Viceroyalty of New Spain

The Viceroyalty of New Spain (Virreinato de Nueva España), was the political unit of Spanish territories in North America and Asia-Pacific. The territory included the present-day Southwestern United States, Mexico, Central America (except Panama), the Caribbean, and the Philippines. It was ruled by a viceroy from Mexico City who governed on behalf of the King of Spain. The Viceroyalty of New Spain lasted from 1535 to 1821, and was one of two early viceroyalties that Spain established in the 16th century to govern its territories in the New World, the other being the Viceroyalty of Peru. In the 18th century the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, and the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata were also created.

The main government of New Spain was located on in what was known then as América Septentrional (Northern America). In 1821, Mexico, and Central America achieved their independence after three centuries of Spanish rule. However, most of the Spanish West Indies including Cuba, and Puerto Rico; and the Spanish East Indies including the Philippine Islands, Guam, and the Mariana Islands remained a part of the Spanish Empire until the Spanish–American War in 1898.

Establishment (1521-1535)
The creation of a viceroyalty in the Americas was a result of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519 to 1521). The lands and societies brought under Spanish control were of unprecedented complexity and wealth, which presented both an incredible opportunity and a threat to the Crown of Castile. The societies could provide the conquistadors, especially Hernán Cortés, a base from which to become autonomous, or even independent, of the Crown. As a result the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V created the Council of the Indies in 1524.

A few years later the first mainland Audiencia was created in 1527 to take over the administration of New Spain from Cortés. (An earlier Audiencia had been established in Santo Domingo in 1526 to deal with the Caribbean settlements.) The Audiencia was charged with encouraging further exploration and settlements under its own authority. Management by the Audiencia, which was expected to make executive decisions as a body, proved unwieldy.

Therefore in 1535, Charles V named Antonio de Mendoza as the first viceroy of New Spain. After the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 opened up the vast territories of South America to further conquests, the Crown established a second viceroyalty there in 1540.

Exploration and Settlement (1519–1643)
Upon his arrival, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza vigorously took to the duties entrusted to him by the King and encouraged the exploration of Spain's new mainland territories. He commissioned the expeditions of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado into the American Southwest in 1540-1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo along the western coast of Alta California in 1542 to 1543, and Ruy López de Villalobos to the Philippine Islands in 1542 to 1543. As these new areas were later settled or conquered, they were brought under the purview of the Viceroy.

During the 16th century, many Spanish cities were established in North and Central America. Spain attempted to establish missions in what is now the United States including the mission to Georgia and South Carolina between 1568 to 1587. Despite the effort, the Spaniards were only successful in what is now the region of Florida, where they founded St. Augustine in 1565.

Seeking to develop trade between the East Indies and the Americas across the Pacific Ocean, Miguel López de Legazpi established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippine Islands in 1565, which became the town of San Miguel. Andrés de Urdaneta discovered an efficient sailing route from the Philippine Islands returning to Mexico. In 1570, the native city of Manila was conquered and trade soon began in the Manila-Acapulco Galleons. The Manila-Acapulco galleons shipped products gathered from both Asia-Pacific and the Americas, such as silk, spice, silver, gold, slaves, and other Asian and Pacific products between Asia and the Americas.

Products brought from Asia-Pacific were sent to Veracruz and shipped to Spain and, via trading, to the rest of Europe. There were attacks on these shipments in the Gulf of Mexico by British and Dutch pirates or privateers led by Francis Drake in 1586 and Thomas Cavendish in 1587. In addition, the cities of Huatulco (Oaxaca) and Barra de Navidad in Jalisco were sacked. Lope Díez de Armendáriz, the first viceroy of New Spain born in the New World, formed the Armada de Barlovento, based in Veracruz, to patrol the coastal regions and protect the forts and the trade organization from pirates and privateers.

