Background and bestowal

After the fall of Tenochtitlan, with the capture of the last Aztec Tlatoani, Cuauhtémoc, on 13 August 1521, the Aztec Empire disappeared, becoming part of the Spanish Empire. The success brought legal status for Cortés, whose position had been contested during the conquest.^[5][6] On 15 October 1522, a Royal Cedula was issued, appointing him Governor and Captain General of New Spain. Cortés personally governed the newly conquered territories until 1524, when he left for Honduras, heading an expedition against the rebel Cristóbal de Olid, who had declared his independence from Spain and claimed Honduras was his own.

Hernán Cortés, conquistador of New Spain, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca

At his arrival at Mexico City in 1526, after having defeated Olid, Cortés found that his enemies Bishop Fonseca, President of the Council of Indies, and Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, Governor of Cuba, had persuaded the King to initiate a juicio de residencia (judgement of residence) against him. The chosen licentiate was Luis Ponce de León, who suspended Cortés from his office of governor on 16 July 1526, and took over the government himself. Ponce de León died shortly after his arrival, and was replaced by Marcos de Aguilar, who also died shortly after taking office. Cortés, who was accused by his opponents of having poisoned both of them,^[6] decided to return to Spain to appeal to the justice of the King.

In 1528, Cortés attained Castile, where he presented himself with great splendor before Charles V's court, responding forthrightly to the accusations of his enemies. Cortés gained the royal favor, and was created Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca, being formally confirmed in his land holdings and vassals. The title was bestowed upon him by a Royal Cédula issued on 6 July 1529. He was also honored with the knighthood of the Order of Santiago and the honorary charge of Captain General of New Spain and of the Coast of the Southern Sea,^[7] and the noble title don, but was not reinstated the governorship of New Spain as he desired and never held any office with political power again.^[8] In 1529 he married the Spanish noblewoman Doña Juana de Zúñiga he had four legitimate children, including his only legitimate son, Don Martín, who succeeded to the title on his father's death in 1547.

On 27 July 1529, a new Royal Cédula was issued, permitting Cortés to establish a mayorazgo (entailed estate) or majorat annexed to the title.^[9] The institution of the majorat, which took place on 9 January 1535,^[9] ensured the permanence of the Marquessate, as it entailed most of Cortés' estates, urban properties and vassals, rendering them inheritable along with the marquessal dignity in the family. The mayorazgo also laid down the succession to the title, which is by male-preference primogeniture, i.e. female are allowed to succeed if she has no living brothers and no deceased brothers who left surviving legitimate descendants. It was also specified that the Marquess or Marchioness had to be a Roman Catholic, loyal to the King, and bear the name and arms of Cortés.^[9]

Territories and administration

Cortés' estate was one of the very few seignorial hereditary domains created in the Indies, along with the short-living Dukedom of Veragua and Marquessate of Jamaica; the Dukedom of Atrisco, the Marquessate of Santiago de Oropesa and the Lordship of Maní.^[10] The Spanish crown preferred to reward conquistadors via the encomienda system, granting tribute and labor from specific indigenous settlements to the holder of the encomienda.^[11][12] The encomiendas could only be inherited up to two generations, and the encomenderos had no political or judiciary power in their lands, depending on the pertinent Royal Audience and Captaincy General or Intendance.^[12] Far from it, the Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca had full civil and criminal jurisdiction over his 23.000 vassals,^[13] and could name justice and administrative officials.^[14] Although the crown had granted the title and privileges, the "royal authorities made continual efforts to prevent the Marquesado from fully acquiring the political and juridical power required in the classic feudal model.".^[15]

The Marquessate granted to Cortés was not a geographically unified estate, but consisted of separate, fertile, populous, and often strategic areas in different parts of Mexico but with economic potential. The holdings covered a total extension of over 11.500 square kilometres.^[13][16] Cortés built a palace in Cuernavaca, (now the capital of the state of Morelos), which is relatively close to Mexico city, where he had substantial holdings. House to house censuses from ca. 1535 in the Nahuatl language are extant for the Cuernavaca region, which give important information about the social and economic structure of indigenous communities held by Cortés. It is likely that the censuses were carried out as part of the dispute between Cortés and the Spanish crown about the number of tribute payers Cortés actually held. In the censuses Cortés is referred to directly by his title of Marqués. The censuses also give important information about the extent to which Christian evangelization was effective at the local level, since each member of a household was identified as baptized or unbaptized.^[17][18] This type of local-level documentation in indigenous languages are used in Mesoamerican ethnohistory (also termed the New Philology) to write history from indigenous viewpoints. The Cuernavaca censuses demonstrate that although Cortés was the recipient of tributes and was acknowledged as the Indian communities' overlord, these communities continued to function with little change fifteen years after the conquest of Mexico.

The Marquessate was composed of seven jurisdictions: four Corregimientos and three Alcaldías Mayores.^[14] The Corregimiento of Coyoacán, of 550 km²,^[19] included the main town, 34 villages (among others Mixcoac, San Agustín de las Cuevas, San Ángel, Churubusco and Tacubaya) and 5 haciendas. Depending on the Corregimiento of Toluca were 12 villages and an hacienda of 450 km², and of the Corregimiento of Charo Matlazinco, of 100 km², San Miguel Charo, 2 villages and an hacienda. The Corregimiento of Jalapa de Tehuantepec, headed by Santa María Jalapa del Marqués, with 7 haciendas that summed up 550 km². The holdings were to bring enormous income to the Marquessate when it was managed well was a large profit-making, economic enterprise with a centralized administration.^[20]

Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca. Main seat of government of the Marquessate of the Valley of Oaxaca, and residence of the 1st, 2nd and 4th Marchionesses.

