are the indigenous people of present-day Mexico? Did the old cultures and languages disappear centuries ago?"

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