In 1591, Luis de Velasco pacified many of the semi-nomadic Chichimeca tribes of northern Mexico. In 1598, Juan de Oñate founded the San Juan colony on the Rio Grande and pioneered the grandly named El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The Native Americans at Acoma revolted against this Spanish encroachment and faced severe suppression. In 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed as far north as Monterey Bay, Alta California. In 1609, Pedro de Peralta, a later governor of the Province of New Mexico, established the settlement of Santa Fe at the region of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The last Spanish Habsburgs (1643–1713)
The presidios (military towns), pueblos (civilian towns) and the misiones (missions) were the three major agencies employed by the Spanish crown to extend its borders and consolidate its colonial holdings in these territories.

The U.S. (modern day New Mexico) town of Alburquerque was founded in 1660, the Mexican towns of Paso del Norte (now known as Ciudad Juárez) was founded in 1667, Santiago de la Monclova in 1689, Panzacola, Texas in 1681 or San Francisco de Cuéllar (now the city of Chihuahua) in 1709. From 1687, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino founded over twenty missions in the areas between the Mexican state of Sonora and the state of Arizona in the United States. From 1697, Jesuits established other 18 missions throughout the Baja California Peninsula. In 1668 Padre San Vitores established the first mission in the Mariana Islands (now Guam). Between 1687 and 1700 several Missions were founded in Trinidad, but only four survived as Amerindian villages throughout the eighteenth century. In 1691, explorers and missionaries visited the interior of Texas and came upon a river and Amerindian settlement on June 13, the feast day of St. Anthony, and named the location and river San Antonio in his honor.

Immersed in a low intensity war with Great Britain (mostly over the Spanish ports and trade routes harassed by British pirates), the defenses of Veracruz and San Juan de Ulúa, Jamaica, Cuba and Florida were strengthened. Santiago de Cuba (1662), St. Augustine Spanish Florida (1665) or Campeche 1678 were sacked by the British. The Tarahumara Indians were in revolt in the mountains of Chihuahua for several years. In 1670 Chichimecas invaded Durango, and the governor, Francisco González, abandoned its defense. In 1680, 25,000 previously subjugated Indians in 24 pueblos of New Mexico rose against the Spanish and killed all the Europeans they encountered. In 1685, after a revolt of the Chamorros, the Marianas islands were incorporated to the Captaincy General of the Philippines. In 1695, this time with the British help, the viceroy Gaspar de la Cerda attacked the French who had established a base on the island of Española.

Early in the Queen Anne's War, in 1702, the English captured and burned Spanish-held St. Augustine, Florida. However, the English were unable to take the main fortress of St. Augustine, resulting in the campaign being condemned by the English as a failure. The Spanish maintained St. Augustine and Pensacola for more than a century after the war, but their mission system in Florida was destroyed and the Apalachee were decimated in what became known as the Apalachee Massacre of 1704. In 1704 the viceroy Francisco Fernández de la Cueva suppressed a rebellion of the Pima Indians in Nueva Vizcaya.

Diego Osorio de Escobar y Llamas reformed the postal service and the marketing of mercury. In 1701 under the Duke of Alburquerque the Tribunal de la Acordada (literally, Court of the Agreement), an organization of volunteers, similar to the Holy Brotherhood, intended to capture and quickly try bandits, was founded. The church of Virgin of Guadalupe, patron of Mexico, was finished in 1702.

The Bourbon Reforms (1713–1806)
Unlike in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the new Bourbon kings did not split the New Spanish viceroyalty into smaller ones. The prime innovation was the introduction of intendancies, and institution borrowed from France. They were first introduced on a large scale in New Spain, by the minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, in the 1780s, who originally envisioned that they would replace the viceregal system all together. With broad powers over tax collection and the public treasury and with a mandate to help foster economic growth over their districts, intendants encroached on the traditional powers of viceroys, governors and local officials, such as the corregidores, which were phased out as intendancies were established. The Crown saw the intendants as a check on these other officers. Over time accommodations were made. For example, after a period of experimentation in which an independent intendant was assigned to Mexico City, the office was thereafter given to the same person who simultaneously held the post of viceroy. Nevertheless, the creation of scores of autonomous intendancies throughout the Viceroyalty, created a great deal of decentralization, and in the Captaincy General of Guatemala, in particular, the intendancy laid the groundwork for the future independent nations of the 19th century.

