Una Historia de Huaxacaya July 7, 2022
When the ancient Zapoteca of Monte Alban inexplicably erected their thick-walled ramparts late in the life of the city, it proved prescient in subsequent centuries, for the middle of the second millennium became a time of constantly changing ownership, starting in the 1200’s when the minority Mixteca conquered the Zapoteca in the valley that today is the capital city of Oaxaca de Juarez.
The gradually expanding Aztec empire did not reach Oaxaca until the 1480’s, thus bringing both Mixtec and Zapotec into the fold, under the sombrilla, so to speak, and firmly beholden to the lopsided system of tribute and extortion that characterized Aztec rule of central Mexico. This status quo lasted barely forty years, however, because the new master from across the sea already had his sights set on the Pacific Ocean and a passage to the Orient.
In 1521, just months after securing the fall of Tenochtitlan, Hernan Cortes sent his fellow conquistadors—Francisco de Orozco, Pedro Alvarado, and Gonzalo de Sandoval—to the Pacific coastal range, on the advice of Moctezuma II, who promised that they would find a rich vein of gold ore. They did not, but they did manage to quell the small resistance and clear the way for further dominion. Official title was granted in 1529 when King Charles declared Cortes “Marques de Valle de Oaxaca,” an apparent misspelling of the main settlement there at the time, Huaxacaya. No matter, the King summarily renamed the city-to-be-built Antequera, meaning “loyal old city.” Not loyal enough, as it turned out, for the original Nahuatl name was eventually returned to the city after Independence.
In 1532, Cortes installed his brother-in-law, Juan Xuarez, as administrator of the new city, and he promptly invited the Hacendero nobles, as well as the Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and, later, the Jesuits to raise their adobe edifices around a central square, dedicated to God and Country, orienting the streets in the characteristic checkerboard grid that became a model for other colonial cities. And thus began almost three centuries of exploitive rule by the Spaniards, with chiefly (and fatefully) the Criollos in charge, and not the growing demographic of Mestizos.
Independence from Spain arrived early in Oaxaca. In 1811, under the command of Jose Maria Morelos, the Mestizos initiated a guerrilla insurrection against the Criollo Royalists. The last stronghold of Nueva España against the Mexican liberators was in the center of the city at Templo del Carmen, which had been recently expanded and fortified in the 1790’s, as if expecting just such an outcome. The thick walls of its church and convent are still pocked from that final battle.
The ultimate chapter for Oaxaca, indeed for all of Mexico, would be Mestizo emancipation, and it would be written a generation later by one of their own, the First Son of Huaxacaya, Benito Juarez. As for the next street battle in the long contested history of this place, if it should come, well, that may be up to the militant teachers’ union, who prefer to construct their own thick ramparts out of stalled vehicles.