Commercial networks, roads, temples and convents in some areas of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexico of the 16th century

Abstract

There is a relationship between commerce, the roads and the convents of the 16th century in New Spain that, however, goes back to pre-Hispanic times mutatis mutandis. In effect, religiosity permeated pre-Hispanic society as much or more than the European ones of the same time, and if there were no convents, instead there were temples in which the devotion of those peoples, heirs of ancient civilizations, was intensely manifested.In particular, this devotion appeared linked to trade through the corresponding propitiatory ceremonies. Therefore, trade was not a pure and impersonal relationship of money as in contemporary capitalism, but an event that had an impact on the entire social environment, since although the merchants were specialists (today we would say: professionals), trade , production and consumption were socially amalgamated with each other by other things besides money in its pre-Hispanic form, without underestimating its function as an incentive for such activities. Although the Spanish conquest modified the correlation of social forces by implanting a new technology, causing a health disaster by bringing diseases for which the immune system of the native peoples was not prepared, etc., the general system of commercial networks-roads-convents continued reproducing, although profoundly disrupted, the corresponding indigenous scheme, with new "lords" and "dominated" in the Weberian sense. A clear example of this was the patrimonial asset inscribed since 1994 on the UNESCO World Heritage List under the title of First Monasteries of the 16th Century in the Skirts of Popocatépetl belonging to the three active mendicant orders in evangelization, almost immediately after of the capture of Tenochtitlán.