The focus on the economy (and the revenues it provided to the royal coffers) was also extended to society at large. Economic associations were promoted, such as the Economic Society of Friends of the Country Governor-General José Basco y Vargas established in the Philippines in 1781. Similar "Friends of the Country" economic societies were established throughout the Spanish world, including Cuba and Guatemala.

A secondary feature of the Bourbon Reforms was that it was an attempt to end the significant amount of local control that had crept into the bureaucracy under the Habsburgs, especially through the sale of offices. The Bourbons sought a return to the monarchical ideal of having outsiders, who in theory should be disinterested, staff the higher echelons of regional government. In practice this meant that there was a concerted effort to appoint mostly peninsulares, usually military men with long records of service (as opposed to the Habsburg preference for prelates), who were willing to move around the global empire. The intendancies were one new office that could be staffed with peninsulares, but throughout the 18th century significant gains were made in the numbers of governors-captain generals, audiencia judges and bishops, in addition to other posts, who were Spanish-born.

18th Century Military Conflicts
The first century that saw the Bourbons on the Spanish throne coincided with series of global conflicts that pitted primarily France against Great Britain. Spain as an ally of Bourbon France was drawn into these conflicts. In fact part of the motivation for the Bourbon Reforms was the perceived need to prepare the empire administratively, economically and militarily for what was the next expected war. The Seven Years' War proved to be catalyst for most of the reforms in the overseas possessions, just like the War of the Spanish Succession had been for the reforms on the Peninsula.

In 1720, the Villasur expedition from Santa Fe met and attempted to parley with French- allied Pawnee in what is now Nebraska. Negotiations were unsuccessful, and a battle ensued; the Spanish were badly defeated, with only thirteen managing to return to New Mexico. Although this was a small engagement, it is significant in that it was the deepest penetration of the Spanish into the Great Plains, establishing the limit to Spanish expansion and influence there.

The War of Jenkins's Ear broke out in 1739 between the Spanish and British and was confined to the Caribbean and Georgia. The major action in the War of Jenkins' Ear was a major amphibious attack launched by the British under Admiral Edward Vernon in March, 1741 against Cartagena de Indias, one of Spain's major gold-trading ports in the Caribbean (today Colombia). Although this episode is largely forgotten, it ended in a decisive victory for Spain, who managed to prolong its control of the Caribbean and indeed secure the Spanish Main until the 19th century.

Following the French and Indian War/Seven Years War, the British troops invaded and captured the Spanish cities of Havana in Cuba and Manila in the Philippines in 1762. The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Spain control over the New France Louisiana Territory including New Orleans, Louisiana creating a Spanish empire that stretched from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, but Spain also ceded Florida to Great Britain to regain Cuba, which the British occupied during the war. Louisiana settlers, hoping to restore the territory to France, in the bloodless Rebellion of 1768 forced the Louisiana Governor Antonio de Ulloa to flee to Spain. The rebellion was crushed in 1769 by the next governor Alejandro O'Reilly who executed five of the conspirators. The Louisiana territory was to be administered by superiors in Cuba with a governor onsite in New Orleans.

The 21 northern missions in present-day California (U.S.) were established along California's El Camino Real from 1769. In an effort to exclude Britain and Russia from the eastern Pacific, King Charles III of Spain sent forth from Mexico a number of expeditions to explore the Pacific Northwest between 1774 and 1791.



