Indigenous Nobility
The Aztecs and other Indigenous peoples in Mexico had a system of hereditary aristocracy in place when the Spanish arrived in Mexico. The Spaniards respected this system and added to it, resulting in many unions between Aztec and Spanish nobility. Descendents of the elites of pre-Columbian Mexico who received these distinctions included the heirs of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II; That family became known as the Condes de Moctezuma, and later, the Duques of Moctezuma de Tultengo. The holders of the title, who still reside in Spain, became part of the Spanish peerage in 1766 when they received a Grandeza. A branch of their family, on the female side, continued to receive an annual payment from the Mexican government in the amount of some 500 Ducats, gold, until 1938, as part of a contract signed in the 16th c. granting Mexico City access to water and lumber on family property.
Some families of pure Amerindian ancestry, such as the Mixtec Villagómez family, were among the richest landowners in New Spain after the conquest of the Aztec empire. Despite being part of the colonial elite after the conquest, the Villagómez retained their Mixtec identity, speaking the Mixtec language and keeping a collection of Mixtec codices.
Numerous other Indigenous elites collaborated with the conquest, earning noble titles and privileges. Most notably, all the Tlaxcallans, who resettled into northern Mexico, became hidalgos.
Read more about this topic: Mexican Nobility
Famous quotes containing the words indigenous and/or nobility:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must. Its very nobility makes the results of its breakdown doubly horrifying, and it breaks down, as it always will, not by some external agency but because it cannot work.”
—Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)