Ancient Mexico Facts

The arrival of the Spaniards led to many changes in transportation and communication in Mexico, but neither as immediate nor as complete as might be expected. Although the Spaniards introduced both draft animals and wheels, transportation largely continued in the pre-Columbia mold during the early colonial period. True, pack animals and wagons were more efficient than tlameme transport, both in terms of pounds moved and people required. For instance, mules in the colonial period carried loads of approximately 250 pounds each, and there was typically 1 arriero (mule driver) per 4 or 5 mules, so 1 arriero could transport the same load as 20 to 25 tlamemes. Similarly, a carreta (the basic freight wagon) pulled by 2 oxen (with a 3rd as reserve) could haul 1,000 pounds, though only for about 10 to 12 miles per day. A larger freight wagon, the carro, which required a team of 16 mules, could haul up to 4,000 pounds.

Nevertheless, horses, mules, oxen, and wagons did not displace the tlamemes immediately or uniformly for a variety of reasons. First, livestock remained scarce and expensive in Mexico until the 1550s, as West Indian producers struggled to keep their monopoly. Thus, even those who might have wanted livestock for hauling could not afford them. Second, neither wagons nor pack teams could travel anywhere at will. Livestock were only the most obvious element of transportation systems that included roads, inns, and suitable reed and water, and many of the roads plied by tlamemes were unsuited to wheels and pack animals. Constructed for foot traffic, indigenous roads stressed directness over gradient: the relative inefficiency of human porters meant that it was more important to shorten travel time rather than to ease the route selected. In an effort to shorten the journey, indigenous roads crossed ravines, scaled gradients, and generally traversed areas that pack animals could not. So even if greater numbers of pack animals and wagons had been available at the time of the Conquest, they still could not have displaced the tlamemes. The widespread displacement of indigenous systems of transportation by Spanish ones was delayed by the financial demands of doing so, in terms of livestock, wagons, inns, new roads, and the hiring of expensive Spanish labor. Given the enormous numbers of Indians available, it made more sense simply to use Indian labor—free, forced, or undercompensated—to transport goods in the traditional way than to make the capital investments necessary to shift completely to a Spanish system.

Water provided the most efficient means of transportation in pre-Columbian Mexico. Rafts and canoes were used in coastal waters, as well as farther out to sea. Although these rafts and canoes were paddled (the sail was unknown in Mexico), they attained considerable size. Columbus noted an ocean-going merchant’s canoe in the Caribbean, and rafts were employed for long-distance bulk goods trade, as evidenced by their use in shipping salt from Yucatán to Tuxpan (Tochpan) in northern Veracruz.

Because of the sharp drop in altitude from central Mexico to the coasts and the pronounced seasonality of the region’s rainfall, most rivers were not navigable for long distances or throughout the year. Landlocked navigation was nevertheless important in the Valley of Mexico and the Pátzcuaro Basin. Especially in the former, tens of thousands of dugout canoes in sizes ranging from small 12-foot vessels up to 100-foot giants plied the lakes. Poled or paddled but lacking sails, the canoes traveled at approximately the same speed as a tlameme could walk, but they could haul significantly larger loads, ranging from one ton in the smaller canoes to well over seven tons in the biggest.

The speed of human travel limited most communications in Mexico. Smoke and fire signals were occasionally used, and there is evidence of lookout posts that may have linked locations within valley systems. But while such systems could have conveyed information quite speedily, their messages would have been limited to the prearranged, and the systems themselves were relatively inflexible and spatially limited. More elaborate and more distant links depended on human conveyance. In formal matters, ambassadors carried messages between rulers, but at no greater speed than tlamemes. For faster service, runners were employed. Along some routes, runners were stationed every three miles or so to carry messages in relay fashion much faster than was possible by other means.