Spain entered the American Revolutionary War as an ally of France in June 1779, a renewal of the Bourbon Family Compact. In 1781, a Spanish expedition during the American Revolutionary War left St. Louis, Missouri (then under Spanish control) and reached as far as Fort St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan where they captured the fort while the British were away. On 8 May 1782, Count Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, captured the British naval base at New Providence in the Bahamas. On the Gulf Coast, the actions of Gálvez led to Spain acquiring East and West Florida in the peace settlement, as well as controlling the mouth of the Mississippi River after the war—which would prove to be a major source of tension between Spain and the United States in the years to come.

In the second Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolution, Britain ceded West Florida back to Spain to regain The Bahamas, which Spain had occupied during the war. Spain then had control over the river south of 32°30' north latitude, and, in what is known as the Spanish Conspiracy, hoped to gain greater control of Louisiana and all of the west. These hopes ended when Spain was pressured into signing Pinckney's Treaty in 1795. France reacquired 'Louisiana' from Spain in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. The United States bought the territory from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

The Nootka Convention (1791) resolved the dispute between Spain and Great Britain about the British settlements in Oregon to British Columbia.

End of the Viceroyalty (1806-1821)
Spanish Florida would ultimately be acquired by the United States in 1819 under the Adams-Onís Treaty.

After priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's 1810 Grito de Dolores (call for independence), the insurgent army began an eleven-year war that would culminate in triumph by the Mexicans, who offered in 1821 the crown of the new Mexican Empire to Ferdinand VII or to a member of the Spanish royal family that he would designate. After the refusal of the Spanish monarchy to recognize the independence of Mexico the ej&eacute;rcito Trigarante (Army of the Three Guarantees), led by Agustin de Iturbide and Vincente Guerrero, cut all political and economic ties with Spain. Central America became part of the Mexican Empire, but seceded peacefully in 1823, forming the United Provinces of Central America.

This left only Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico as part of the Spanish empire until the Spanish–American War in 1898.

Politics
The Viceroyalty of New Spain united many regions and provinces of the Spanish Empire throughout half a world. These included on the North American mainland, New Spain proper (central Mexico), Nueva Extremadura, Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya and Nuevo Santander, as well as the Captaincy General of Guatemala. In the Caribbean it included Cuba, Santo Domingo, most of the Venezuelan mainland and the other islands in the Caribbean controlled by the Spanish. In Asia, and the Pacific the Viceroyalty included the Captaincy General of the Philippines, which covered all of the Spanish territories in the Asia-Pacific region.

Therefore, the Viceroyalty's former territories included what is now the present day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica; the United States regions of California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Florida; the Caribbean nations of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the island of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda; the Asia-Pacific nations of the Philippine Islands, Guam, Mariana Islands, Palau and Caroline Islands.

The Viceroyalty was administered by a viceroy residing in Mexico City and appointed by the Spanish monarch, who had administrative oversight of all of these regions, although most matters were handled by the local governmental bodies, which ruled the various regions of the viceroyalty. First among these were the audiencias, which were primarily superior tribunals, but which also had administrative and legislative functions. Each of these was responsible to the Viceroy of New Spain in administrative matters (though not in judicial ones), but they also answered directly to the Council of the Indies. Audiencia districts further incorporated the older, smaller divisions known as governorates (gobernaciones, roughly equivalent to provinces), which had been originally established by conquistador-governors known as adelantados. Provinces, which were under military threat, were grouped into captaincies general, such as the Captaincies General of the Philippines (established 1574) and Guatemala (established in 1609) mentioned above, which were joint military and political commands with a certain level of autonomy. (The viceroy was captain-general of those provinces that remained directly under his command).

At the local level there were over two hundred districts, in both Indian and Spanish areas, which were headed by either a corregidor (also known as an alcalde mayor) or a cabildo (town council), both of which had judicial and administrative powers. In the late eighteenth century the Bourbon dynasty began phasing out the corregidores and introduced intendants, whose broad fiscal powers cut into the authority of the viceroys, governors and cabildos. Despite their late creation, these intendancies had such an impact in the formation of regional identity that they became the basis for the nations of Central America and the first Mexican states after independence.