This last Corregimiento included until 1560 the port of Tehuantepec, when King Philip II issued a Royal Cédula, dated 16 December, which removed Tehuantepec from the marquessal estate, but specified that the Marquess should receive in exchange the equivalence of the tributes in gold that the town produced for the Royal Treasury.^[21] The Royal Audience of Mexico, on 23 November 1563, fixed a perpetual annual reward of 1,527 pesos of gold and 3,442 fanegas of maize paid by the villages of Tenango del Valle and Chimalhuacán.^[21]

The Alcaldía Mayor of the four towns of the Marquessate (Santa María de Oaxaca, Cuilapan, Etla and Santa Ana Tlapacoyan), of 1,500 km²,^[19] included 34 villages, 2 haciendas and a sugar ingenio. Notwithstanding being surrounded by lands of this Alcaldía, the city of Antequera (today Oaxaca de Juárez) was patrimony of the Crown.^[16] The Alcaldía Mayor of Cuernavaca spanned the former Corregimientos of Acapixtla and Oaxtepec, covering an area of 4,100 km². It included the city of Cuernavaca, head of the Marquessate; 80 villages, 8 haciendas and 3 sugar ingenios, situated in Tlaltenango (the first one in New Spain), Amatitlán and Atlacomulco.^[19] The Alcaldía Mayor of Tuxtla and Cotaxtla, headed by the town of Santiago Tuxtla, was composed of 51 villages.

Up to 1567, the Marquess assigned the general supervision of the Estate affairs to the High Steward (Mayordomo Mayor), an official directly below him whose work consisted of routine collection and disbursement of funds and materials, as well as the conduct of lawsuits.^[22] In that year, the viceregal authorities discovered a conspiracy led by Don Martín Cortés, 2nd Marquess and his brother Martín Cortés the Mestizo, planning to proclaim the former King of New Spain, supported by the conquistadors, who were unhappy with New Laws that restricted the inheritance of encomiendas.^[23] The King ordered the sequestration of the Marquessate, which meant the Crown seized control of the Estate and withdrew all its incomes; the leaders being expelled from New Spain and forbidden to return.

Although the sequestration was lifted in 1593, the Marchionesses lost direct control of the administration of the Estate, as they had to retain the structure through which the Crown had worked, which relinquished the governing autonomy they used to exercise.^[22] From then, the Marquessate had a fixed bureaucracy: The Governor and Privative Judge of the Estate (Gobernador y Juez Privativo), the Estate Controller (Contador), the Estate Lawyer (Abogado de Cámara), the Estate Solicitor (Procurador), the Estate Bailiff (Agente solicitador), the Estate Executioner (Ministro ejecutor), the Administrator of houses and ground rents and the Interpreter of the Nahuatl.^[14] These major officials met together as a group, called the Junta, to discuss Estate affairs. Also, there was an office in Madrid, the General Direction, so that the decisions could be taken jointly with the agents of the Marquess.^[22]

The Marquesado del Valle Codex, written in the second half of the 16th century, includes 28 petitions filed by local landowners in the Nahuatl language requesting return of their seized lands.^[24]

From the Cortés to the Pignatellis

Don Martín, the 2nd Marquess, obtained royal pardon in 1574, returning from his exile in Oran and recovering part of his sequestered lands in Mexico. However, he could not go back to New Spain and still had to pay a fine of 50,000 ducats and lend 100,000 more to the Crown.^[25] He died in Madrid in 1589 and was succeeded in the title by his eldest son, Don Hernando Cortés, 3rd Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca, who was reinstated the rest of his Estate in 1593, with the help of his brother-in-law, Diego Fernández de Cabrera, 3rd Count of Chinchón, close adviser to the King.^[25] The 3rd Marquess left no legitimate children, so the title passed on his death to his brother, Don Pedro Cortés, 4th Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca. This Marquess was allowed to settle in Mexico, where he personally took up the running of the Estate, which had been controlled by administrators since 1567.

The 4th Marquess also died without surviving descendants, so the Marquessate was inherited by his niece, Doña Estafanía Carrillo de Mendoza y Cortés, married to the Sicilian Duke of Terranova. Doña Estefanía was the eldest daughter of Doña Juana Cortés, sister of the 3rd and the 4th Marchionesses, and her husband Don Count of Priego. Upon the inheritance of the title, in compliance with the mayorazgo or entailment, the family adopted the name Aragona Tagliavia Cortés, although commonly referred to as Tagliavia d'Aragona.^[26] This marriage produced a single child, Giovanna, one of the richest heiresses of her time,^[27] who married Ettore Pignatelli, 5th Duke of Monteleone, giving birth to a dynasty that assembled the immense wealth of the Aragonas, the Tagliavias, the Pignatellis and the Cortés, their titles and their fiefs, among which the Mexican marquessate was the crown jewel. Upon marriage, the groom assumed the name Aragona Pignatelli Cortés for him and all his descendants, who however where generally known as Pignatelli d'Aragona.^[26]