These means of transport were only the most obvious element of what were, in fact, elaborate transportation systems. Tlamemes, ambassadors, and runners all depended on a system of maintained roads, as well as inns and hostelries. Where the Mexica Empire expanded, these were provided; beyond the cities, however, roads were only dirt. (Exceptions occurred during portions of the late Classic and early postClassic periods in the Maya lowlands, where elaborate stone roads linked some towns.) The lakes, too, required maintenance. In the Valley of Mexico, canals had to be dredged and maintained; and dikes, dams, sluice gates, and docks all had to be built, manned, and maintained. Despite their sophistication, both land and water transport suffered seasonal variation in utility. During and after the May-to-September rainy season, roads quickly became quagmires and swollen streams could become impassable, even if they were bridged in normal times. Canoe transport complemented this pattern, with the lake levels rising to more suitable heights during and after the rainy season, although extensive dams and dikes did create navigable pools, especially in the southern Valley of Mexico, permitting more use of canoes than would otherwise have been feasible.

Wheels were known and used on small toys in preColumbian Mesoamerica, but since there were no domesticated animals large enough to be ridden or to pull vehicles, overland transport was limited to foot traffic. Foot transport was professionalized in Mesoamerica: human carriers, called tlamemes (in Nahuatl the singular was tlameme and the plural, tlamemeque; the Spaniards called them tlamemes) earned their livelihood by carrying loads in packframes supported by tumplines that transferred the weight to the head and then down the spine, making carrying more efficient and leaving the hands free. The standard load was two arrobas, or 50 pounds (or about 23 kilograms), and though weights would vary, significantly heavier burdens reduced the distances tlamemes could carry them. Loads were standardly carried five leagues per day, but this seemingly exact measure actually reflects the duration—one day—rather than the distance, and five leagues uphill was shorter than five leagues downhill. On average, however, a day’s journey laden was probably around 16 miles (or about 26 kilometers).

Since foot transport was open to everyone, the advantage of the tlamemes was in their numbers, availability, and especially their organization. As professional carriers, tlamemes were available year round and were organized in cabeceras (main towns), from which they carried loads to the next major town, deposited them, and returned to their own towns. Thus, loads moving long distances depended on relays of carriers going only from their town to the next. This, in turn, meant that the transport system had to be organized over a broad spatial expanse, and much of this appears to have been the result of imperial expansion. As the Mexica (Aztecs) expanded, the creation of new or additional tlamemes in towns along major routes became a tributary obligation, resulting in an organized system of professional carriers that speeded transport throughout the empire.

What could be hauled by the tlameme system was limited, although some heavier-than-normal burdens could be accommodated. Notably, individuals were occasionally carried by tlamemes. A single tlameme could carry a person on his back, but not for great distances and, when this happened, relief carriers were needed, so the overall average of load per carrier per day remained at roughly 50 pounds. For elite travel, both palanquins and litters were employed, although the data indicate that these were used sparingly and not for general conveyance. Both palanquins and litters required four bearers and accommodated a single occupant, yielding a load per carrier that was probably no greater than for individual tlamemes, and these conveyances could theoretically have matched their five-league distances. Palanquins and litters could have been used to carry larger loads than was possible for individual tlamemes, but there is no evidence of this. When very large objects were moved, such as massive stones, log rollers were employed, although this method was largely limited to local use and transportation within valleys, downhill, and on level surfaces.

During the 1980s Mexican policy makers began to change course on foreign trade. Not only had import substituting industries outlived their usefulness as the primary motor of economic growth in the country, but foreign investment was in short supply in the wake of the 1982 debt crisis. In response, the Mexican government turned to export-led growth, attended by reduced trade barriers, active cultivation of trade partnerships, and a more hospitable legal environment for foreign investors, as a way to restart the nation’s troubled economy.