Audiencias
With dates of creation:

1. Santo Domingo (1511, effective 1526, predated the Viceroyalty) 2. Mexico (1527, predated the Viceroyalty) 3. Panama (1st one, 1538 - 1543) 4. Guatemala (1543) 5. Guadalajara (1548) 6. Manila (1583)

Autonomous Captaincies General
With dates of creation:

1. Santo Domingo (1535) 2. Philippines (1574) 3. Puerto Rico (1580) 4. Cuba (1607) 5. Guatemala (1609) 6. Yucatán (1617)

7. Commandancy General of the Provincias Internas (1776) (Analogous to a dependent captaincy general.)

Intendancies
Listed under year of creation:

1764 1. Havana

1766 2. New Orleans

1784 3. Puerto Rico

1786 4. Mexico, 5. Chiapas, 6. Guatemala, 7. San Salvador, 8. Comayagua, 9. Léon, 10. Puerto Príncipe (separated from the Intendancy of Havana), 11. Santiago de Cuba (separated from the Intendency of Havana)

1787 12. Guanajuato, 13. Valladolid, 14. Guadalajara, 15. Zacatecas, 16. San Luis Potosí, 17. Veracruz, 18. Puebla, 19. Oaxaca, 20. Durango, 21. Sonora

1789 22. Mérida

Economy
In order to pay off the debts incurred by the conquistadors and their companies, the new Spanish governors awarded their men grants of native tribute and labor, known as encomiendas. In New Spain these grants were modeled after the tribute and corvee labor that the Mexica rulers had demanded from native communities. This system came to signify the oppression and exploitation of natives, although its originators may not have set out with such intent. In short order the upper echelons of patrons and priests in the society lived off the work of the lower classes. Due to some horrifying instances of abuse against the indigenous peoples, Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas suggested bringing black slaves to replace them. Fray Bartolomé later repented when he saw the even worse treatment given to the black slaves. The other discovery that perpetuated this system was extensive silver mines discovered at Potosi and other places that were worked for hundreds of years by forced native labor and contributed most of the wealth flowing to Spain. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was the principal source of income for Spain among the Spanish colonies, with important mining centers like Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo.

There were several major ports in New Spain. There were the ports of Veracruz the viceroyalty's principal port on the Atlantic, Acapulco on the Pacific, and Manila near the South China Sea. The ports were fundamental for overseas trade, stretching a trade route from Asia, through the Manila Galleon to the Spanish mainland.

These were ships that made voyages from the Philippines to Mexico, whose goods were then transported overland from Acapulco to Veracruz and later reshipped from Veracruz to Cádiz in Spain. So then, the ships that set sail from Veracruz were generally loaded with merchandise from the East Indies originating from the commercial centers of the Philippines, plus the precious metals and natural resources of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. During the sixteenth century, Spain held the equivalent of US$1.5 trillion (1990 terms) in gold and silver received from New Spain.

Nevertheless, these resources did not translate into development for the Metropolis (mother country) due to Spanish Roman Catholic Monarchy's frequent preoccupation with European wars (enormous amounts of this wealth were spent hiring mercenaries to fight the Protestant Reformation), as well as the incessant decrease in overseas transportation caused by assaults from companies of British buccaneers, Dutch corsairs and pirates of various origin. These companies were initially financed by, at first, by the Amsterdam stock market, the first in history and whose origin is owed precisely to the need for funds to finance pirate expeditions, as later by the London market. The above is what some authors call the "historical process of the transfer of wealth from the south to the north."

The role of epidemics
Spanish settlers brought to the American continent smallpox, typhoid fever, and other diseases. Most of the Spanish settlers had developed an immunity to these diseases from childhood, but the indigenous peoples lacked the needed antibodies since these diseases were totally alien to the native population at the time. There were at least three, separate, major epidemics that decimated the population: smallpox (1520 to 1521), measles (1545 to 1548) and typhus (1576 to 1581). In the course of the sixteenth century, the native population in Mexico went an estimated pre-Columbian population of 8 to 20 million to less than two million. Therefore, at the start of the seventeenth century, continental New Spain was a depopulated country with abandoned cities and maize fields. These diseases would not have a similar impact in the Philippines because they were already present there.

