“They Did Not Die until They Were Old”: Remembering Health and Wellness in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

The sixteenth century was a time of severe demographic collapse among the native populations of Spanish America, a result of conquest-era violence, colonial abuses, and recurring epidemics. While Spanish colonial and ecclesiastical authorities insisted that local peoples celebrate their conquest as a glorious achievement that liberated their ancestors from idolatry, savagery, and ignorance, this notion sat uneasily with the reality of widespread postconquest morbidity and disease. This paper examines sixteenth-century nostalgic recollections of preconquest central Mexico as a world of health, longevity, and prosperity, and argues that such portrayals were critical responses to the traumas and challenges of Spanish colonialism. While the earliest colonial accounts did not highlight longevity and health as the dominant features of the pre-Hispanic era, following the devastating epidemics of the 1540s and 1550s such memories became more prominent. Spanish observers sympathetic to the plight of native communities detailed indigenous morbidity in impassioned critiques of Spanish greed and aggression. In stressing the connection between the arrival of Spaniards and the beginning of the epidemics, meanwhile, native writers and historians implicitly challenged the imperialist idea that the conquest benefitted their communities.