Ethnicity, Caste, and Rulership in Mixquiahuala, México

Epidemic Disease

There has been a long-running debate among historians and anthropologists about the size of the Precolumbian population of Mesoamerica. Various sixteenth century demographic data have been used as a baseline to reconstruct how many natives there were prior to 1519, but this reconstruction depends upon estimates of the mortality inflicted by the series of epidemics that followed the Spanish Conquest. Some have estimated a mortality of up to 90% between 1519 and 1600, while others have argued for closer to 25% (McCaa 2000 considers both arguments and rejects the latter). Because detailed mortality reports do not exist for any of the sixteenth-century epidemics, scholars rely upon more general descriptions of the extent of each epidemic, as well as modern epidemiological accounts of the diseases that they think were responsible.

Eighteenth-century epidemics can be studied in greater detail. One of the most destructive was the matlazahuatl epidemic which raged across México between 1736 and 1738, otherwise known as the huey cocoliztli (Cuenya 1999). Contemporary accounts report 40,000 deaths in México City alone. The name matlazahuatl was also used to describe an earlier pandemic in 1576-1580. What pathogen was responsible? Typhus, plague, smallpox, and most recently an arenaviral hemorrhagic fever have been proposed (see Marr and Kiracofe 2000 for a recent perspective).

While transcribing the Mixquiahuala death records, I discovered that they included detailed burial records from this 1737 epidemic. Over a fifteen-month span, starting at the end of February, 1737, 218 people were buried in Mixquiahuala and 380 in Tecpatepec. If we assume no change in population size between 1718 and 1737, this indicates a mortality of 53% and 57%. Not all of these deaths were necessarily due to disease, although the burial of Rita, daughter of Joseph Hernandez and Agustina Feliciana, on June 6, 1738 is followed by the statement "asta esta partida se murieron de la epidemia general que bulgarmente llamaro matlasahual." At the same time, in any epidemic situation, it is likely that under-registration of deaths was even greater than usual.

The deceased can be sorted into the two broad categories of unmarried (children and solteros) and married (including widows and widowers). In Mixquiahuala, 95 unmarried and 123 married died, equivalent to 52% and 54% of the 1718 population in each category, and in Tecpatepec 194 and 186 died, or 54% and 61%. Even if we assume that under-registration in the 1718 padrón, and population increase over the following 19 years, dramatically outweigh under-representation in the burial record, it is hard to argue for a mortality rate of under 40%, if not 50%. If a single epidemic could cause this high mortality in a single year two centuries after the Conquest, high estimates of sixteenth-century epidemic mortality seem eminently reasonable. By 1737, indigenous populations were no longer "virgin soil" for European pathogens to exploit. Also, the warfare and social disruption that made sixteenth-century populations more vulnerable to disease were no longer a factor.

The diversity of diagnoses indicates how difficult it can be to map historically described symptoms onto a modern disease definition. As Scott and Duncan (2001) have demonstrated, an examination of parish-level data can illuminate historical epidemiology. My analysis remains incomplete, but I can draw some preliminary conclusions about the spread and etiology of the disease.

An examination of the distribution of burials over time is complicated by the fact that two separate burial registers exist for Mixquiahuala. The first eleven epidemic deaths from 1737–marked by "que por ella comenzo la epidemia general" on February 28, 1737–are at the end of the 1712-1737 volume. The next volume, 1737-1748, picks up one day later. After the epidemic ends, burials continue in sequence through 1748. They are followed by a parallel register of Tecpatepec burials, beginning on March 2, 1737, after a five-page gap in the numeration of folios, and continuing through 1748. The second Mixquiahuala list consists of 22 unnumbered leaves inserted in the beginning of the 1712-1737 volume. The names and information recorded are almost identical–three individuals are listed in the unpaginated list and not the regular volume–and they occur in exactly the same sequence. But the dates of interment (and both lists specify "buried," not "died") differ dramatically, starting at the same point but extending over very different periods.

Fortunately, an outside control of chronology exists. Polonio Hernandez, husband of Magdalena Maria, was buried on either July 1, 1737, or February 14, 1738. On October 14, 1737, his son Nicasio was baptized, and that entry specifies that the child’s father was already dead. This means that the February date, if it is meaningful at all, refers to some late reburial or memorial, not the original interment of the corpse. I hope that a more thorough analysis of all local records from this period will reveal why two burial registers were kept.

Throughout the epidemic burial records, there are numerous cases of immediate family members (spouses and children) buried shortly after one another. As I reconstruct families, I can group some more distant relations. Table 8 lists fifteen burials of related individuals from Mixquiahuala and Tecpatepec. The six deaths in Mixquiahuala break into two mother-child sets, in each of which the two children follow their mother within two days. The twelve days that separate the two sisters suggest that Magdalena may have gotten it from Agustina.

The nine deaths in Tecpatepec follow a more complex pattern. Doña Juana de la Cruz y Granada and her husband Balthasar Briseño were buried a week apart. A month later their grandson Basilio was buried, and eleven days later Balthasar Briseño’s mother. She was followed by another of her great-grandsons, and then after two weeks by another Briseño child of unknown connection to the family and by Juan de Aguilar, Basilio’s father. Another Briseño of unknown connection was buried at the end of November, and one of Balthasar’s remaining sons in March.

It appears that the causative agent was regularly spread between immediate family members. Infection, or at least death, was not a given, since numerous spouses survived–some to remarry other widows before the epidemic had run its course. The fact that some individuals died six months or more after their spouses or children indicates that they either had not been infected by the earlier intimate contact, or that that infection did not render them fully immune.

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