The role of interracial mixing
Following the Spanish conquests, new ethnic groups were created, primary among them the Mestizo. (See also Filipino mestizo.) The Mestizo population emerged as a result of the Spanish colonizers having children with indigenous women, both within and outside of wedlock, which brought about the mixing of both cultures. Many of the Spanish colonists were either men or women with no wives or husbands and took partners from the indigenous population. Marriage between Europeans and Natives was even encouraged by Queen Isabel during the earliest days of colonization. As a result of these unions a vast group of people eventually known as Mestizos came into being. Initially, if a child was born in wedlock, the child was considered, and raised as, a member of the prominent parent's ethnicity. (See Hyperdescent and Hypodescent.) Because of this, the term "Mestizo" was associated with illegitimacy. Mestizos do not appear in large numbers in official censuses until the second half of the seventeenth century, when a sizable and stable community of mixed-raced people with no claims to being either Indian or Spanish appeared, although, of course, a large population of biological Mestizos had already existed for over a century.

The Spanish conquest also brought the migration of people of African descent to the many regions of the Viceroyalty. Some came as free blacks, but vast majority came because of the introduction of African slavery. As the native population was decimated by epidemics and forced labor, black slaves were imported. Mixes with Europeans and indigenous peoples also occurred, resulting in the creation of new racial categories such as Mulattos and Zambos to account for these offsprings. As with the term Mestizo, these other terms were associated with illegitimacy, since a majority—though not all—of these people were born outside of wedlock.

Eventually a caste system was created to describe the various mixes and to assign them a different social level. In theory, each different mix had a name and different sets of privileges or prohibitions. In reality, mix-raced people were able to negotiate various racial and ethnic identities (often several ones at different points in their lives) depending on the family ties and wealth they had. In its general outline, the system reflected reality. The upper echelons of government were staffed by Spaniards born in Spain (peninsulares), the middle and lower levels of government and other higher paying jobs were held by Criollos ("Spaniards" born in the Americas or Philippines). The best lands were owned by Peninsulares and Criollos, with Native communities for the most part relegated to marginal lands. Mestizos and Mulattos held artisanal positions and unskilled laborers were either more mixed people, such as Zambos, recently freed slaves or Natives who had left their communities and settled in areas with large Hispanic populations. Native populations tended to have their own legally recognized communities (the repúblicas de indios) with their own social and economic hierarchies. This rough sketch must be complicated by the fact that not only did exceptions exist, but also that all these "racial" categories represented social conventions, as demonstrated by the fact that many persons were assigned a caste based on hyperdescent or hypodescent.

Even if mixes were common, the white population tried to keep their higher status, and were largely successfully in doing so, up until the present day. With Mexican and Central American independence, the caste system and slavery were theoretically abolished, however it can be argued that the Criollos simply replaced the Peninsulares in terms of power. Thus, for example, in modern Mexico, while Mestizos no longer have a separate legal status from other groups, the comprise approximately 49% of the population. White people, who also no longer have a special legal status, are thought to be about 40% of the population, but still have most of the desirable jobs. In modern Mexico, "Mestizo" has become more a cultural term, since Indigenous people who abandon their traditional ways are considered Mestizos. Also, most Afro-Mexicans prefer to be considered Mestizo, since they identify closely with this group. (See also, Demographics of Mexico.)

The population of New Spain in 1810
Population estimates from the first decade of the 19th century varied between 6,122,354 as calculated by Francisco Navarro y Noriega in 1810, to 6.5 million as figured by Alexander von Humboldt in 1808. Navarro y Noriega figured that half of his estimate constituted indigenous peoples. More recent data suggests that the actual population of New Spain in 1810 was closer to 5 or 5.5 million individuals.