A milestone in the shift toward trade liberalization took place in the mid-1980s, under the administration of Harvardeducated president Miguel de la Madrid. At the time, world petroleum prices were falling, which gave Mexico added incentive to promote other products on its export menu. Mexico acceded to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986 in order to open up new trading opportunities. Under the GATT, Mexico committed itself to reducing tariffs and other trade barriers, especially licensing restrictions. From 1985 to 1994 Mexico reduced its average tariff rate by nearly half, from 23 percent to 12 percent.

Mexico already had an established history of participation in trade agreements before the 1980s. In 1960 Mexico joined the Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración (ALADI) with 10 South American countries, and in 1961 Mexico entered the Central American Common Market. Trade flows between Mexico and the participating countries increased in subsequent years, but trade volumes always remained tiny in comparison with U.S. trade, partly because of the similarities in the types of goods exported by these Latin American countries.

In the early 1990s Mexico entered into free trade agreements with Chile ( 1991), the Central American countries ( 1992), and Costa Rica ( 1994). The most dramatic evidence of Mexico’s new trade philosophy came in the form of the North American Free Trade Agreement, ratified by the United States, Canada, and Mexico in 1993. Despite predictions by supporters and detractors that the effects of such agreements would be substantial and immediately noticeable, as of 1996 there was no consensus concerning the net effects of more open trade policies on the Mexican economy. Other factors, especially the exchange rate, proved much more powerful and evident in the short term, and it is difficult to separate out the impact of trade agreements. Mexico stayed the course of trade liberalization despite the recent economic crisis and its attending political consequences. In the coming years, the permanence of that course will likely be determined by political factors. The advocates of free trade held sway in the Mexican government starting in the early 1980s, but the poor performance of the economy may make them vulnerable in future elections.

Mexico always has had a diverse export mix. In the 1940s minerals, such as silver, copper, lead, zinc, and petroleum made up the majority of Mexican exports. Agricultural products, especially cotton (Laguna), coffee (southern highlands), sugar (south-central temperate zone), shrimp (gulf coast), cattle (northern region), cord fiber (Yucatán), and fruits and vegetables have also played an important role. During the 1950s and 1960s, the importance of mineral exports diminished, while that of manufactured goods increased. This change reflected the growth of Mexican industries, led by the steel, glass, cement, and beer factories in Monterrey and the textile factories in Puebla.

In the late 1970s petroleum shot to the top of Mexico’s list of exports, fed by the discovery of huge reserves on the gulf coast. In 1979 petroleum comprised more than half of the value of Mexico’s exports, and by 1982 oil’s share stood at more than three-quarters. The fall in world prices in 1986 reduced the weight of oil in Mexico’s export mix, however, and by 1993 petroleum accounted for only 22 percent of Mexican exports.

Automobiles and automobile parts also began to be an important source of export revenue in the 1970s. (From 1982 to 1988 the number of automobiles produced in Mexico increased tenfold.) Most of these were assembled in “maquila” plants near the U.S. border. The Mexican government encouraged the creation of these off-shore assembly plants for U.S. manufacturers beginning in 1965. Their numbers grew dramatically through the 1970s and 1980s, and by the mid1990s there were several thousand maquiladoras assembling everything from televisions to heavy trucks.

The composition of Mexican imports also has varied over time. In the 1940s, Mexico had to import 350,000 tons of food per year to feed its population. Through improvements in irrigation and technology, Mexico gradually reduced its dependence on imported food through the 1950s and even became a net exporter of agricultural goods in the 1960s. During this period imports of machinery and industrial inputs increased to supply domestic factories. In the 1980s Mexico again began to import greater volumes of foodstuffs, reflecting the failure of government programs designed to achieve food self-sufficiency.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the appreciation of the peso increased the purchasing power of Mexican consumers abroad, and the proportion of Mexican imports represented by consumer goods increased to 14 percent, about double what it had been in the early 1980s. Increased consumer confidence, the availability of consumer credit, and faith in the economic program of President Carlos Salinas contributed to this trend. The peso crash in late 1994, however, brought Mexico’s foreign buying spree in consumer goods to an end.