Continuity and Change in Morelos, Mexico

SCHOLARS who have occasion to use the relaciones geograficas and other regional documents drawn up by local magistrates and priests in both colonial and independent Mexico should have a clear idea of what the terms and units of measurement in them mean and of what area is covered. Something, though perhaps not enough, has been done to define terms and to produce usable equivalents.' In this article I shall discuss the relatively ill-explored matter of territorial boundaries, as they were affected by demographic change and other factors, concentrating on the small area now known as the state of Morelos, on the southern slope of the volcanic axis just south of Mexico City. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, they found the land divided in a number of ways. First, an obvious boundary separated farmers from nonfarmers. South of this line were the sedentary, politically sophisticated successors of the extinct classic civilizations, and north of it were primitive hunters and gatherers. The latter occupied subsistence territories, but as these people were driven northward in the Spanish advance, the pre-Conquest political geography of the Chichimeca disappeared and was replaced by arbitrary jurisdictional divisions set up at the convenience of the viceregal government. On the other hand, in central and southern Mexico various kinds of native political divisions survived during the colony and in some cases to the present day. As an example, one can trace the external boundaries of the Triple Alliance empire, with the addition of Michoacan and the Pacific coast kingdoms, in the early limits of New Spain. The extent of Tarascan hegemony is recognizable in several territorial units of the colony, and it is not too different from the modern state of Michoacan. The Huaxteca became the colonial province of Panuco; the old confederation of Metztitlan was about equal to the alcaldia mayor of that name; the empire of Tototepec had much the same limits as the partido of Xicayan. Perhaps the bestknown case of survival is that of Tlaxcala, where the military confederation that befriended Cortes kept its identity as a gobierno under the Spaniards and as a territory and state in independent Mexico. Alongside and within the empires and confederations were a great many autonomous little kingdoms or senorios, contiguous territorial and political units, each consisting of a number of calpultin or their equivalent ruled by a tlatoani or a calpixqui. The limits of these native states were mostly recognized and retained by the Spaniards and became the boundaries of the republicas de indios or Indian pueblos that were distributed in encomienda. After the great epidemic of 1545-1548, surviving native communities were consolidated in two ways. First, the scattered rural population within each pueblo was concentrated in villages (congregaciones), leaving unoc

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