The role of the Roman Catholic church
Because the Roman Catholic Church had played such an important role in re-conquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors, the Church in essence became another arm of the of Spanish government. The Spanish Crown granted it a large role in the administration of the state, and this practice became even more pronounced in the New World, where prelates often assumed the role of government officials. In addition to the Church's explicit political role, the Catholic faith became a central part of Spanish identity after the conquest of last Muslim kingdom in the peninsula, the Emirate of Granada, and the expulsion of all Jews who did not convert to Christianity.

The conquistadors brought with them many missionaries to promulgate the Catholic religion. Amerindians were taught the Roman Catholic religion and the language of Spain. Initially, the missionaries hoped to create a large body of Amerindian priests, but this did not come to be. Moreover, efforts were made to keep the Amerindian cultural aspects which did not violate the Catholic traditions. As an example, some Spaniards learned some of the Amerindian languages (especially during the sixteenth century) and wrote grammars for them so that they could be more easily translated. This was similarly practiced by the French colonists. On the other hand, the idea of sharing the language and the religion of the natives was largely rejected in the British colonies of North America (and later in the United States of America) and their culture was ignored, despised and eventually obliterated.

At first, conversion seemed to be happening rapidly. The missionaries soon found that most of the natives had simply adopted "the god of the heavens", as they called the Christian god, as just another one of their many gods. While they often held the Christian god to be an important deity because it was the god of the victorious conquerors, they did not see the need to abandon their old beliefs. As a result, a second wave of missionaries began an effort to completely erase the old beliefs, which they associated with the ritualized human sacrifice found in many of the native religions, eventually putting an end to this practice common before the arrival of the Spaniards. In the process many artifacts of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of native codices were burned, native priests and teachers were persecuted, and the temples and statues of the old gods were torn down. Even some foods associated with the native religions, like amaranto, were forbidden.

Many clerics, such as Bartolomé de las Casas, also tried to protect the natives from de facto and actual enslavement to the settlers, and obtained from the Crown decrees and promises to protect native Mesoamericans, most notably the New Laws. Unfortunately, the royal government was too far to fully enforce them, and many abuses against the natives, even among the clergy, continued. Eventually, the Crown declared the natives to be legal minors and placed under the guardianship of the Crown, which was responsible for their indoctrination. It was this status that barred the native population from the priesthood. During the following centuries, under Spanish rule, a new culture developed that combined the customs and traditions of the indigenous peoples with that of Catholic Spain. Numerous churches and other buildings were constructed by native labor in the Spanish style, and cities were named after various saints or religious topics such as San Luis Potosí (after Saint Louis) and Vera Cruz (the True Cross).

The Spanish Inquisition, and its New Spanish counterpart, the Mexican Inquisition, continued to operate in the viceroyalty until Mexico declared its independence. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Inquisition worked with the viceregal government to block the diffusion of liberal ideas during the Enlightenment and the revolutionary republican and democratic ideas of the United States War of Independence and the French Revolution in an attempt at keeping the Spanish world culturally closed to new ideas and uniformly Catholic.

Arts
The Viceroyalty of New Spain was one of the principal centers of European cultural expansion in the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific region. The viceroyalty was the basis for a racial and cultural mosaic of the Spanish American, and Spanish East Indies colonial period.

The first printing press in the New World was brought to Mexico in 1539, by printer Juan Pablos (Giovanni Paoli). The first book printed in Mexico was entitled La escala espiritual de San Juan Clímaco. In 1568, Bernal Díaz del Castillo finished La Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España. Figures such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón stand out as some of the viceroyalty's most notable contributors to Spanish Literature. In 1693, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora published El Mercurio Volante, the first newspaper in New Spain.

Architects Pedro Martínez Vázquez and Lorenzo Rodriguez produced some fantastically extravagant and visually frenetic architecture known as Mexican Churrigueresque in the own capital, Ocotlan, Puebla or remote silver-mining towns. The magnificent fourth Manila Cathedral was constructed in 1654 to 1671.