Ethnicity, Caste, and Rulership in Mixquiahuala, México

Mixquiahuala Parish Records

The parish registers from Mixquiahuala record vital events from all four communities of the 1718 padrón (see Appendix 2 for the detailed contents of the microfilm rolls; see Rabell 1990 for a general consideration of Mexican parish records). The series of events from the cabecera is obviously the most complete. That from Tepeitic appears to be least complete, because of its distance from Mixquiahuala and proximity to Tepetitlan and Chilcuautla. The Hacienda de los Pozos was immediately adjacent to the town, so it appears likely that its population was fairly well recorded. Tecpatepec is further than Tepeitic from the cabecera, but has a much larger population and maintained its own baptismal and burial registers at some periods.

Baptisms

The baptismal records from Mixquiahuala begin in 1577, among the earliest known from México. From that date until 1641 they are continuous, although there may have been brief periods when a priest was not present in the community. Although there is a book labeled 1646-1675, it contains only a handful of entries: single baptisms from 1648, 1671, and 1672, and 86 baptisms from 1674-1675. In 1670, a new book began to be kept in Tecpatepec. A separate book commenced in 1680 in Mixquiahuala. From that date, a continuous series of baptisms is available until the end of the Colonial period, although the Tecpatepec series of volumes has a gap between 1713 and 1727. It is unclear how comprehensive these records are. During the times that no records from Tecpatepec are available, some of the baptisms in Mixquiahuala are specified as being from the former town instead. In fact, even during the span of the Tecpatepec registers, some Tecpatepec baptisms were recorded in Mixquiahuala. All baptismal records include the names of the parents and one or two godparents; when a single godparent is listed, she is usually a woman. A fair number of babies are recorded as huerfanos, or de padres no conocidos. This phrase does not always mean that the parents were truly unknown. For instance, when doña Josepha de Tapia married Bernardo Dias in 1726, her parents were recorded as unknown. Yet according to a later legal proceeding (AGN Tierras 2580: exp.1), she was the illegitimate daughter of doña Maria de Tapia, who never married but had at least two children who were legal heirs to the de Tapia estates.

Children were generally baptized promptly after birth. In 1718, Br. Sebastian Rubio recorded the birth and baptismal dates of 38 children. The average delay between the events was 6.8 days; the minimum was one day and the maximum sixteen. On the other hand, Nicolasa, daughter of Nicolas de Charri and Juana Cantu, was baptized on June 23, 1702. Her baptismal record specifies that her father was dead. In fact, he had been buried on July 15, 1700, almost two years before. If both records are correct, and there is no reason to suspect that they are not, then either the priest was cooperating with a fictive kinship designation, or Nicolasa was at least fourteen months old at her baptism.

I am in the process of entering all of the records from before 1750 into a spreadsheet, which can then be connected with marriage and death records in a genealogical database. For statistical purposes, I have identified the sample from 1681-1730, which contains 4792 records from both Mixquiahuala and Tecpatepec, with few interruptions, as the most useful (Table 6).

Over this period, the average number of baptisms per year remained fairly steady, suggesting a more or less stable population size. The proportion of infants of unknown parentage also remained constant, between 16.4% and 18.9%. Over the same period in Tula, the illegitimacy rate was 17.5% (Malvido 1980a) The number of baptisms of castas, or gente de razón, increased steadily, from 1.7% to 11.3%, suggesting a growing non-Indian presence.

Marriages

The earliest marriage records date to 1574, and from then until 1644 there is a continuous series. This is followed by a 36-year gap, aside from a single información matrimonial from 1667. The next volume spans 1680-1693, followed by another gap until 1712. From that date until the end of the Colonial period, most marriages are recorded in multiple places. The volumes of informaciones matrimoniales contain the initial record of the couple’s coming to the priest for permission. If one spouse was from another community, the priest would send a letter to that parish asking if he or she was eligible for marriage. After the banns were read and the couple was married, another entry would be made in the marriage book. Some marriages slipped through one or another crack, but the different sets of records can be combined and compared to produce a complete set of events. This larger set of marriages also includes those from Mixquiahuala who married elsewhere, because the cura kept a file of the letters sent to him from other priests. I am currently in the process of cross-checking the información matrimonial volumes against the standard marriage volumes.

Although it varied over time and according to the diligence of each cura, most marriage entries include the names, race, and birthplaces of the contractants; their parents’ names; and the names of up to four witnesses, often with their age and spouses. Few entries include the age of the contractants, contrary to the practice in many other parishes. However, the parents’ names allow many spouses to be matched to baptismal records. A sample of 144 females and 145 males provides mean ages at marriage of 19.7 and 22.6, with minimum ages of 13.7 and 13.8.

Because the birthplaces of the spouses are not always recorded, particularly when they were from within the parish, cross-referencing of records is necessary to fill out the picture of intercommunity migration. It appears that the majority of marriages were town-endogamous; although barrio identifications are rarely recorded in the later records, barrio endogamy also appears to be the norm. As might be expected, exogamous marriages tend to occur with neighbors: People from Mixquiahuala marry those from all three sujetos, as well as the Hacienda de Ulapa; those from Tecpatepec often marry those from the different sujetos of Actopan, or Tlacotlapilco; and those from Tepeitic often marry people from Tezcatepec and Tepetitlan. Most marriages also occur within racial categories. The nobility are more likely to contract geographically and racially exogamous marriages. This is most dramatically illustrated by the nobles of Tepeitic, who married nobles from Mixquiahuala and Tecpatepec as well as mestizos from Tezcatepec and Tepetitlan rather than marrying commoners from Tepeitic. When geographically exogamous marriages can be correlated with subsequent baptisms, they appear to have been preferentially uxorilocal until after the birth of the first child, perhaps so the new bride could learn basic parenting skills from her own mother. Subsequent children were generally born in the father’s home town, but in at least one case, after her husband’s death a widow returned to her birth place.

Deaths

The first records of deaths and burials date to 1645. From then to 1679, there is spotty coverage of the burials of adults. From 1685 through the end of the colonial period, one or more registers of burials survive for all years–after 1742, there were separate registers for Tecpatepec, and after 1769 for gente de razón. Very few entries record the date of death, but it seems unlikely that the delay was very long–at least in most cases. All specify whether or not last rites were performed; most, even of the nobility, state that the individuals were too poor to need a last will and testament. Until 1712, very few children’s burials were recorded; after that date, while there is almost certainly under-representation of children, there are also many recorded.

Entries usually include either the spouse or parentage of an individual, as well as his or her pueblo of residence. Older solteros and viudas are often described by civil status alone, with neither parents nor spouse listed. Later entries tend to be more complete, often listing the number of surviving children and occasionally their names.

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